One of the things I enjoy most about board games is their tactile nature. And nothing feels more tactile than laying some thick cardboard tiles. There’s a lot I love about games, but give me some tiles and an efficiency puzzle, and I’ll be happy until the cows come home.
A lot of my favourite games feature tile laying in some respect. Isle of Skye, Castles of Burgundy, Calico, Patchwork, Barenpark, I could go on and on. I just love the progression and sense of accomplishment that you get by building something in most of these games. So how does Akropolis stack up? Read on to find out!
How to Play
Akropolis, designed by Jules Messaud and published by Gigamic, is a tile laying game where you’re trying to build up a settlement. The game starts you off with a special starter tile, which has 4 hexagons arranged in a Y shape. A blue star sits in the centre and 3 white buildings surround it.
The rest of the tiles are city tiles. These tiles consist of 3 hexagons in a triangle pattern. Each hexagon on these tiles depict one of the 6 buildings types in this game. The blue buildings are housing districts, which want to be adjacent. The yellow market buildings detest competition, and must not be adjacent to any other market. The red barracks must have along the edge of your city, while the purple towers must be completely surrounded. The green have no requirements, but there’s very few of them. Finally, the white buildings offer no value in terms of points, but if you manage to build over the white buildings, you get a piece of stone which is a valuable resource. To add some complexity, each building has an alternate scoring method that I won’t mention here.
The city tiles are stacked based on the number of players (N+1), and any remaining tiles form the market row. A turn in Arkopolis is as simple as can be. Take a tile from the market row, and place it in your city. Now, you do have to take the left most tile, but you can choose to pay one of your stone to take a tile further down the line if you so wish. Placing the tile in your city is fairly unrestricted. Either place it so at least one edge is touching another edge, or, you can build on top of existing tiles, provided the tile placed on the higher level is sitting on three hexes from at least two different tiles.
Some of these buildings depict stars, which add to your score multiplier for that colour. At the start of the game, you only have 1 blue star, meaning that every other colour starts with a times 0 multiplier! You need to acquire the right buildings to earn the right to score any points!
If the market row gets picked down, so there’s only one tile remaining, you refresh it with one of the tile stacks you set aside earlier. If there is one tile remaining and no stacks left, the game ends. Each player calculates their score, and the player with the most points is the winner.
Review
It’s not something I admit freely, but I usually don’t like learning games from other people. I like to have the rule book in my hand and be the one to teach the table how to play a new game. I get cagey that an important rule gets missed, or that some exception gets missed. So when I met up with Ryan Rau of Mista Rau’s Gaming, and he taught me how to play Akropolis without ever touching the rule book, I was a bit nervous. And when he proclaimed that there were so few restrictions on tile placement, I was dubious.
But I’m happy my fears were unfounded! Akropolis is as simple as can be. Pick a tile from the row, place it in or on your city, and score at the end of the game. Get stone when you overbuild white buildings, and use the stone as a resource to jump the building queue to get the tiles you actually want. It’s clean, easy, and quick to get started.
The production on Akropolis is no slouch. The cardboard is thick, which makes the tiles feel great to hold, and gives your city a nice elevation when you start to reach that third level. The insert is just folded cardboard, but highly functional, holding all the tiles in place. There’s not a lot of art to talk about beyond the colourful cover on the box, the tiles just depict a bird’s eye view of little clusters of buildings. With the thickness and size of the tiles, your city sprawls out and up in a very satisfying way, like a loaf of sourdough bread.
I love building my city up, turning useless tiles into multipliers of helpful tiles. Yes, there are only 6 green tiles in the whole game, but by putting a green tile on level 3, suddenly I’ve extended my scoring opportunities for this game. It feels dynamic, as you need to hope the right tile comes out at the right time, and while it’s nice if the other colours on the tiles work for you, worst case scenario they serve as the bedrock for another tile to be placed on top of it.
One of the key aspects of Akropolis is that you cannot do everything. Each round you’ll look over the supply of tiles and want to take most of them into your city. You’re forced to niche yourself and while it would be great to hate draft a tile away from your neighbour, will denying them points make up for the points you’re missing out on by not taking the tile that you really wanted? The tiles that contain stars are coveted by everyone, after all, it doesn’t matter how many colours you have in your city if they’re all multiplied by 0.
The verticality and multipliers combined in Akropolis unlock amazing scoring potentials. Plopping a garden down on level 3, when you have 6 stars, feels amazing. Likewise, placing the perfect blue tile on the third level that connects your two separated blue districts into one massive scoring opportunity feels excellent.
At 2 players, Akropolis can get a little cutthroat. The hate drafting aspect is higher, as you only have one other city to evaluate when you’re considering which tile to take. At 4 players, you’ll only be tangentially aware of what your opponents are doing. You’ll be much more concerned with the flow of stone at higher player counts. When there are 3 players taking tiles between each of your turns, and the offer being drained nearly every time, you’ll be much more willing to drop 4 pieces of stone to ensure you get the tile you want
I am absolutely enthralled by the experience of playing Akropolis. Every move in this game fills me with immense satisfaction and excitement. The strategic placement of tiles, the exhilarating feeling of replacing useless tiles with ones that generate a plethora of points, and the sheer joy of denying your rivals the stars they have been waiting for throughout the game – it’s all incredibly gratifying. In fact, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Akropolis becomes a cherished favourite among tile laying games. It’s a game that captivates me, and I can’t recommend it enough!
If you’re looking for something to compare Akropolis to, it feels like NMBR9 mixed with Kingdomino. If you like either or both of those games, then I’m sure Akropolis will be a hit for you!
I’m at a weird inflection point on my board game hobby. Sometimes, I acquire a game, then, after some time passes, I completely forget how I acquired that game. Such is the case for Lost Cities: Rivals. I own it, but I have no recollection on how I managed to come into ownership of this game.
I’ve already talked about my love for Lost Cities by Reiner Knizia. The two player game is one that I adore, and after playing the four player board game, I was quite hesitant to give another Lost Cities branded back a shot. Much like the IP games of old, I assume spin-offs are bad and are using my adoration of an established property to catch my interest. So let’s take a look at what makes Lost Cities: Rivals tick.
How to Play
In Lost Cities: Rivals, players are embarking on expeditions to distant locations, but instead of playing cards from a hand, they’re auctioning off a pool of cards instead. To set up the game, the deck is broken into 4 equal piles, and everyone gets an equal pile of money. Then, everyone receives 2 wager cards, and the game can begin.
On your turn, your choices are to either reveal the top card of the deck and add it to the prize pool, or, call an auction by offering at least one coin. The auction goes around and around the table until everyone bows out. The last player pays their coins into the supply and takes their winnings.
Much like the original Lost Cities, cards are placed in a tableau in front of you. Cards of the same colour form stacks, and must be in ascending order, with the wager cards at the top. Once you place a card, you can’t place cards of a lower number in that expedition.
When one of the decks of cards runs out, play is interrupted. All the coins in the supply are divided amongst players equally, then, play resumes. When the final card from the final deck is reveals, the game immediately ends.
To score, simply count the footprints shown on all the cards of an expedition. If you have any wager cards, those will multiply your score (the first wager card doubles the score, the second triples, and so on). In addition, if you managed to get 4 number cards of an expedition, you get a bonus 8 points, but that bonus is not eligible to be multiplied. Any leftover coins are worth a point each, and the player with the most points is the winner!
Review
I have such a love/hate relationship with bidding games, but I can’t deny that Renier Kenizia knows how to make some fun games. I won’t start by comparing Lost Cities: Rivals to Ra or Medici, but, I’ll start by comparing it to its namesake, Lost Cities.
Lost Cities: Rivals comes in a small box with a regular sized deck of cards. Gone are the tarot size cards from the two player version that features a panoramic expedition as you ascend in the cards. Now, that panoramic art is still there, but it’s quite lost on these smaller cards. It’s functional, but not necessarily attractive. Considering that Lost Cities: Rivals has become a favourite pub game, I’m thankful for the portability.
I always go into my games of Lost Cities: Rivals with the strategies that I’ve honed over dozens of games of Lost Cities, and I generally end up doing poorly for it. My loss aversion kicks in, and I refuse to start an expedition on a 5 or a 6 because I feel like I need the lower numbers to make an expedition ‘worth it’. One rule I often forget is that there is no penalty for starting an expedition, so, other than blocking yourself off from the lower numbers, there’s no reason not to skip the lower numbers.
Further to that, the cards don’t score based off their number anymore, giving much greater importance to getting the 8, 9, and 10 to do well. Instead, the lower half of cards give 1 point, while the upper half of cards earn you 2 points. A 6 and a 10 are effectively equal, for the purposes of scoring. Again, my tendency to fall back on the original Lost Cities strategies do me a disservice here. I don’t need to overspend just because the 9 and 10 are up for bid, it’s only 4 points that I’m ‘giving up’.
The final place where my Lost Cities experience is failing me, is the expectation that I’ll acquire roughly half the cards in the game. It should be obvious, with more players, the fewer cards I’ll take. But my control over which cards I can acquire is quite a bit more chaotic. I can’t hold cards in my hand and wait for the lower values anymore. If someone else starts an auction, and there are cards that I want in that prize pool, I have to bid on them, and put them into my expedition right now.
Almost every card will be valued differently by every player. Thanks to the starting wager cards, and the restrictions on only being able to play higher numbers in your expeditions, as the game goes on, you’ll have a prize pool that two players fight over for very different reasons, and that feels exciting. Add to that, the winner of an auction gets to discard one card that they don’t take from the prize pool, giving you control to remove cards that you can’t take into your tableau, but don’t want other players profiting from.
The gameplay is dead simple. On your turn, either push your luck and add to the prize pool, or, call an auction. If you’re flush with cash, adding cards to the display sweetens the pot that you can guarantee that you’ll take, even if it costs you everything. If you’re strapped for cash, calling an auction with a single coin is a great way to drain the coins from the more wealthy players, assuming there’s anything in that prize pool that they want.
The ebb and flow of cash feels exciting, too. As the current deck of cards gets slim, the players low on cash are quick to flip the cards, giving more prizes to those who chose to bide their time. It makes me cackle with glee when I manage to win 5 or 6 cards with only 4 coins, while others need to spend 7 coins to win only 4 cards. I’m not saying I often win, I just love the feeling that comes when you score a good deal.
I’ve only played Lost Cities: Rivals at 4 players, and it does excellently at that player count. I imagine that 3 works fairly well, but I suspect 2 players is not where this game shines. Heck, at 2 players, you should be playing the 2 player specific version of Lost Cities, which you can actually do with Lost Cities: Rivals by removing one set of the 2–5 cards of each colour. Two games in one!
Lost Cities: Rivals wasn’t an immediate hit with me, but the more I play it, the more I enjoy it. Lost Cities: Rivals needs time to settle in your mind, especially if you’re constantly comparing it to its predecessors. It’s in no way better than RA, but it is much easier to teach and play in situations where RA isn’t an appropriate choice. I think the more stiff competition comes from For Sale by Stefan Dorra. Both are very portable, and both are really fun auction games. Lost Cities: Rivals does take a bit longer to play, but it also feels more interactive.
As I mentioned above, there are some significant changes from base Lost Cities, but you don’t need to have experience with that game to enjoy Lost Cities: Rivals. The inclusion of auctions into the Lost Cities gameplay isn’t something that I would have expected to work, or for me to enjoy, yet here I am. I quite enjoy playing Lost Cities: Rivals while on a patio. It’s a breezy, quick game full of tension and excitement. And what more can I ask for?
Full Disclosure: A copy of Aethermon: Collect was provided by the publisher for review
Introduction
I vividly remember the summer of 1999. I was 8 years old, my grandparents were taking me and my sister on a weeks long road trip across Manitoba, and down to South Dakota to attend a family reunion. At the outset, my mom gave us $100 each in spending money. At the first stop, I spent half my cash on Pokémon Red, and throughout the tip, the other half on triple A batteries for my Game Boy pocket. I don’t even remember why I wanted Pokémon, I just saw Charizard on the cover and felt inexplicably drawn to it (oh geez, a 8-year-old drawn to a fire breathing dragon, who would have guessed it.)
That summer, was my introduction to Pokémon. With dozens of hours in the back seat of my grandparent’s Toyota Corolla, I immersed myself into the world of Pokémon. And right from the outset, I was hooked. Charmander and I spend endless afternoons crawling through the world. With no friends to confer with, or strategy guides to consult, my experience with Pokémon was entirely trial and error. I remember levelling up a Pikachu to level 48, trying to make it evolve. Grinding against monsters half it’s level, the elation every time it levelled up, the anticipation, hoping against hope that this time, THIS TIME will be the level at which Pikachu evolves, only to have my hopes dashed as the battle screen gave way to the over world sprite, time and time again (for those who don’t know, Pikachu requires a special item to evolve).
What I’m trying to say is, I have sincere nostalgia for the olden days of Pokémon. So when I saw the art for Aethermon: Collect, I couldn’t help but be attracted to it. The kids in the forest, with magical mons by their side, I was ready to submerge myself into another adventure.
How to Play
Aethermon: Collect is a fast set collection game. All the cards are laid out on a grid, then players take a turn moving the acrylic group marker up and down the rows and columns of cards, collecting the one monster you choose to stop on. Around and Around the game goes until either all players cannot collect an Aethermon in succession, or in the cooperative version, any one player fails to collect an Aethermon on their turn.
Each Aethermon has a value, and many belong to families. Your score at the end of the game is simply the sum of the Aethermon you collect, with a bonus being applied if you managed to collect all the monsters in a single family.
A 4 player cooperative setup
Review
As I mentioned in the introduction, what pulled me into Aethermon: Collect was the art direction. The cover of the two pals, their robot and dog in the forest, ready for a grand adventure, had me sold from the start. The promotional images of the Aethermon themselves on Aethermon Studios website had me absolutely hooked on this franchise.
Aethermon: Collect itself comes in a small box, about as wide as a smart phone, a touch more than half as long, but deep enough to hold the 74 cards with room to spare. It’s travel sized for your convenience!
Everything in Aethermon: Collect is composed of these 60 mm square cards. From the 48 Aethermon cards (6 monsters of 8 elemental families), to the 12 artefacts, to the 14 cards that comprise the ‘rule book’. While I appreciate the convenience of portable size, I strongly dislike shuffling square cards. Furthermore, I harbour significant discontent towards the rules being put onto 14 double-sided cards. It would be far preferable if the rules were presented in a compact booklet instead.
Aethermon: Collect features both a cooperative mode, and a competitive mode, both play modes feature players moving a shared pawn along a grid of cards. In the competitive mode, players are given 2 artefacts, which they can use to break the rules and give themselves a surprise advantage. Players are trying to collect Aethermon and accrue the most points. If you happen to collect all the Aethermon of a family, their points are doubled. It feels painfully straightforward, where the only interesting thing that happens is when someone uses their artefact, and the winner is just the one who used their artefact most effectively.
The Co-op game feels less like a game, and more of a puzzle. Kind of like a Sudoku; the optimal path could be deduced before the first turn is ever taken. Depending on how strongly other people inject their input on other player’s turn, this could be a major problem. However, if you’re not of the min-max persuasion, then there are some fun moments to be had as the game slowly whittles down the choices available to you. You’ll have moments where you’ll take Matchka, which allows Bigfoot to take Fizzig, finishing that family, then Otter flies to the far side of the board to get Wahblaze, then Bear can collect Eleplant which is right next to it. It never makes you feel clever, but there is joy in finding the happy accident moments where everyone managed to get what they wanted.
Whether you play competitive or cooperative, the gameplay is lighting quick and straightforward. I would have no hesitation to introduce this game to my nieces, or use it as a quick casual game to kick off game night, maybe while waiting for others to arrive. Maintaining the grid of cards can be a bit of a challenge, though. If some cards get knocked askew, it can be tricky to know if they’re in one column or the other, which is a major gameplay consideration. I did see in the crowdfunding notes that they’re making a playmat available, but I’m not sure how that will be combined with the box. As with all crowdfunding projects, we’ll need to wait and see.
The Aethermon themselves should be the star of the show. They have dynamic poses, each one has a short biography on the back, and the character designs are top-notch. Their elements mean nothing in the gameplay of Aethermon: Collect, they’re just a way to shrink the deck for the 2 and 3 player game, which is kind of disappointing, honestly. It’s obvious that a lot of work and love and talent went into designing each of these creatures, which then to have them relegated to being functionally nothing but numbers and set collection bonuses, I’m left wanting so much more.
A lot of my negative feelings come from my own heightened sense of anticipation. I wanted so much more than Aethermon: Collect itself is supposed to be. On its own, Aethermon: Collect feels like a missed opportunity. I’m left praying that Aethermon: Collect is just an introduction to a franchise, an amuse bouche to whet the appetites before the real products start to roll out. And I know there is more on the horizon! The game includes a teaser card, promising a Rougelike RPG coming soon, with more details on the Aethermon website, and I’m so eagerly anticipating whatever comes next for Aethermon. I adore the art direction Aethermon Studios has established, and I will eagerly snap up whatever comes next.
For a lot of board game enthusiasts, Carcassonne by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede was one of the early games that pulled them into this wonderful cardboard hobby. Released in 2000, and with over 100 expansions and versions listed on BoardGameGeek.com, it’s hard to imagine a world without this quintessential tile laying game.
The Meeple, or, My People, have become a ubiquitous icon of the board game community
Mists over Carcassonne is the 2022 cooperative game, utilizing the tried and true tile laying mechanics, but turning the scoring on it’s head and forcing players to collaborate to achieve a score threshold, while trying to keep the ghosts at bay. Does it work? I’m not going to bury the lede here, it absolutely does, as long as you’re already a fan of cooperative games. Read on to find out more!
How to play
Just like in base Carcassonne, players take turns adding a new land tile to the display, creating an ever-enlarging game board onto which you may then place your meeple on terrain features to score points. During Mists over Carcassonne, ghosts will keep appearing, and it’s your job is to pacify them. Together, you must reach the goal tile, i.e. score a pre-determined number of points. But watch out: If there are too many ghosts on the board, or you can’t draw land tiles any more, you lose the game. All players play together against the game. Show each other your tiles and decide as a team where to place them. In later levels especially, you will need to cooperate well!
Each turn, you must execute a set of actions in a specific order. Start by drawing, and placing a land tile adjacent to an existing tile. Then, place ghosts and meeples. Ghosts get placed on the mists, while meeples get placed on the terrain features. And finally, you score points for completed terrain features, and return those meeples to their owner’s supply.
When placing tiles, you must match the terrain of the tile to the same terrain on a tile already in the central play area. Cities to cities, roads to roads, and fields to fields. The exception here are the mists, which can abut non-misty terrains of the same type (a clear road can lead into a misty road, and ditto for fields)
If a newly placed tile contains mist, and if the mist bank it’s added to is completed, then all the ghosts from that mist bank are removed. If you started a wholly new mist bank, then you add ghosts equal to the number of ghost symbols on that tile. If you added to an existing mist bank, making it bigger, then you get to place one fewer ghost to that tile. Managing your ghost supply is important, as if you ever need to place a ghost, and you can’t, then it’s game over!
One more wrinkle to the game is instead of scoring a completed terrain feature, you can choose to forgo the points and instead remove 3 ghosts from any one tile, returning them to the supply.
To win the game, players simply need to achieve the point goal set out by the chapter they’re playing. The first chapter’s goal, is 50 points. Further chapters will introduce castles, graveyards, and impose more restrictions
Review
I recently played base Carcassonne, and was reminded on just how brilliant that core game is. I know everyone will have their own favourite combination of expansions or ways to play, but for me, the base game is sufficient. It’s quick, concise, and competitive.
Mists over Carcassonne retains that lighting quick gameplay and slowly expanding decision space. Now, with the cooperative aspect, you’re no longer hissing at your friends as they try to weasel in on your massive city. Instead, you’re encouraging it, leaving your gates open in the hopes you can double up on your scoring opportunities.
It would be boring if the goal was only to get the highest score. The titular mists bring spectres, determined to bring your city-building ambitions to its knees. Many of the tiles feature mists and require a number of ghosts to get placed on that tile. You place 1 fewer ghost if you’re adding to an already existing bank of mist, and if you manage to complete that mist bank, then all the ghosts from that get removed. It doesn’t sound like much, but the tension of pulling a tile that has the perfect orientation for completing a city, but also has mists that introduce 2 ghosts and your supply only has 3 ghosts left, do you risk busting on having too many ghosts and lose, or place tiles to mitigate ghosts, but end up ignoring the scoring opportunities and possibly lose the game.
Every time I review a cooperative game, I’m compelled to address the ‘alpha gamer’ or ‘quarterbacking’ issue that comes up. Some people have playmates that want to control every aspect of a cooperative game. I don’t have that problem in my group, but Mists over Carcassonne does nothing to address that complaint. If you’re one of the people who struggle with this issue, Mists over Carcassonne isn’t going to change your mind.
I love the various difficulty levels that serve as an on-ramp to the system. At first, all you need to do is earn 50 points. Easy. Then, it introduces two new tile types, castles and graveyards. Then, you’ll need to achieve points in a more even manner (getting 15 points within the first 20 tiles, 50 within the next 20, then finally, 100 points to win the level), then, some ghosts get removed, and so on. The first level levels serve as an introduction to the cooperative game, and one that I wouldn’t hesitate to use to teach my family how to play this system. The castles and graveyards can be a wrinkle too much to begin with, so leaving them out for the first level was probably a good idea.
Much like Viticulture World: The Cooperative Expansion, I loved experiencing a competitive game that I enjoyed with a new mechanic and collaborative twist. While Mists over Carcassonne hasn’t completely overtaken the base game as my default way to play Carcassonne, it dons enough to earn a spot of respect in my heart. If you’re a fan of Carcassonne, or coop games in general, Mists over Carcassonne is assuredly going to be a hit for you.
The Pursuit of Happiness, a game created by designers Adrian Abela and David Chircop and published by Artipia Games in 2015, was pitched to me as “The Game of Life” for gamers. This brought back some nostalgic memories for me, as I have strangely fond recollections of that classic game. Those memories mainly stem from playing the computer version that came in a cereal box when I was a kid. I can vividly remember huddling around the computer with my sisters, engaging in hot seat mode, taking turns with the mouse, and poking fun at the randomly assigned professions we received, and the terrible 1998 3D computer graphics.
Well, you get what you pay for, I suppose!
How to Play
In The Pursuit of Happiness, players are attempting to live the most fulfilling life, beginning with a childhood trait to give you an edge out in the world, you’re tasked with living a whole life, balancing money, resources, and stress, all in an effort to attain the most long term happiness. Each round, players will have a limited amount of time, represented by hour glass tokens, to embark on projects, purchase items and activities, advance their careers, and take on romantic interests, all in an effort to acquire that elusive happiness.
The board has 9 worker placement spots, with 4 of them being dedicated to simply acquiring more of the game’s resources. Creativity, knowledge, influence, and money. One action is called Overtime, where you get 2 more time tokens to work with, but you incur 2 stress.
The four remaining spaces involve you taking one of the 4 types of cards. Project, Items/Activities, Get a Job, and Get a Partner. Each of these cards work in different ways
Project cards come in 3 different styles, basic project, group projects, and one-time projects. With basic projects, you must start at level 1, pay the cost, and reap the benefits. On future turns, you may spend 1 time token to advance to level 2, and so on until level 4 has been achieved. Group projects have you taking the card into your play area, and other players can spend 1 time token to contribute to the group project, enhancing the benefit for everyone who contributes at the end of the around. The one-time projects have you taking the project, and choosing which level to pay for, and then that’s it. You’ll reap the corresponding reward, but you won’t be able to progress this project any further.
The Items/Activities generally cost money, but when you take the card into your play area, you can choose which level you want to start at, and can spend time tokens on future turns to progress deeper into that hobby. Many hobbies require you to pay a resource during the upkeep phase, but will provide you with a benefit for doing so.
The Career is unique in that you can only have one job at a time. When you take the job action, you need to pay the entry cost, and you’ll earn some money. During each upkeep phase, you’ll need to spend time and some resources to keep your job, but you’ll enjoy the benefit of income, hopefully enabling you to do the things you really want. During your turn, you can spend a time token to get a promotion, which allows you to advance to the next level of the same job type that you currently have. You pay the resource cost for the promotion, then search the card row and the deck for the next available card of the same job type, and replace your existing job. The next upkeep will demand more resources and time from you, but your compensation will be higher.
Going on a date allows you to take a partner into your play area, and generally get a small benefit. On future turns, if you have whatever your partner’s prerequisite are, you can spend a time token to progress your relationship. On future upkeep turns, your partner will demand some time tokens, but give you long term happiness in return. If you take a second partner, you immediately get a stress, and will get another stress per partner in excess of 1 during every upkeep.
So that’s the bulk of the cards, you can only have 3 cards active at a time, except for items and activities. If you take a 4th, you immediately incur a stress, and will get more stress if you have more than 3 cards during the upkeep phase. If you want to discard a card, you can, but you’ll incur stress and lose one short term happiness. If you have positive short term happiness, you pay one resource less for projects (but not activities), and vice versa for negative short term happiness. If you rest or relax, you can remove some of your stress, as long as you remain in the same colour area. The only way to go down to the next colour is by getting a heart from one of your cards, which are quite rare.
Review
I want to start with what I enjoyed. I loved the stories that The Pursuit of Happiness generates. Early in one game, bear took on the project “seek funding”, then proceeded to ignore the job cards for the rest of the game, while the charismatic Bigfoot promptly got married and started a family, while also becoming CEO, locking up 5 of his 6 time tokens at the start of every round. The hardworking family man only had 1 time token to do anything, which he ended up spending to get just enough knowledge to maintain his job position until the end of the game. At one point I, while happily married, decided to seek the short term happiness by taking a second partner, stress be damned.
We all found an emergent narrative to justify our decisions, and that’s easily the best part of this game. Joking and laughing with your friends at the ridiculous situations your fictional persona has embarked on. The theme is baked into every card and action, making it easy to understand what you’re doing, or why something behaves in the way that it does (like raising a family gives you less time for activities).
I adore the art in The Pursuit of Happiness. The cartoony style exudes a whimsical charm. One thing that truly impresses me is the inclusivity that comes with the design of the partner cards. The fact that they are double-sided, with identical stats, offers players the freedom to choose the character that resonates with them the most.
On the flip side, learning to play The Pursuit of Happiness can be a frustrating experience. Everything looks similar but acts in different ways, and there are exceptions galore. You can only have 3 cards, except for items. You have to start at Level 1 for projects, except for the one time project. You can jump down to any level in items, but not projects. If you put two time tokens on the same space, you get a stress, except on cards. Every rule has an exception, that makes it a burden to teach and learn.
There are a plethora of decisions on every turn. You have 9 action spots on the board, 16 cards to pick from, resources to manage, and card actions in front of you and other players that you can choose to do on any of your turns. The sheer number of choices is paralyzing, and simultaneously uninteresting. At one point, I was trying to figure out what to do, but realized that I didn’t really want to do anything. None of the actions were exciting, most were just different ways to trade some resources for other resources.
Initially, I was really excited about the push and pull of the stress track. I loved the idea of pushing up to the colour border, only to drop back down, and possibly even earn extra actions from lowering the stress level. But we literally saw a single heart throughout the entire game, making the stress track much more of a detriment. Bigfoot, who only had a single action per turn, was locked in his situation, unable to take a single stress, lest he push into the next colour section and lose his single action that was available to him. It’s easy to fall into a death spiral on that stress track, and I wish there were more ways to play with that aspect of the game.
Finally, the game is fiddly. From all the rules exceptions, to constantly converting resources from one type to another, I was frustrated by needing to turn on 6 cardboard chits to get 8 different cardboard chits in return. “I spend 3 social and 2 money and get 4 knowledge and 3 creativity, but I only have a 5 social, so I need 2 social back”. With conversions happening at nearly every action, this was by far the most annoying part of the game.
The Pursuit of Happiness has merit. As I said above, there’s charm, it generates great stories, and it’s really an experience worth having! But I don’t feel like there’s much depth. The game plays fairly similarly every time, and even when you find ways to buck the system, and avoid taking a job or partner and remain competitive, it’s not particularly interesting. My wife called it Ecclesiastes in a box, nothing really matters, your choices will all lead you to the same place ultimately. In all my plays, the scores between the winner and lose of the game were within 6 points of each other (winning score being around 65 points each time). Yes, you can choose to take on projects, and items, and jobs that strike your fancy, but in the end, you’re left wondering if your choices really matter.
I enjoyed playing The Pursuit of Happiness, make no mistake. But the short term happiness that this game provides just isn’t worth the stress that comes from learning to play it over again, and struggling through the myriad of decisions to arrive at the same destination every time.
A review copy of The One Hundred Torii was provided by Pencil First Games
As a teenager, I was an unabashed weeb. Growing up in a small town in northern Manitoba, I voraciously consumed as much anime as I could get my hands on, which, in the early to mid 00’s, was not very much. I had the local pharmacy special order me in Shonen Jump every month, I would use school computers to download fan translated episodes of manga and anime, distributing them to two others in my school on the down-low. I loved Japan, I wanted nothing more than to speak the language and travel there. Any time I got to choose a project in school, I’d use it as an excuse to learn more about Japan.
While I’ve not yet completed my dream of travel, and my consumption of anime and manga has waned in my 30’s, anything Japanese themed still always grabs my attention. Given the opportunity to marry my love of board games with my affinity for the theme makes for a very happy game night.
How to Play
Designed by Scott Caputo, art by Vincent Dutrait, and published by Pencil First Games, The One Hundred Torii proclaims that life is a journey, not a destination. In The One Hundred Torii, players are trying to earn the most points by expanding the garden, and walking through as many Torii gates as possible, accruing experiences in the form of monument sightings, and interacting with characters.
The game begins with a central tile depicting all 6 monument types. On your turn you can pay monument tokens to enlist the help of one character, then, you expand the garden by placing a tile adjacent to any tile. Each tile has a road on all 4 edges, meaning other than placing adjacent to an existing tile, there are no placement restrictions.
When you place a tile, you select one of the features on the tile and trace the shortest path to another one of those features already in the garden. If there’s a match, you earn a token depicting that feature. If you cross under any red torii gates, you’ll get additional tokens of that feature, and if you cross under any blue torii gates, you’ll earn any feature of your choosing, other than the one you are scoring.
The goal of the game is to earn the most points, and you do so by collecting these feature tokens. When you have 5, you turn them in and take a big 5 point marker of that feature type. Then, when you take 5 more, you turn those in, and flip the point marker over to the 10 point side.
In addition to collecting features, you also get rewards for interacting with the characters. At the start of each round, you can pay feature tokens to enlist the help of various characters. The Poet sits their bottom down on a tile, blocking one feature, allowing you to potentially really extend what the shortest path you’d create. The Samurai sits outside the garden, and prevents a tile from being placed in that spot. The geisha, allows you to place both of your tiles, but you only get to score the second one you place.
The first time you use a character, you take a 2 point scroll representing your interaction with them. If you enlist their help again, that scroll flips over to the 4 point side. And if you were the first person to use a character 3 times in one game, you get a big 3 point bonus.
Gameplay continues around and around, players enlisting help, expanding the garden, and claiming rewards until the tile deck is empty. Then all players take one more round and the player who has the most points is the winner!
Review
The One Hundred Torii features beautifully illustrated art on the cover, and equally delightful art inside. The characters, the tokens, and the tiles are all colourful and pleasant to look at. The cardboard quality is perfect, not thin and cheap feeling, but also not overwrought. The aesthetic of The One Hundred Torii is quite calming, so I feel that an over-done production would actually pull away from the experience.
The box comes with a guide in how to put it away, which I found surprising considering how small the game box is. Usually these guides are reserved for games like Scythe or Anachrony. After punching everything out and trying to follow the guide to pack everything away, I can see why it was included. There are piles and piles of little cardboard chits that have a propensity to scatter everywhere if the box is slightly tilted in the wrong direction.
The gameplay of The One Hundred Torii is simple; enlist the help of one of the characters, then place a tile, and collect your rewards. At first, getting through just one or two gates will feel like an accomplishment. As the game goes on, your actions can give way to other players being able to make even better turns than you, and vice versa. Alternatively, the most lucrative route will get closed off, and you’ll suddenly feel like you’re falling behind.
As the game wears on, the decision space organically grows and shrinks. Someone will place a tile with a monument that you were hoping to cash in on, in the wrong space, making your path go from 5 gates to just 1. But then, as play continues, the paths between monuments grow longer, and opportunities that didn’t exist a moment ago suddenly present themselves to you. Someone just so happens to cover a tile that perfectly assists you in achieving your goals.
Speaking of goals, the goals in The One Hundred Torii are very attainable, meaning players don’t really need to hyper-focus on a specific monument type. There’s fluidity in the achievements, which offers grace in the tile placement. Yes, sometimes your action will be less efficient than your opponents, and yes, sometimes you were kind of hoping to score 4 Inari Statues, but plans change, and you’ll pivot to collecting 2 arched bridges and a lantern this round instead.
The characters that you can enlist allow you to break the rules in perfect little ways. Just enough to get you out of a tough jam, but not too aggressive in that they’re horribly over-powered. They cost you some of your monument tokens every time you want to enlist one, giving you a delightful little push and pull of benefits and drawbacks. The game encourages you to use the same guest 3 times to maximize the points you’ll earn from those actions, but the benefit of doing so is incredibly small, giving you the freedom to diversify your friend group to fit your needs.
The One Hundred Torii puts genuine effort into educating players as to what each of the tokens and characters represent. From engaging with a Culture Consultant (Lisa Wilcut) to dedicating 5 pages of their 20 page rule book to detail the significance of everything in the game, to the personal letter by artist Vincent Dutrait crediting his inspirations and detailing the efforts he took to ensure the game looked authentic, alive, and exotic, I appreciate the efforts The One Hundred Torii goes through to pay homage and respect to its theme.
Getting back to the gameplay, The One Hundred Torii is a calm game. Yes, there’s some opportunity to stifle your opponent’s plans by placing a tile in the wrong spot, but there’s so many mechanics available to subvert that kind of play, that the game ends up being a calm, peaceful experience. We had a lovely time just sitting back, placing tiles, and collecting monuments representing the memories that come from strolling through the Japanese gardens.
I quite enjoyed The One Hundred Torii, more than I expected to, considering it’s just a tile laying game. This game is more than the sum of its parts, and I’m glad I got the opportunity to play it. The only thing holding me back from playing it more is the substantial number of cardboard tokens that need to be sorted each time I play. Nevertheless, I appreciate The One Hundred Torii for its gorgeous artwork and simple gameplay, and won’t hesitate to introduce anyone who is looking for a chill game to play while enjoying each other’s company.
