Step by Step

Step by Step is a push-your-luck dice game in the spirit of Sid Sackson's classic Can't Stop as players try to push their pieces to the top of multiple columns on the game board – but players win by scoring points and that can be done two ways. Each player starts the game with their pieces in the start spaces of five columns on the game board – a space worth -5 points at game's end, mind you, so don't stick around too long! (The game board is double-sided, with one side for 2-3 players and the other for 4-5 players.) On a turn, a player chooses a column, then rolls 2-6 dice depending on which column he chose. After rolling the dice, the player then makes a bid – either "higher/same" or "lower/same" – that lasts for the remainder of the turn. After making a bid, the player chooses one or more dice from among those he rolled previously and rerolls them. If the sum of all the dice matches his bid, then he advances a runner in the column he chose, skipping over opponents' pieces on the way. The player then either ends his turn (moving his pieces to where the runner sits) or rerolls one or more dice to try to match his bid once again. If a player ever fails to match his bid, his turn ends without moving his pieces. If a player ends his turn with his piece on one of 14 tokens that start on the game board, he claims this token. Each column is divided into two zones, and a player cannot advance into an upper zone unless he has moved at least three pieces from the start spaces. The game ends as soon as one player piece is in each upper zone. Players score points based on the height they reached in each column (-5 to 12 points) and the number of tokens they collected (-3 to 5 points). The player with the highest total score wins.