About Cross Locked
Cross Locked, which was initially called Master X until some friends mentioned that they hated the name, was created in the middle of the night when I woke up suddenly and a vision of a game popped into my head. Earlier that evening my wife and I were with some friends playing Canasta and I believe it just simulated my mind in thinking of “games” we have played in the past and out popped Cross Locked.
I have no idea where or how the pattern came into my head, since Canasta is so different-looking, however, once the pattern emerged the rest fell into place quickly. We have often played games like Uno, Rummy Cube, and Gin Rummy and liked them for their pace of play and simplicity. And, there was just enough strategy to make the games competitive.
Cross Locked is a true “team” game. It is designed so that a four or six-player game can not be played as four or six individual competitors. I wanted the game to not take hours to play so I hoped the game would take about 1.5 hours max so I broke it up into 3 rounds to fulfill that goal.
In some early plays, I took suggestions from the people and made a few changes to improve the game. In the beginning, I allowed unlimited use of the yellow “action” tiles on a turn, but that was too time-consuming. Also, one player, who happened to be a real gamer mentioned that it seemed that you could get stuck with a bunch of “dead” tiles if the X’s became populated with all high numbers or all low numbers. So, he suggested that I add an option to replace the “dead” tiles. That was a great idea and improvement.
I hope you enjoy the game, play it often, and recommend it to your friends and family.
Sincerely,
Sanford Mandell