Take a board game like Tantrix, simplify it a bit so that the shapes are just squares with two different colors, and then add a game board and personalities to the tiles, and you have R.S.V.P. To those who doesn’t know what Tantrix is, you have probably seen it before; parents who stroll the aisles of toy stores know too well the hexagonal shapes with colorful lines printed through them. You can read about Tantrix here. Great game, by the way – really works your brain. Tantrix is a free game to play online.

In R.S.V.P. Each level consist of a board, and a preset number of tiles to put on the board. The game will only show you 3 of these at a time, at the bottom, and your job is to take those tiles and make sure the colors on each matches the edge next to it. Sounds simple, right? Well, it is. It makes the game very accessible, and the limited number of colors it presents in Adventure mode ensures that you learn the basics of how all the different “personality” tiles work before you get into the real “meat” of the game: Endless Party.

Sure, 28 levels in Adventure mode don’t seem like much, but that’s not where the game really is. Adventure mode is like a prolonged tutorial in order to prepare you for Endless Party. In Endless Party, you get a clock, randomized tiles, all of the personalities, as well as extra colors. You also get 3 snub bonuses to get rid of lines of tiles that you don’t want in the waiting area. However, there is no power-up to get rid of something once you put it on the board. I wish there was, though. The way it stands now, the difficulty level ramps up really quick.

R.S.V.P. is very elegantly designed in terms of the rules – there are no real “bonuses” aside from the Joker character and the Surfer Girl. The Joker is a wildcard, and will match any tile placed next to it. As for the Surfer Girl, she changes color every time you pick her up, so she can be made to match any two colors surrounding her. I find it to be a flaw in her design that you can’t just click on some arrows on her to change color, but instead have to pick her up and wait for the colors to match.

The presentation in the game can be summed up as one word – gorgeous. Everything is beautifully drawn in a vector illustrated style, all the tiles are animated very well, where the characters on each tile “checks out” the next one to see if they get along. There are six different background styles for the locations, and the boards are unique so that in adventure mode there is always a way (more than one way) to finish off a board. There seems to be only one music track, and it gets annoying pretty quick. I turned it off halfway through adventure mode. Given all the different locations, a new track for each location would’ve been lovely.

R.S.V.P. will not save mid-level, and if you want to play Endless Party, you better have a lot of time on your hands, because you’ll have to play until you, or it, drops. Definitely not a Minute Game, but I did have a lot of fun playing it until Curtis got sick of staring at it. Which, given the amount of bright colors and animations involved, kept him occupied in his high chair for a while watching the entire Adventure Mode.