Polizei-Alarm! (2009)

About this game

One player is the band of thieves, attempting to break into safe deposit boxes. The other player is the police, trying to hunt them down before they escape. While the police scoots around a magnetic board looking for the thieves, the criminal rolls the dice attempting to break open the safe deposit boxes. Polizei-Alarm! is an action/dexterity game for 2-4 players (although only two sides play against each other).One side plays a gang of safe-crackers who try to throw the correct combinations for the safes with some special dice under time-pressure. The other side is the Police, who try to find the the hideout of the gangsters. In order to achieve this they steer a police car through a labyrinth-like city plan on the game board by holding the board at an angle, so that the the police car slides on the surface (similar to the classic wooden labyrinth-games where you have to navigate a metal ball through a maze with holes in it - but without the holes). When they find the correct hideout before the safe-crackers succeed with the combination, the latter walk off empty-handed.

Does it fit your group?

• Group size. Works with 2 to 4.
• Rules load. At 1.1/5 this is a light game — explain it in a few minutes, good for a table that has not played much.
• Age. The publisher suggests 6 and up. That rates the rules rather than the artwork, so judge the box yourself for younger players.