GearGrid

You blatantly lied on your CV and got hired by the world's best Gear Moving Factory. It is your first day at the job and the boss is smelling something fishy about the new recruits. He places you in the Ultra Modern Testing Grounds to test your skills. The one who ends up the best will start working... for others, tough luck. Pick up gear tiles as quickly as possible and try to make right connections and fill up the board... 1-4 players, virtually no setup time and 1-3 minutes per round. During a game, each player picks up gear tiles from the common pool and adds them to their own board. Each tile must be connected (diagonally or orthogonally) to the engine tile via coloured squares. If a player successfully connects 3 goal tiles with the engine tile so that goal tiles turn in the right direction, he scores 3 points for each. Each empty space on the board is worth -1 point at the end of the game. Players must be careful, invalid connections might make whole sections of the board invalid and empty before the scoring. No two tiles may be connected via different colours, and a tile connected with two tiles that turn in two different directions is also invalid. A round lasts between 1 and 3 minutes (players choice, depends on skill). The player with the best score is the winner. Players may also choose to use or not use both sides of the gear tiles that easily show which gear turns in which direction. Using both sides makes the game much easier and it is recommended for the first games.