In order to qualify for this audience reaction, one of the following must be present:
- The components are liable to break after small amounts of normal use, e.g. flimsy cards that easily get bent or damaged during shuffling.note
- The components have issues that lead to the board game equivalent of a Game-Breaking Bug, such as a Dexterity Challenge that flat-out doesn't work, or a card that's so warped it's declared tournament-illegal.
- The components have flaws that actively make the game harder to play. Examples include a component too small to handle comfortably, a card with text too small to comfortably read, printing problems that make colour-coded elements hard to distinguish, flimsy score trackers that easily get misplaced, and so on.
Maths: Should we include accessibility issues? I'm leaning towards no — while I'm all for accessibility, I don't want the page to be flooded with examples like "game X is borderline unplayable if you have this rare disability". Especially if it would've been hard or impossible to modify the game to accommodate for the disability in question anyway.
Please do not use this page to complain about publishers supposedly being cheap, lazy or stupid. Mishaps can happen.
Examples
- Betrayal at House on the Hill: The "clip-on" trackers are so loose that a small bump to the table will knock them off or move them around.
- BreaKeys tried to make breakable components a feature — its gimmick is that the loser's piece will break during normal gameplay. It didn't go over well.
- The Castles of Burgundy has yellow tiles portraying buildings. The problem is that they have unique effects, but none of the building designs are very memorable or hint at what the tiles do. The game is also prone to tiny illegible iconography.
- Coaster Park, a game about building physical rollercoasters in cardboard, was poorly received in part because the cardboard used in its dexterity element will end up warping and bending, especially as you regularly attach and detach pieces.
- Magic: The Gathering:
- The foil cards are notoriously prone to curling, to the point where calling them "Pringles" is a common meme. They might end up warped to the point of being considered marked cards in tournaments.
- While alternative art treatments are mostly well-received, they do have the issue of making the board state harder to keep track of. Especially for people who like to identify cards by their art.
