Party games are always fun to review because ultimately there is only one standard by which they should be judged. They either generate laughter, friendly arguments, and memorable moments around the table or they don’t.
I don’t have to get all academic about clever mechanics or spend three paragraphs dissecting optimal strategy. The only real question is whether people are having enough fun to accidentally spray their drink across the table while laughing.
The original Hitster landed back in 2022 like a bombshell, at least in my house. It immediately became the centerpiece of every family gathering and has remained there ever since.
We eat. We drink. We play Hitster. Somebody confidently insists that ABBA released a song in 1997. Somebody else gets irrationally competitive. Everyone has a great evening.
Hitster Battle of the Generations is far from the first variation on the formula. In fact, Jumbo has been releasing new editions at a pace that makes it feel like there is probably a Hitster edition dedicated exclusively to songs about tractors somewhere in development.
There are versions centered around Movies and TV Soundtracks, genre collections like Rock and Christmas, and regional editions such as Radio Italia or the German Schlager Party. There really is something for just about everyone.
At its core, though, every version follows exactly the same recipe. Pick the music that best suits your family and friends, scan the cards, and let nostalgia do the heavy lifting.
Original Hister, so far as I could tell, blew up as a party game, but I’m not so sure it really attracted the board gaming hobby community. Its ranking on BBG is impressive, sitting at 480 today, but I honestly expected to see a lot more ratings and fans of the game than that.
That makes this review refreshingly straightforward because I already love the original Hitster. Battle of the Generations immediately struck me as one of the more interesting ideas. Dividing songs into different eras so that grandparents, parents and teenagers all have a fighting chance sounds like an obvious improvement on paper.
The only question is whether that idea actually works in practice.
That is exactly what this review is all about.
Overview
Final Score: (4.65) Fantastic Party Game
Hitster could hardly be simpler as a game. Each player begins with a single song drawn from the generation they have chosen for the game. Every card has one important piece of information printed on it, the song’s release year.
On your turn you draw the next card from your generation deck, scan the QR code, listen to the song and then attempt to place it in the correct position on your growing timeline.
Naturally, the more songs you have in front of you, the more difficult this becomes.
Players can also earn Hitster tokens by correctly naming both the song and the artist.
If you place a song incorrectly, your opponents get the opportunity to steal it by placing it correctly on their own timeline and spending a Hitster token.
And that is pretty much the entire game. So where does the fun come from?
Well, Hitster is really an excuse to sit around listening to great music, reminiscing about old memories, and confidently demonstrating just how much useless musical knowledge you have been carrying around for the last thirty years.
Music is already a natural part of most gatherings with family and friends, so turning it into a game feels effortless.
At its heart, Hitster is a trivia game, but unlike most trivia games, it does not punish you for lacking specialist knowledge. You do not have to know the exact release date of a song. You simply have to make a reasonable guess about where it belongs in history.
I don’t want to cast shade on Trivia Pursuit; it’s a great, classic game, but it does make you feel quite stupid, quite often. The blend of Trivia game and party game is a tricky business; make it too hard, and it can really let all the steam out of the room. Hitster finds that fine line between too hard and too easy, while maintaining the fun.
Even if you have never heard a particular song before, you can often estimate its age from the production style, the instruments or simply the general feel of the recording. The game constantly rewards educated guesses rather than perfect knowledge.
As a result, Hitster rarely makes anyone feel left out or embarrassed. Most players will score reasonably well, while people with exceptional memories, musicians, and dedicated music fans naturally have an edge.
In a party game though, who wins is almost beside the point. What matters is whether everyone is smiling, singing along and arguing over whether a song is “definitely from the eighties.” Hitster delivers all of that in abundance.
The Battle of the Generations twist actually makes the game both easier and harder at the same time.
Restricting the playlist to your own generation greatly increases the chance that you will recognize the songs, giving everyone a better opportunity to participate regardless of age. At the same time, because every song now comes from a much narrower window of time, the release dates end up clustered much closer together.
Guessing whether a song came out in 1987 or 1989 is considerably more difficult than deciding whether it belongs before or after Bohemian Rhapsody.
It is a surprisingly elegant trade-off that keeps the game feeling fresh without changing the core formula.
I suspect we will see JUMBO pump out versions of Hitster for many years to come with unique themes and gimmicks that cater to different kinds of music lovers.
In the end, Battle of the Generations is every bit as entertaining as the original Hitster, which comfortably sits in my “always happy to play” category.
It’s a fun trivia game about music; I’m not sure what else you could ask for out of a party game.
Components
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Great quality components, fantastic, easy-to-use app; everything is in order here.
Cons: With a phone on the table, some might end up fiddling when it’s not their turn.
Everything included in the box, which essentially amounts to a large stack of cards and a handful of tokens, is well produced with excellent print quality and easy-to-read text.
The game also requires you to download the free Hitster app, which is used to scan the QR codes on the cards and play the music. We experienced no issues whatsoever during our time with it. The app downloads quickly, is intuitive to navigate, and simply does exactly what it needs to do without getting in the way.
Hitster maintains consistently strong component quality throughout the entire spectrum of releases; it doesn’t really matter which one you get, it has been standardized.
Rather than including a printed rulebook, the game provides a QR code that links to the rules online. Given how remarkably simple Hitster is, I actually prefer this approach. The rules take only a couple of minutes to read and, unlike a traditional booklet, they cannot mysteriously disappear into the same dimension as missing socks and television remotes.
There is nothing in the box that feels particularly luxurious or flashy, but there really does not need to be. The cards are durable, the app works exactly as intended, and the production quality is consistently high throughout.
Considering the relatively modest price, Hitster Battle of the Generations delivers excellent value for money.
Theme
Score: Tilt:
Pros: The era of music concept does a lot to set this version of the game apart from others, and it’s a fun gimmick.
Cons: Not everyone is going to fit neatly into one of the three era’s of the game.
Like every Hitster release, Battle of the Generations takes the same core concept and adds its own twist.
This time the music is divided into three distinct eras, with each player selecting the generation they want to play before the game begins. Every era has its own deck of cards, allowing everyone at the table to tailor the experience to the music they know best.
The three generations are the LP Era, covering music up to 1984, the Cassette Era spanning 1985 to 2004, and the Streaming Era covering 2005 to 2025.
It is a sensible split and, for most players, it is easy to identify the era that best represents their musical upbringing.
That said, not everyone fits neatly into a single category. I was born in 1975, which technically places much of my childhood in the Cassette Era, yet I have always gravitated more toward the music of the LP Era. I could happily play either deck, and I suspect many players will feel the same way.
There is one unique type of Hitster, called Hitster: Bingo, I haven’t tried yet that combines the classic game of bingo with Hitster’s unique brand of music trivia. It looks cool, and I suspect we will see more unique themes like this as JUMBO milks this cash cow. Not that I blame them in the slightest, they have a real winner on their hands!
Fortunately, this is hardly a problem. If anything, it simply reflects how personal musical taste is. Generations may be convenient labels, but very few people actually listen to music according to a calendar.
Whether the song selection is unique compared to the original Hitster is difficult to say. There are so many cards across both games that you are unlikely to encounter the same song very often, and even if you do, enough time usually passes between plays that it never becomes an issue.
As for whether I prefer this version over the original, I honestly cannot pick a clear winner.
After playing both versions with a wide variety of groups over the past month, a few people commented that they preferred the unpredictability of the original, where absolutely anything could appear next. There is a certain excitement in wondering whether your next card will be Elvis Presley or Ed Sheeran.
That is not really a criticism of Battle of the Generations, though. If anything, it comes down to personal preference. This version offers a more focused experience, while the original feels a little more chaotic and surprising. Both approaches work, and both are a lot of fun.
Gameplay
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Gameplay is simple and to the point; Hitster is about music, plain and simple. It’s less a game and more of a party activity.
Cons: Making a comeback is very difficult; once you fall behind, your probobly not going to catch up. Competitive players might find that to be a problem.
I don’t want to spend too much time talking about the mechanics of Hitster Battle of the Generations because, at the end of the day, this is a party game. Strategy plays only a minor role, but the experience is much closer to a social activity than a deeply tactical game.
There is still a winner, of course. The first player to collect ten songs wins, and some of the most exciting moments come when a player spends a precious Hitster token to steal a song that someone else failed to place correctly.
Each player begins with three Hitster tokens. While you can earn additional tokens by correctly naming both the song and the artist, they remain a limited resource throughout the game. By the halfway point, many players have already spent most of theirs.
That means every decision to spend a token actually matters. You cannot afford to gamble on every opportunity and, more often than not, the player who chooses the right moments to steal a couple of key songs ends up winning the game.
Hitster tokens are kind of the key to the game. As you progress through the game, stealing another players/teams Hitster card is how you are going to get ahead and win the game.
Beyond that, Hitster is essentially a race. Placing a song incorrectly is a meaningful setback because someone else may immediately benefit from your mistake. At the same time, it is surprisingly common for at least one player to build a flawless timeline, meaning games rarely drag on.
Even if a game lasts ten rounds or more, turns move so quickly that the pacing never becomes an issue. In fact, one of Hitster’s greatest strengths is knowing exactly when to stop. It finishes before anyone starts checking their phone, wandering into the kitchen, or announcing that they are “just going to stretch their legs” for twenty minutes.
Most games also produce remarkably close finishes. It is not unusual to see several players sitting on eight or nine songs, all desperately hoping someone else slips up so they can steal the winning card. Those final few rounds generate exactly the kind of excitement you want from a party game and exactly at that right, end-game moment.
I loved the original Hitster when it was released, and Battle of the Generations has done nothing to change that opinion. If anything, it reinforces just how brilliantly simple the formula is.
It is difficult to imagine a better party game.
Replayability and Longevity
Score: Tilt:
Pros: For music lovers in particular, this game is infinitely replayable, but music is such a universal language; I find this to be true about everyone who plays the game.
Cons: Choosing the right version of Hitster for your particular mix of players is important.
I will keep this one short and sweet.
Hitster is about as replayable as a party game can be.
It has appeared at almost every family gathering and dinner party at my house over the past year and, somehow, it still manages to be the game people ask to play before the evening is over.
That is not unusual for a great party game, but it is surprisingly rare for a trivia game. Most trivia games tend to be a bit too long in my opinion when it comes to entertaining guests as the evening dessert comes out.
Hitster largely avoids that pitfall mainly because it’s about listening to music, an activity already associated with a good party.
The sheer number of songs means you are unlikely to encounter the same cards very often, and even when you do, enough time has usually passed that nobody remembers exactly where they belong. More importantly, the experience is driven as much by the conversations, singing and shared nostalgia as it is by the gameplay itself.
That gives the game an unusually long lifespan.
If you do eventually want something different, there is no shortage of expansions and themed editions to explore. Whether your group prefers rock music, movie soundtracks, Christmas songs or something more region-specific, there is probably a version that fits your tastes.
Good party games earn a permanent place on the shelf in every household, and so far as party games go, I think Hitster has nailed a great formula.
Conclusion
I don’t think there is much doubt that Hitster is here to stay as one of the defining party games of this generation. I can easily imagine it becoming one of those games you find tucked away in a basket at every holiday cabin, bed and breakfast or Airbnb, sitting comfortably beside Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit in a few years.
Hitster has managed to do something surprisingly difficult. It has created a party game that appeals just as much to people who never play board games as it does to dedicated hobby gamers.
Battle of the Generations leans even further into that universal appeal. The idea of dividing players by musical generation is immediately attractive and, before we even played our first game, everyone in my family was excited by the concept.
The twist works well, although I am not entirely convinced it replaces the original. If anything, it complements it. Some groups will enjoy the focused playlists and the chance to revisit the soundtrack of their own youth, while others may prefer the wonderfully unpredictable mix of the original game. Neither approach is better. They simply create slightly different experiences.
What remains unchanged is everything that made Hitster such a success in the first place. It is approachable, endlessly entertaining and capable of bringing together people with wildly different gaming backgrounds around a single table.
That is exactly what a great party game should do.
As far as recommendations go, Hitster Battle of the Generations is an easy one. It has earned a permanent place in my collection, and I expect it will continue making appearances at family gatherings for years to come.
If you are hosting a party and wondering what game to bring to the table, there are a lot of fantastic options; in fact, I feel like I should do a list here at some point.
Or you could just put on some music and pull out Hitster. It always works.
I’ve been described by friends as many things over the years, but my personal favorite is “a fully functioning idiot.” Honestly, I think that’s a fairly accurate assessment.
That same quirkiness extends to my taste in board games, which is probably why my enthusiastically recommending a cooperative game about escorting elephants across the African savanna sounds completely out of character.
Generally speaking, I don’t like cooperative games, regardless of theme, but theme is rarely the problem for me.
Why sign up to review a cooperative game if, in general, I don’t like cooperative games? This picture is the answer. I saw this and thought to myself, that is one beautiful game I would like to see in person. The use of color, wonderful components, and amazing art really brings this game to another level. I figured if I end up liking it, it will be an easy game to get to the table.
Even more strangely, when I do like one, it rarely seems to be the ones everyone else loves. I have no explanation for this phenomenon other than the possibility that I’m simply wired differently somehow, or I’m a cooperative gaming hipster. Who knows!?
Take Pandemic, for example, one of the most beloved cooperative games around. I actively dislike it. Pandemic Legacy did nothing to change my opinion; it was just an extended version of the same game with the same problems. Gloomhaven bored me to tears. I still maintain it’s essentially shitty Dungeons & Dragons with all the roleplaying surgically removed, and I never understood the obsession with Clank! either. Its repetative if it’s anything.
Clearly, I’m the problem? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
So why has a cooperative game about herding elephants managed to win me over?
The answer has surprisingly little to do with elephants.
What I enjoy most about cooperative games is genuine adversity. I want a game that repeatedly beats us into the dirt before we finally scrape together a victory through experience, better teamwork, and a little bit of luck. That moment where everyone around the table erupts because you’ve finally solved a puzzle that seemed impossible three games earlier. That’s the magic of cooperative gaming to me and coincidentally, it’s what makes for a good solo game as well.
Which checks out. Among the cooperative games I love, you will find games like Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. An absolutetly brutal and unforgiving deck builder and the lesser-known Peloponnesian War by Mark Herman, a game, if you can win, you should call the designer, he will be impressed! Both are great games to play cooperatively, but for me, these are just fantastic solo games.
Peloponnesian War is a historical war game and technically a solo game. Yet, I found Tembo reminded me of it a bit because it’s this really great puzzle that you have to solve, and I love living inside my head, obsessing about a game that is just absolutetly crushing me as they say “is the juice!”. The Peloponnesian War was the last game I played solo that did that, and it’s exactly what I got out of Tembo, which was really great. I love a good challenge.
Tembo delivers exactly that energy.
I’ve also discovered over the years that there are three things I absolutely cannot stand in cooperative games.
First, I dislike “alpha gamer” designs where one experienced player effectively takes everyone’s turns for them. Pandemic has always been the poster child for this. Once someone at the table knows the optimal strategy, everyone else gradually becomes an unpaid intern carrying out instructions.
Second, I have very little patience for cooperative games that secretly don’t want you to lose. You know the type. They’re less games than guided theme park rides where the illusion of danger is far greater than the actual challenge. If failure requires the combined tactical brilliance of a potato, something has gone wrong.
Finally, I want games that earn their victories.
If my group beats a cooperative game on the first attempt, chances are it wasn’t difficult enough. That’s admittedly a slightly unfair benchmark because the people I regularly play with are seasoned hobby gamers. We tend to solve difficult games faster than most groups. Fate: Defenders of Grimheim is a good example. I genuinely believe it’s an excellent challenge, yet we’ve somehow managed to beat it every single time it’s hit the table on the highest difficulty level.
Tembo is different. I’ve now played it well over a dozen times. I’ve won once. And that’s exactly why I keep coming back.
Even the introductory challenges continue to force me into difficult decisions. Every defeat leaves me convinced there’s a better strategy waiting to be discovered, another approach I haven’t considered, another tiny optimization that might finally tip the scales in my favor.
That’s exciting. That’s the sort of cooperative game I want to play.
Behind the adorable artwork, charming elephants, and wonderfully approachable rules lies a genuinely demanding puzzle, one that’s far cleverer than it first appears.
And for someone who generally doesn’t enjoy cooperative games as a whole, that’s about the highest compliment I can give.
Overview
Final Score: (3.85) Great Strategic Puzzle
The best way I can describe Tembo is as a deceptively simple puzzle that’s constantly trying to outsmart you.
The objective itself couldn’t be more straightforward. You’re guiding a herd of elephants across a randomized savanna, escorting them safely from one side of the map to the other. If all your elephants make it to the destination, you win.
Unfortunately, the game seems to have taken that simplicity as a personal challenge.
The first obstacle is that your herd can’t simply march to the finish line. Along the way, there are six key locations that must be visited before victory is even possible. Every detour costs precious time and resources, forcing you to constantly weigh short-term efficiency against long-term necessity.
Checking off the different locations before you march your elephants to the finish line is the big catch here, but the complexity is tripled down on because you have to manage this little trip around the savanna while avoiding lions and staving off the Matriarch cards.
Then there’s your energy supply.
Energy is brutally limited and slowly drains away as you play certain cards. You can replenish it by visiting certain places scattered around the board, but doing so often requires abandoning the route you actually wanted to take. Ignore your energy, and you’ll eventually grind to a halt. Chase it too aggressively, and you’ll waste so much time that victory slips away anyway.
It’s a wonderfully uncomfortable balancing act. The elephants themselves introduce another layer of complexity.
Your herd must always remain connected, forming an unbroken chain stretching across the landscape. Periodically, you’ll need to play a Matriarch card, relocating the lead elephant somewhere else in that chain before gathering up the rest of the herd and beginning the journey again from that new position. It’s a clever mechanism that constantly forces you to rethink your route instead of simply extending the same line across the board.
As if that wasn’t enough, you’re also building the savanna as you play.
The terrain itself is created by laying down landscape cards, determining not only where your elephants can travel, but also providing the resting places needed to recruit additional elephants into your growing herd.
The game is further complicated by lions that will periodically activate and hunt your elephants, which, when successful, will permanently remove members of your herd and weaken your chances of success.
The lions can absolutetly devastate any attempt at a victory, no matter how brilliant your strategy, they are the big trump card that you must be ready for at all times. In most scenarios, their starting location really determines just how difficult a scenario will be.
Individually, none of these systems are particularly difficult to understand. Collectively, they’re fiendishly difficult to master.
That’s where Tembo really shines.
Every turn feels like you’re solving a Rubik’s Cube where twisting one side somehow rearranges three others. You finally solve your energy problem only to discover you’ve broken your elephant chain. You build the perfect route only to realize you’ve skipped a mandatory objective. You manage to get your chain set up correctly, only to have it cut by a lion attack. Every solution creates two brand-new problems, and somehow that’s exactly what makes the game so satisfying.
For all of those reasons, I absolutely adore Tembo.
Interestingly, though, I don’t think the cooperative aspect is actually its biggest strength.
Don’t misunderstand me, it’s an excellent cooperative game I would recommend to any group of gamers. Sitting around a table with friends trying to untangle this puzzle is hugely rewarding, particularly after several failed attempts. Everyone contributes ideas, everyone spots different opportunities, and those eventual victories feel thoroughly earned.
But for me……the real magic is the solo game.
I’ve been slightly obsessed with Tembo for the better part of two weeks. I’ve replayed the opening challenges more times than I care to admit, and despite losing, well, pretty much always, I keep coming back for “just one more attempt.”
That’s the sign of a great puzzle to me, if it feels like I can’t solve it, that drives me to try over and over again.
Every defeat feels deserved. Every loss convinces me I was only one or two better decisions away from success. Every new game teaches me something I hadn’t noticed before.
I’ve only managed to beat the game a handful of times on the most basic difficulty levels after two weeks of trying. Either I’m stupid, or this game is hard!
Normally, that would frustrate me. Instead, it just makes me want to shuffle the cards and try again.
That’s probably the strongest recommendation I can give. Tembo isn’t simply difficult.
It’s addictively difficult, and for players who enjoy slowly unraveling a beautifully constructed puzzle, I think that’s exactly what makes it special, and it’s the main reason to get into this game.
Components
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Looks great, feels great, is great. Quality publication with an eye for great art.
Cons: You would have to be pretty picky to find a problem here.
Reviewing components has become a slightly strange exercise these days. Twenty years ago, component quality could make or break a game. Today, the industry standard is so consistently high that most productions simply clear the bar. It has almost become a pass-or-fail category rather than a meaningful differentiator.
Tembo is a perfect example of that.
Everything in the box is exactly what you’d hope it would be. The cards are excellent, the modular board tiles are thick and durable, the wooden elephant tokens are charming, and all of the cardboard components feel like they’ll comfortably survive hundreds of plays. Long before the components begin to show any wear, you’ll almost certainly have exhausted the game itself.
The presentation deserves particular praise. Once everything is laid out across the table, Tembo does a wonderful job of evoking the African savanna. The warm color palette, inviting artwork, and clean graphic design all come together to create a game that’s simply pleasant to look at.
Tembo is more than just pretty, its very functional. Good use of iconography, a very well laid out rulebook, and good reference material make learning to play and executing this game that much easier. This is the standard I think all games should meet.
The insert also deserves a quick mention. It’s thoughtfully designed, keeps every component neatly organized, and makes setup and teardown refreshingly painless. It sounds like a small thing, but after wrestling with enough poorly designed inserts over the years, I’ve learned to appreciate the ones that simply do their job.
If I had one criticism, it’s that the production occasionally wanders into the realm of unnecessary spectacle.
The cardboard standees used for trees and location markers certainly look nice on the table, but functionally, they don’t add very much. A simple token or tracker could have communicated the same information while reducing both production costs and setup time. I understand the designers were aiming for immersion, and aesthetically it works, but it also feels like an easy place where the game could have been streamlined without sacrificing the experience.
That’s a relatively minor complaint, though.
Overall, Tembo is a beautiful production. The artwork is gorgeous, the components feel premium without being excessive, and everything has clearly been designed to withstand repeated play. More importantly, the production serves the game rather than distracting from it. The iconography is clear and easy to remember, and there are plenty of cheat sheets and reference material, so you don’t have to go searching through the manual to answer the few questions you might have during play.
In the end, I really don’t have much to complain about.
It’s a polished, attractive package that feels every bit as refined as the gameplay inside.
Theme
Score: Tilt:
Pros: The art sells this theme, and for a strategy puzzle game, the theme comes across surprisingly well.
Cons: This family-friendly theme may result in a disconnect between expectations and reality. It may look like a family game, but this is definitely a complex strategic puzzle that casual gamers will struggle with.
For games that are fundamentally abstract puzzles, theme often takes a back seat to mechanics. Whether you’re moving cubes through a medieval marketplace or elephants across the African savanna, the underlying puzzle usually remains the real attraction.
Tembo is no exception.
I’m a sucker for a pretty game with pretty colors, but at the end of the day Tembo’s theme and eye candy is not the main attraction here; this game lives by the wonderful strategic puzzle it presents, the eye candy is just a cherry on top.
That said, if you’re going to wrap a puzzle in a theme, marching a herd of elephants across the African savanna is a pretty inspired choice.
There’s something immediately calming about it. The artwork evokes the same feeling as a lazy Sunday afternoon watching a wildlife documentary, complete with the soothing narration of Sir David Attenborough gently explaining why the elephants are, once again, making better life decisions than the humans.
The artwork deserves particular praise.
The color palette is absolutely gorgeous. Warm oranges, rich greens, and soft earth tones combine to create a board that is both inviting and unmistakably African safari. Every illustration feels carefully considered, giving the game a personality that’s difficult not to appreciate. It’s one of those games that naturally draws people over to the table simply because it looks so attractive.
The adorable presentation is both one of the game’s greatest strengths and, oddly enough, one of its greatest deceptions.
Everything about Tembo screams “friendly family game.” The rules are straightforward, the elephants are charming, and the presentation couldn’t be more welcoming.
Then the game proceeds to repeatedly crush your spirit.
It’s almost comical how vicious the puzzle hiding beneath those cute illustrations actually is. I can easily imagine families picking this up expecting a relaxed cooperative adventure, only to discover they’ve accidentally signed up for an advanced logistics course run by elephants.
That contrast is strangely endearing.
The theme itself isn’t deeply woven into every mechanism, but it provides enough context that every action makes intuitive sense. You’re exploring the savanna, guiding your herd, managing their energy, and carefully navigating the landscape toward safety while avoiding predators. The mechanics never feel disconnected from the story the game is trying to tell.
As I understand it, Tembo is part of a broader series of nature-themed games, although I haven’t had the opportunity to play the others.
My understanding, mind you, I did the absolute minimum amount of research here, is that Deep Blue is a member of the game series that Tembo completes. Looking at the wonderful use of color here, that would not surprise me. It definitely piqued my interest.
What I do know is that designer Asger Granerud has developed a reputation for elegant designs with memorable themes. Between Flamme Rouge, Heat: Pedal to the Metal, and now Tembo, there’s a clear pattern of taking relatively straightforward mechanisms and wrapping them in themes that immediately resonate with players.
The theme isn’t the reason I keep coming back to Tembo. The puzzle is.
But the beautiful presentation, charming artwork, and wonderfully peaceful atmosphere certainly don’t hurt. They make repeatedly losing feel just a little less painful, which, given how difficult this game is, might be one of its smartest design decisions.
Gameplay
Score: Tilt:
Pros: The simple rules disguise a very complex puzzle that requires a lot of game knowledge and experience before you succeed. Great challenge.
Cons: Despite best efforts from the design perspective, some games you will simply lose because of a bad draw, and some you will win because you got lucky.
Whenever I review a game, there are two questions I always ask myself.
The first is simple: Have I played this game before?
Not literally, of course. But most games borrow ideas from somewhere. Worker placement, deck building, tableau building, drafting; modern board games are built on decades of fantastic design, they are usually evolutions, not revolutions. But every now and then, a game presents a puzzle that feels genuinely fresh, a design that makes me stop and think, “I haven’t quite seen that before.”
Those games always get my attention.
The second question is equally important: Can I solve it immediately?
If the optimal strategy reveals itself during the first play, my interest tends to fade rather quickly. What keeps me coming back are games that slowly reveal themselves over repeated plays. Games where every defeat teaches you something, every victory results in you uncovering another layer, and you’re constantly left wondering if there’s an even better approach waiting to be discovered.
Tembo ticks both boxes.
On the surface, it looks like a pleasant little family game about escorting elephants across the African savanna. The rules are approachable, the artwork is adorable, and nothing about the presentation suggests a strategic monster lurking beneath. And perhaps Tembo is not exactly that, but it’s certainly a lot more than what’s on the tin suggests.
That’s wonderfully deceptive. As I’m writing this review, I’ve played Tembo roughly fifteen times. I’m still discovering new ideas. I’m still excited to play.
What’s interesting is that my first impression was actually fairly lukewarm. After my opening games I remember thinking, “This is interesting… but I’m not sure there is much more here than a push your luck game.”
Then I lost. Again. And again.
Losing at Tembo is not hard to do; things can escalate and get out of control pretty fast, especially once the lions get close to the herd. It can be a bit frustrating at times.
Those defeats bothered me enough that I refused to write this review until I’d actually beaten the introductory scenario. More importantly, as I lost, I could see that it wasn’t luck that was driving my defeats.
Eventually, I did win. That’s when the obsession started.
Instead of feeling satisfied, I immediately wanted to tackle the next challenge. Then the next one. Then the next. Every victory revealed another layer of the puzzle, and what initially looked like a pleasant family game gradually transformed into one of the most fascinating strategic puzzles I’ve played in a while.
The best way I can describe Tembo is that it rewards thinking several turns ahead without ever becoming mechanically complicated, with some luck management. The rules remain wonderfully straightforward, but the game is a lot deeper than the rules suggest.
The strategy doesn’t end with solving one of the puzzles; there is a lot more to learn after finishing the first couple of scenarios.
Whether you’re playing solo or cooperatively, I think three elements combine to make the game exceptional.
Every Puzzle Feels Different
The first is the dynamic map.
Every scenario changes the layout of the savanna, but the map tiles themselves also rotate between games. Add to that the impact of the locations of the lions and suddenly every puzzle demands a different approach.
Some layouts reward speed. Others reward caution. Some practically force you to detour for energy, while others encourage aggressive expansion before the lions begin closing off your options.
How you build up the savanna with cards is vital to any strategy, but you’re always working with the constraints of the cards you have drawn. There is a lot of nuance in this little card game built into Tembo, it takes several games for the lights to come on.
The game constantly asks you to reassess your plan rather than relying on whatever worked last time.
Information Is a Resource
The second thing Tembo quietly expects from its players is card counting.
Keeping track of how many Matriarch cards remain in the deck, how many Lion cards have already appeared, and what your odds are on the next draw becomes increasingly important as the difficulty ramps up.
It’s a little like Blackjack. Your odds of winning feel random until you card count, and then suddenly it feels far more strategic. Vegas refers to using strategy in Blackjack as cheating, because it’s that effective. Though card counting here is an intended element, there is even a reference card that helps you do it, and of course, it’s considerably less complicated to count cards here than in Blackjack. It’s an obvious part of the strategic expectation designed into the game.
You never have complete control over what happens next, but understanding the probabilities dramatically improves your chances of making the right decision.
Ignoring the deck is possible. Winning while ignoring is not unless you get really lucky.
Resource Management Is Everything
Finally, and most importantly, there’s resource management.
Energy and rested elephants are the lifeblood of the game. You’ll never have enough of either.
Energy constantly disappears, forcing difficult decisions about when it’s worth diverting from your route to replenish it. Running out is one of the endgame loss conditions, so its nescessary to keep your levels up. Meanwhile, your elephant herd gradually shrinks as lions become more aggressive and the board grows increasingly hostile.
Managing those two resources while simultaneously planning your route, tracking the deck, and preparing for future Matriarch resets creates an astonishing number of possible board states.
Every turn feels meaningful. Every mistake has consequences. Every successful move feels earned.
It’s very easy during your first few games to fall into the trap of simply hoping things work out.
“I’ll probably draw the card I need.”“Hopefully the lions don’t appear here.”“Maybe I can squeeze out one more move…”
Sometimes you’ll even get away with it. Tembo quickly teaches you that hope and luck is not a strategy.
The greater difficulty scenarios demand careful planning, disciplined resource management, and a willingness to think several turns into the future. That’s where the game truly comes alive.
Interestingly, while the cooperative and solo experiences are mechanically almost identical, I actually prefer the game solo. The cooperative restrictions around discussing cards create a slightly different challenge, and it’s still an excellent multiplayer puzzle, but it was the solo mode that completely hooked me. It’s where I’ve spent most of my time, and it’s where I think Tembo truly shines.
What I love most about the design is that it never advertises any of this.
On the surface, Tembo looks like an approachable cooperative family game with adorable elephants. And it kind of is, but hidden underneath that theme is one of the smart, very satisfying strategic puzzles well worth exploring by veteran gamers.
That’s a wonderful achievement. And it’s exactly why I think Tembo is a very underrated game. It deserves more attention in my humble opinion.
Replayability and Longevity
Score: Tilt:
Pros: It’s going to take a lot of replays to complete all of the difficulty levels, and you’re definitely getting your money’s worth.
Cons: Eventually, the puzzle will feel solved, and the game will run out of steam permanently.
Replayability is perhaps the most difficult category to score in Tembo because the answer depends entirely on what you’re expecting from the game.
From a pure value-for-money perspective, I don’t think there’s much to complain about. At roughly the €35–40 price point, Tembo offers a tremendous amount of gameplay. It took me around fifteen plays just to consistently solve some of the introductory scenarios, and I suspect the later challenges will demand at least that many again before I feel like I’ve truly mastered them. Then there is the potential of introducing it to new players and enjoying their discovery and experience.
Frankly, that’s already more plays than many games in my collection ever receive.
There is a campaign mode that comes with Tembo, and for this review, I did not even attempt it. I think it’s for an advanced level of play. Just reading the instructions, I could see how very difficult a challenge that will be, but it does give the game a bit of extra longevity.
When I look across my shelves, the list of games I’ve played thirty or forty times is surprisingly short. Tembo is well on its way to joining that club, and that’s saying something.
That said, I don’t think Tembo is the sort of game you’ll play forever. At its heart, it’s a puzzle. And puzzles, by their very nature, have an endpoint.
I don’t necessarily mean they’ll ever be completely “solved.” The randomized maps, card order, and dynamic board states ensure there’s always some variation from game to game. But eventually you’ll reach a point where the game has taught you most of what it has to teach. The surprises become less frequent, the strategies more familiar, and your decisions increasingly instinctive.
For some people, that might sound like a weakness. I don’t see it that way.
Not every game needs to become a lifestyle game that lives permanently on your table. Sometimes a game simply needs to provide dozens of hours of engaging, memorable gameplay before gracefully stepping aside for the next experience.
Tembo strikes me as exactly that kind of game. It’s a journey with a destination.
Eventually, you’ll reach the end, feel immensely satisfied that you made it, and happily place it back on the shelf knowing it earned every play it received.
I think there’s something rather fitting about that. After all, every migration eventually comes to an end.
Conclusion
When I sat down to write this review, I honestly wasn’t sure where I was going to land. If anything, I expected to be fairly lukewarm on Tembo.
Cooperative games and I don’t exactly have the best relationship, and if I’m being completely honest, I wasn’t particularly excited when I first agreed to review it. There was even a small part of me that regretted saying yes.
I’m very happy to report that I was completely wrong.
Tembo didn’t just surprise me; it quietly became one of my biggest gaming obsessions of the past few weeks.
It’s an unusual game. A cooperative strategy puzzle about escorting elephants across the African savanna isn’t exactly the sort of pitch that immediately grabs my attention, yet behind that simple, yet charming presentation lies one of the most satisfying and cleverly designed cooperative puzzles I’ve played in quite a while.
What impressed me most wasn’t the difficulty. It was the very subtle depth brought out slowly, even if it was a bit frustrating at times.
Tembo is one of those rare games that’s incredibly easy to learn but remarkably difficult to master. The rules are concise, intuitive, and approachable, yet the strategic puzzle hiding beneath them took me well over a dozen games before I felt like I truly understood what the designers were asking of me.
That’s exactly the sort of challenge I enjoy and certainly wasn’t expecting it from Tembo, a game about herding elephants.
I love going into a game with low expectations and being pleasantly surprised; it’s actually one of my favorite things about being a tabletop games reviewer.
Although Tembo plays wonderfully as a cooperative experience, it was the solo mode that completely won me over. It captures everything I love about solitary puzzle solving: the constant experimentation, the gradual discovery of better strategies, and the satisfying feeling that every defeat is teaching you something rather than simply wasting your time.
Yes, sometimes the game just beats you because of bad luck, not unlike a bad beat in poker, and that is going to happen now and again, but the more you play, the less often it happens, and that is experience kicking in. It might seem random, especially at first, but this game hides a lot of strategic subtlety.
If you enjoy cooperative puzzle games that genuinely expect you to think, titles like The Crew, The Gang, or even the more puzzle-oriented side of Spirit Island, I think you’ll find a lot to love here.
I also think it makes an excellent family game, with one important caveat.
Don’t mistake approachable rules for an easy game.
Tembo is genuinely difficult, and younger players or more casual families may find the constant defeats frustrating. Fortunately, the designers anticipated this. The support cards provide valuable assistance, and there are optional rules that soften the challenge for groups who simply want a more relaxed experience, like playing without event cards. Personally, I recommend keeping the event deck in play. It adds another layer of unpredictability and keeps the puzzle feeling dynamic, even if it occasionally results in spectacular failure.
Spectacular failure, in my opinion, is half the fun.
Tembo won’t be for everyone. If you’re looking for a light-hearted cooperative game where victory is almost guaranteed, you’ll probably bounce off it.
But if you’re the kind of player who enjoys wrestling with a difficult puzzle, learning through repeated defeats, and finally earning a victory that feels genuinely deserved, Tembo is an easy recommendation.
A beautifully produced, deceptively deep, and wonderfully addictive puzzle game that earned its place on my shelf the hard way, by making me want to play “just one more game” fifteen times in a row.
First Giants is a wonderfully straightforward tableau-building card game about excavating dinosaur fossils and assembling museum displays to score victory points. Mechanically, it’s about as simple as modern Euro games come. You’ll acquire cards, convert them into points, improve your efficiency, and repeat. It’s a gameplay loop that has been explored countless times over the past two decades, to the point where releasing a game in 2026 that relies almost entirely on this formula feels, at first glance, a little old-fashioned.
And yet… That’s exactly why I think First Giants succeeds.
The elegant rules, gorgeous illustrations, exceptional rulebook, and effortless teachability combine to create something that’s becoming surprisingly rare in today’s hobby: a genuinely approachable strategy game. One that doesn’t require an hour-long rules explanation, twenty different icon references, or a veteran gamer sitting beside you translating every symbol on the table.
Looking through other reviews, I couldn’t help but notice a common theme. Most approach First Giants from the perspective of experienced hobby gamers, asking whether it offers enough mechanical innovation and depth to compete with other games in this genre. Often comparing it to much more involved and complex games like Elysium. Let me save you the agony here: it does not, not even a little bit.
That makes a lot of sense on the surface, but I think that’s an approach that answers the wrong question.
First Giants isn’t trying to reinvent tableau building quite intentionally. It’s trying to introduce it, more specifically, it’s trying to introduce it with a theme beloved by kids, in a way that kids can get their heads around it. I have been board gaming now for over 40 years, and I can tell you that in all that time, if any kids between the ages of 8-15 come into my office to pick a game, they will grab one with dinosaurs on it 100% of the time. It’s just how it is, kids love dinosaurs! Hence, a game about Dinosaurs has to be for kids.
If you’re looking for the next Ark Nova, Terraforming Mars, or Earth, this probably isn’t the game that’s going to blow your socks off. But if you’re looking for a game you can comfortably put in front of your children, your parents, or friends who think UNO represents the pinnacle of modern board game design, First Giants suddenly becomes a much more interesting proposition.
Lots and lots of dinosaurs, that’s what this game is. It’s a theme masquerading as a strategy game. The point here I think, is that when you want to get kids to the table, you need a good hook. Dinosaurs are easy to sell.
Wrap that universal appeal around a genuinely solid gateway game, and you’ve got something that’s arguably far more valuable than yet another mechanically brilliant Euro destined to be played exclusively by people who already own fifty mechanically brilliant Euros.
Sometimes a game doesn’t need to innovate. Sometimes it just needs to be exactly the game someone is ready to discover. That is the target audience for First Giants, people taking their first steps, and most importantly, kids.
Overview
Final Score: (4.05) Great Family Game
First Giants takes one of the hobby’s most familiar mechanisms, card-based tableau building, and strips it down to its absolute essentials. There are no elaborate engine-building chains, no sprawling technology trees, and no half-dozen subsystems all competing for your attention. You buy cards, build a collection of dinosaur fossils, use their abilities as efficiently as possible, and eventually convert those collections into museum displays worth victory points.
And……that’s pretty much the entire game.
Normally, that might sound like criticism, in most reviews I read for First Giants, that was in fact the criticism levied against it. The game doesn’t innovate established mechanics, it lacks depth, and it’s, in a word, too simple. I see an issue with that approach to First Giants, this is a game that does those things very intentionally.
At no point did I get the impression that the designers lacked the ability to make the game more complex with greater strategic depth. Quite the opposite. There are countless directions they could have taken the design, additional resources, more player interaction, asymmetric powers, multi-stage fossil excavations, set collection bonuses, evolving museums, the possibilities are practically endless.
They simply chose not to. That restraint says far more about the designer’s intentions than their ability.
Mathew Dunstan and Brett Gilbert are perfectly capable designers who gave us the amazing Elysium, a card-driven tableau builder First Giants has a lot in common with. It’s a deep and rich strategic game that takes the very basic concept in First Giants and goes crazy with it.
First Giants knows exactly what it wants to be.
This isn’t a game designed for hobby veterans looking for their next heavy Euro obsession. It’s a game about dinosaurs aimed at families and younger players, officially recommended for ages 10 and up, although I wouldn’t hesitate to play it with children in the 6-8 age range.
And that’s where everything suddenly clicks.
The fun isn’t found in optimizing an economic engine or calculating the perfect scoring combo. The fun is discovering dinosaurs.
When I played First Giants with kids, the strategy quickly became secondary. They weren’t excited because they had found the most efficient card. They were excited because they had found their favorite dinosaur. Every new fossil sparked questions, conversations, and enthusiastic declarations about which prehistoric giant was the coolest.
That tells me the game succeeded.
The artwork deserves enormous credit here. Every card is beautifully illustrated in a soft watercolor style that feels more like the pages of a children’s natural history book than a traditional board game. Combined with the thick, oversized components, everything about First Giants feels welcoming, tactile, and wonderfully inviting.
The production continues that philosophy with one of my favorite inclusions in the entire box: the dinosaur appendix.
On paper, it’s simply a reference booklet explaining each card, organized by dinosaur types.
In reality, it feels like the kind of guide you’d pick up at the entrance to a natural history museum at that exciting moment right before you get to see all those wonderful giant monsters on display.
When I introduced First Giants to younger players, that booklet quickly became the most popular component in the box. They passed it around, argued over who got to read it next, and spent far more time asking me questions about dinosaurs than they did asking about the rules of the game.
That’s the moment where First Giants reveals what it’s really trying to accomplish.
It’s not simply teaching children how tableau building works. It’s encouraging curiosity.
When I was growing up educational games that were supposed to be “fun” while they taught, were boring tests of knowledge we had no hope of having acquired. It was silly. I’ve always believed that using games to inspire, rather than teach, was far more effective.
I suspect that’s exactly what the designers were hoping would happen. In fact, as I read the bios of Bret Gilbert and Mathew Dunstan, the two designers behind First Giants, I could almost imagine the conversations they had as they made this game.
As someone with a large extended family, where “Uncle Chris’s house” has slowly become synonymous with board games, I have absolutely no doubt First Giants will see plenty of table time over the coming years. It occupies a space in my collection that very few games do, a genuinely engaging gateway game that children actually want to play because the theme captures their imagination before the mechanics ever have a chance to, and strictly speaking, need to.
I don’t think First Giants will become the next great strategy classic. I don’t think it was ever trying to.
What it is is a beautifully produced, thoughtfully designed family game that understands its audience perfectly.
Components
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Great chunky components that feel and look fantastic on the table. Great rules reference.
Cons: As a family game, a bigger, more deluxe production would have been worth the investment.
First Giants comes in a surprisingly compact box packed primarily with cards, alongside a handful of chunky cardboard components used to track your expeditions and construct your museum displays and various tokens.
Everything that is in the box is exceptionally well-made.
There is a silly amount of “stuff” in this small box, but the production quality is top-notch. No expense was spared, and the entire thing looks amazing on the table. Everything you want out of a good family game.
The cards are beautifully illustrated, the cardboard is thick and durable, and everything is uniformly designed with purpose. Throughout the production, there’s a consistent feeling that the designers expected this game to spend most of its life on family tables rather than sitting shrink-wrapped on a collector’s shelf.
One detail I particularly appreciated is that almost everything is just a little larger than it strictly needs to be. The components are easy to pick up, easy to read across the table, and sturdy enough to survive the sort of enthusiastic handling children are famous for. Anyone who has introduced board games to younger players knows exactly what I’m talking about. Components aren’t just played with, they’re squeezed, bent, stacked into towers, and occasionally inspected with fingers orange from cheese snacks.
First Giants feels built for that reality.
If I have one criticism, it’s almost an odd one. Part of me wishes there were a deluxe edition.
Not because the game needs more components mechanically, but because kids are naturally drawn to spectacle. A giant box filled with oversized dinosaur meeples, plastic fossils, excavation trays, or elaborate museum pieces would have absolutely no impact on the gameplay… but it would have an enormous impact on getting younglings excited before the first card is even dealt.
Sometimes, presentation is a key part of the experience, and in the case of First Giants, I think it’s doubly so.
Even without that hypothetical deluxe treatment, though, First Giants is an excellent production. The artwork is gorgeous, the components feel fantastic in the hand, and everything has clearly been designed with durability in mind.
Given its target audience, I honestly can’t think of much more I could ask for.
Theme
Score: Tilt:
Pros: As a family game, the dinosaur theme is a homerun. Beautiful art, appealing aesthetic, sells the entire thing long before any rules come out.
Cons: I have never met anyone who doesn’t like dinosaurs.
The choice of theme for First Giants is about as close to perfect as you could hope for. In fact, I’m not convinced the game would have had anywhere near the same appeal had the designers chosen almost anything else.
Dinosaurs sell.
Kids are fascinated by them, adults are fascinated by them, and there’s something universally appealing about uncovering creatures that ruled the Earth millions of years ago. The theme immediately sparks curiosity before a single rule has been explained, and that’s a tremendous advantage for a family game.
Better still, the mechanics support that theme remarkably well.
The theme in First Giants sticks the landing exceptionally. You can explain the game in thematic terms while explaining the rules, without it feeling like a stretch. It all just clicks.
Your little wooden explorers travel to excavation sites, uncover fossils, add those discoveries to your collection, and eventually transform them into museum displays. Every step of the gameplay reinforces the narrative of building your own natural history museum, and because the actions are so intuitive, teaching the game becomes surprisingly effortless.
That last point is more important than it might sound.
When introducing kids to board games, explaining mechanics in purely mechanical terms is often a losing battle. Telling a child they need to “optimize their tableau” or “manage their engine” is a great way to watch their eyes glaze over.
Tell them they’re archaeologists searching for dinosaur fossils to display in their very own museum, and everything falls into place for them.
Everything on the table has an obvious purpose. There are excavation sites to explore, fossils to discover, a museum to fill, and prehistoric giants waiting to become the centerpiece of the next exhibit. The rules almost explain themselves because every action naturally follows the story the game is telling.
The artwork deserves special recognition here. Quite simply, it’s gorgeous.
The soft watercolor illustrations give every dinosaur an almost storybook quality that immediately captures attention. Before long, players stop asking which card is worth the most points and start asking, “Can I have the Triceratops?” or “Look at this one!”
That’s exactly what you want.
The artwork transforms the cards from game pieces into discoveries, and for younger players, that’s an important distinction. They’re no longer collecting points.
They’re collecting dinosaurs.
That’s a subtle difference, but it’s one that First Giants understands perfectly.
For a family game, I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better thematic execution. The theme is engaging, the mechanics reinforce it at every opportunity, and the artwork does the rest. It’s a wonderful example of a game where every design decision pulls in the same direction, making the whole experience feel natural, intuitive, and just a little bit magical.
I can imagine, however, that for more serious gamers looking for a strategic experience, this probably won’t quite do the trick. Sure, dinosaurs are cool, but for most seasoned gamers, collecting dinosaurs because dinosaurs are cool is going to be insufficient for a sales pitch.
Gameplay
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Simple rules that are easy to teach and learn make it ideal as a casual, kid-friendly family game.
Cons: There is just insufficient strategic depth or variability to hold your typical board game enthusiast’s interest.
When it comes to playing First Giants with children, I’ll say it plainly. This is a wonderful game.
Collecting dinosaur fossils, building museum exhibits, and scoring points is already more than enough to keep younger players engaged. Better yet, the game is simple enough that the rules disappear into the background, allowing children to focus on what they’re actually doing rather than how they’re doing it. Judged as a family game, First Giants delivers exactly what it promises.
Viewed through that lens, I’d happily give the gameplay five stars.
Let’s put on the seasoned gamer’s hat for a minute.
While I genuinely love the presentation, the production, and the overall concept, mechanically First Giants never really develops beyond its opening act.
That isn’t because the game is simple.
Simple games can still possess incredible strategic depth. Ticket to Ride, Small World, and Wingspan are all relatively accessible games, yet they reward repeated plays because players gradually discover richer decision spaces, stronger combinations, and increasingly subtle strategies.
First Giants never really gets there.
It’s not really a flaw in the game that the gameplay is ultra simplistic, lacking meaningful depth, as these things add complexity, and you don’t want that here. This is a family game, that’s where it lives for better or worse.
Most dinosaur cards either provide an immediate one-time effect or a passive ability that only rarely and mostly unreliably triggers while the card remains in your tableau. The problem is that there’s very little incentive to keep those cards around. Once they’ve provided their play value, you’re almost always better off converting them into museum displays and scoring the points at the first opportunity.
There simply isn’t enough engine building, if there is any at all, to create interesting long-term decisions.
Likewise, the museum objectives remain extremely straightforward and the same each game. You’re either collecting dinosaurs of the same species across multiple colors, or assembling sequential dinosaurs within a single color. On top of that, players receive bonus points for constructing the largest museum exhibit in each color.
That’s the puzzle. And unfortunately, it doesn’t evolve beyond that.
Because the objectives never change from game to game, the decision space quickly becomes fairly obvious. You draft the cards that best fit your current collection, trigger any useful abilities along the way, and convert them into points as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
There are certainly decisions to make.
Some cards work better together than others, timing matters, and paying attention to what your opponents are collecting is worthwhile.
But the strategy rarely feels particularly surprising or interesting.
There aren’t many moments where a clever engine suddenly comes online, an unusual strategy emerges, or a risky long-term investment pays off spectacularly. Most of the “correct” plays reveal themselves fairly quickly, and once you’ve understood the scoring system, subsequent games tend to follow the same patterns.
Perhaps the biggest limiting factor is how dependent the game becomes on the card market. Since you have very little control over which dinosaurs appear and player order determines who gets first choice, success often comes down to whether the right fossils become available at the right moment. You can certainly make mistakes, but the optimal decisions are usually quite obvious once the available cards are revealed.
For experienced gamers, that means repeated plays don’t uncover much hidden depth. The puzzle remains largely the same.
That’s perfectly acceptable for the audience First Giants is trying to reach. In fact, constantly introducing new systems or complicated strategies would probably work against its greatest strength as an approachable family game.
For hobby gamers, however, I think the experience is a different story.
Even as a filler, First Giants is probably too lightweight to keep seasoned players engaged for very long. It’s enjoyable, charming, and beautifully presented, but mechanically it never asks enough of its audience to remain interesting over repeated plays.
And that’s perfectly okay. Not every game needs to be designed for veteran gamers.
Sometimes the best family games are the ones that know exactly where to stop before complexity begins getting in the way of fun. First Giants understands that balance exceptionally well, even if it means veteran gamers will likely move on after a play or two.
Replayability and Longevity
Score: Tilt:
Pros: As a family game, the theme will keep this one alive for a lot longer than the mechanics.
Cons: Once you have played this game once, you have seen all there is to meaningfully see in this mechanic.
Replayability is one of those categories where the target audience matters more than almost any other.
When it comes to younger players, replayability is rarely driven by mechanical depth. It’s driven by emotional attachment. Children don’t ask whether the decision matrix has enough strategic variance or whether the scoring objectives are sufficiently dynamic. They ask whether they get to collect dinosaurs again.
First Giants absolutely delivers on that front.
The theme, artwork, and tactile components are engaging enough that I can easily see families returning to this game again and again. Children love repetition, particularly when they’re still discovering the world the game presents. I certainly don’t imagine many complaints from the younger audience this game was designed for.
Veteran gamers, however, are a different story.
For experienced players, I think First Giants probably has one or two really enjoyable plays before most of what it has to offer has been explored.
The first reason is that the game’s objectives never change. Every play uses the same museum collections, the same scoring conditions, and ultimately asks players to solve the same puzzle. Once you’ve identified the optimal ways to pursue those objectives, subsequent games feel very familiar.
The second issue is the card deck itself.
Every card is included in every game, and because cards are never permanently removed from play, it’s relatively easy to keep track of what remains in the deck. You may not see every dinosaur every game, but you quickly learn which collections are still viable and which ones can safely be abandoned. The uncertainty gradually disappears, taking some of the excitement with it.
For seasoned gamers, that’s probably the game’s greatest weakness.
There simply aren’t enough moving parts to make repeated plays feel substantially different. There are no variable objectives, no modular setup, no alternative strategies waiting to be discovered after your fifth or sixth play. Once you’ve experienced the game once or twice, you’ve largely experienced everything it has to offer mechanically.
The lack of diversity in the victory objectives means the game will get very repetitive and predictable. I think even for a family game, once the theme runs out of steam, this might be insufficient replayability long term. A good expansion with variations on the victory objectives could fix this.
That sounds harsher than I actually intend. Because I don’t think First Giants was ever designed to become someone’s forever game.
It was designed to be a family’s dinosaur game. Those are two very different goals.
As a gateway game for children and casual families, I think it will enjoy a long life simply because the theme continues to capture imaginations long after the mechanics have become familiar. For hobby gamers chasing the next endlessly replayable strategy game, however, I suspect First Giants will quickly become a pleasant memory rather than a permanent fixture on the shelf.
Conclusion
First Giants fills a very specific role in my collection, and it’s a role that comes up far more often than you might expect.
At my house, it’s perfectly normal for nieces, nephews, and the neighborhood to come over and ask, “Can we play a board game?” When that happens, I don’t want to spend twenty minutes explaining rules or worrying that the game will be too complicated. I want something that’s easy to teach, immediately engaging, and capable of capturing their imagination.
A game about collecting dinosaurs does exactly that.
I also think First Giants makes an excellent gateway into modern board gaming. It introduces players to tableau building, resource conversion, and light engine-building concepts without ever overwhelming them. Those are mechanics they’ll encounter throughout the hobby, and First Giants teaches them in perhaps the gentlest way possible.
Those two qualities alone are enough to justify its place on my shelf.
If you’re a seasoned hobby gamer looking for your next strategic obsession, I suspect you’ll bounce off this one fairly quickly. The puzzle simply doesn’t evolve enough over repeated plays to keep veteran players engaged for the long haul.
I think that’s judging the game by the wrong standard, but it is a far more common standard in the hobby today.
If your collection already has plenty of heavy strategy games but lacks something you can confidently teach to children, families, or complete newcomers to the hobby, First Giants is an easy recommendation.
Finspan is the third entry in the growing and rather oddly named “Span” series, following award-winning Wingspan and the more fantasy-leaning and complex Wyrmspan. This time, instead of birds or dragons, the focus shifts underwater to diving and collecting fish.
Before getting into it, a bit of transparency. I came into this review without any real attachment to the series. I had not played Wingspan or Wyrmspan beforehand, so I am not coming at this as a long-time fan or someone already invested in what these games are trying to do. For me it’s a new game and a first go at the series, open mind, no preconceived notions.
That said, I did spend some time with Wingspan while preparing this review. I felt it was important to have that point of comparison, a bit of context for this review, as clearly, fans of Wingspans are going to be eyeing this one. If I were to summarize that experience, I think the best review I could give it is that it left me…. wanting. I will talk a little bit about why that is later in this review, as we make some comparisons between Wingspan and Finspan.
Wingspan was a runaway hit in 2019, winning a laundry list of awards and rising to the status of “classic” in a short span of 5 years. (no pun intended). It is a bona fide success story in the world of board games and continues to be one of the most talked-about and often played games in the hobby.
Finspan, however, is where things get interesting, albeit only slightly. While Wingspan and Finspan share a lot of the same core ideas and structure, they do not necessarily deliver the same experience. For better or worse, Finspan is a much simpler game, focused on being a kind of more accessible version of Wingspan with its own unique theme, and this is quite obvious from the onset. In fact, it could arguably earn the label of a gateway game were it not for a couple of quirky elements.
There are, however, other more subtle differences beyond the simplified gameplay and approachability of the game; the most notable thing that stood out to me is why Finspan is not just simply a 2-player version of Wingspan with a different theme. I can’t stress how different the experience is between a 2-player game and a 3+ player game.
I think the strangest thing about my experience with Finspan is how vastly worse the game got with more players. My initial experiences with the game were a two-player affair, and I have to admit, while the game was simple and a little outside of my genre preference, I still enjoyed it. It was a pretty quick, fun little engine builder and victory point salad with a charming theme and colorful components. It was… simply put, kind of fun.
Then I tried Finspan with 4 players, and it was like being run over by an ice cream truck. I like ice cream, just not from this angle. It was a dismal slog that overstayed its welcome by nearly an hour, and there was quite literally no payoff to it, not just because there is virtually no interaction between players, but there was a ton of downtime, and it swallowed up a stupid amount of table space. It was just outright boring and slow.
One thing I can say is that when playing Finspan, due largely to the lack of interaction between players, one way you can expedite a game with more players like this would be to just have everyone do their turns simultaneously. Rarely will anything anyone does on their turn affect you, so there is no logical reason why you couldn’t do this.
That contrast is difficult to review because I want to tell you that I really like Finspan, my daughter and I have played it several times, we had a lot of fun, and it continues to hit the table long after my obligation to write this review ended. That said, there is absolutetly no way I will ever play this game with more than 2 players again, because that was a truly painful experience. So does that make Finspan a good game or a bad one? It’s tricky.
I think to tackle this review, we have to answer some questions here to put things into context. Does Finspan stand on its own within this series? Is it different enough to justify a place alongside the other games? And perhaps more importantly, who is it really for?
Spoiler alert! While Finspan does look a bit complicated in a screenshot like this, the reality is, it’s mechanically a fairly simple game, something you can teach to just about anyone.
Today, we sort all that out. Let’s get into it!
Overview
Final Score: (3.05) Good Game!
The first thing that struck me about Finspan was how bold and vibrant it looks on the table. The colors really pop, and once everything is laid out, the game becomes a genuine visual feast. It immediately made a stronger impression on me than Wingspan ever did in that regard.
Bright, colorful, beautiful! The importance and impact of eye candy as a part of a game’s appeal should not be underestimated. Finspan sticks the landing here without question.
Now, to be fair, I do enjoy fishing as a hobby, so I was naturally more drawn to the theme here than Wingspan’s birds. Drawing a fish card you have caught and eaten before adds a kind of charm to the experience. There is also the fact that my experience with Wingspan was digital, played on Board Game Arena, which I personally think is not a great way to get the right first impression of a tabletop board game, while Finspan was played physically at the table. That difference alone likely plays a role in how each game landed for me. Fortunately, I’m not here to review Wingspan; we are here to talk about Finspan, and while I think a comparison is a valid addition to a review in a game in a series, I don’t think it matters how much I did or didn’t like Wingspan.
In Finspan, each round you take one of two actions. Either you play a fish card from your hand into your player board or you go diving down one of three columns representing, I guess, different types of dives (reef, coast, and open ocean?).
When you play a fish card, you typically get a one-time “when played effect,” or you get an ability you will activate each time you make a dive in the zone that the fish is in.
Additionally, each fish is worth a certain amount of points and has a wide range of potential attributes that are sort of collected for certain types of scoring opportunities that are available each round of play.
When you dive, you activate all the fish in the column that you activated, gaining various rewards like drawing cards, laying fish eggs, and stuff like that. All the little point scoring levers.
There are, of course, a few other little auxiliary things to the game, but that is more or less the gist of it. A lot of this probably sounds very familiar to Wingspan players because it’s mostly the same routine.
Beyond the much-improved presentation, Finspan felt noticeably smoother to play than Wingspan. The game is more streamlined and easier to grasp, both when learning it yourself and when teaching it to others. It takes several of the core ideas from Wingspan, trims away some of what I feel were rough edges, and presents them in a cleaner, more efficient way. The result is a game that flows better and gets out of its own way. Perhaps more accurately, the game is a lot more newbie-friendly, being the lightest variant in the series.
That said, like Wingspan, Finspan is a very solitary experience. While there are occasional moments where another player’s action might give you a small incidental benefit, there is little reason to pay close attention to what others are doing. For the most part, you are focused entirely on your own board, your own cards, and your own engine.
For me, this is probably the game’s biggest weakness, especially when playing with more than one other player. Player interaction is extremely limited, but the downtime and the length of the game increase dramatically with each added player.
At three to five players, it often feels like you are playing a solo game where you simply wait for others to take their turns, even though what they do has no impact on your own decisions.
That may not be a flaw for everyone, though. In fact, I suspect this is exactly what fans of Wingspan enjoy. Finspan delivers that same kind of energy, a quiet race to build the most efficient engine and score the most points. As a 2-player game, a race to victory points like this, where you have quick back-and-forth uninteractive turns, makes sense, but in a 3 or 4 player game, it’s just painful waiting for your turn.
I recently discovered White Castle, an amazing worker placement game that utilizes dice, and this is exactly the sort of interaction-based victory point salad I’m talking about. This game has tension, moves, and counter moves; it’s a race, and it’s super tight. This is one of those games where something someone else did on the board can ruin your day or open an opportunity that might end up winning you the game. I love that kind of tense exchange.
Despite the simplicity of the actions you can take on your turn, the game offers a fair amount of depth as a puzzle. There is a huge variety of fish (cards), each with unique powers that create lots of interesting engine puzzles to solve. Figuring out how to make the most of what you are given is where the game finds its replay value; it’s a very addictive and repeatable experience.
One area where Finspan clearly improves on Wingspan is resource management. Wingspan uses a dice tower as a shared pool of food, which introduces a level of randomness that can feel out of place in an otherwise controlled system. Finspan shifts the focus to cards as your primary resource (discarding cards to play other cards), which reduces both luck and downtime. It becomes more about planning and decision making, and less about hoping for the right roll.
In Wingspan, I thought the dice tower, while cool aesthetically, was the weakest part of the game. The impact of randomized resources really shifts Wingspan from a deterministic strategy game to a bit of a gamble. I wasn’t a fan of it at all.
I prefer games with more interaction, a bit of tension, and at least some level of confrontation. When I sit down for a board game night, I want a reason to react to what the people around the table are doing. Finspan, for all its strengths, leans more toward a personal puzzle than a shared experience. That lack of impact of other players being at the table with you weakens the experience a great deal for me, especially in larger player counts.
Bottom line is that it’s an engine-building victory point salad game, with minimal interaction and zero confrontation. Because it’s easy to learn and teach, being a much lighter game than Wingspan, it’s kind of a perfect introduction to the series and a great introduction to board games in general.
Components
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Bright, colorful, and altogether a visual feast. Great rulebooks!
Cons: With larger player counts, this game takes up a lot of relestate
Finspan is a very pretty game. It looks fantastic on the table, and the components, especially the iconography, are exceptionally well executed. As a whole, it is a pleasure to lay out and play with.
I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to iconography. When done well, it is far superior to heavy text, making games faster to learn and easier to read at a glance. That said, there is definitely a tipping point where too much iconography becomes overwhelming. A perfect example is Race for the Galaxy, which remains one of my least favorite games to teach for exactly that reason.
Fortunately, Finspan finds the right balance. The iconography does a lot of the heavy lifting, but never feels cluttered or confusing. It makes learning and teaching the game remarkably smooth, supported by a rulebook that is clear, concise, and refreshingly easy to follow. I can comfortably teach this game in about five minutes and have everyone up and running without any friction.
Iconography can be a curse or a blessing. I really love playing Race For The Galaxy, but teaching it is a nightmare, and overkill on iconography is the root cause. Once you get it, it’s fantastic, but if you want to play it with me, watch a YouTube video!
My biggest gripe with this game’s components is their size; again, this applies only to games with more than 2-players, but the amount of table space it takes up is kind of insane. I shit you not to play this 5-player game; you will need about as much room as you would need for a 6-player Twilight Imperium game. I assure you, most people do not have a big enough table to play this game with a full player count. I’m not sure how this didn’t come up during play testing.
I’m not sure “taking up too much space,” however, is a rating-reducing offense. For the most part, this game is beautiful, as a gamer, that counts for a lot in my book.
Theme
Score: Tilt:
Pros: While marine enthusiasts and divers might not agree, I think Finspan nails a fun, gratifying fishy theme
Cons: The enthusiasm for the theme gets dragged down by larger player counts.
I was not expecting Finspan to be particularly thematic when I opened the box, and I am still not entirely convinced that it is in the traditional sense. That said, there is a certain charm to it that just works.
Every card represents a unique fish, and that alone gives the game a subtle collectible feel. Playing them onto your board and then activating them as you dive adds a layer of satisfaction that is hard to fully explain, but easy to appreciate once you are in it.
When it comes to theme, Finspan sticks the landing like an Olympic gymnast; I’m not sure how you would improve it, considering the subject matter, but it’s fair to say I’m no expert in diving or fish, so I’m speaking mostly to the aesthetic.
Whether that qualifies as “thematic” is up for debate. I am no expert on diving or marine life, but the combination of the theme and the simple, approachable gameplay creates an experience that feels cohesive and inviting.
This is also the kind of game I could comfortably put in front of non-boardgamers without much hesitation. It is easy to grasp, visually appealing, and does not come with the usual baggage that might scare people off. It feels like a family game, though probably best suited for a smaller group.
That is really where the theme feels strongest. At two players, and to a lesser extent three, the rhythm of drawing cards, diving, and scoring points flows nicely. The game moves at a pace where the experience feels engaging, and before anything becomes repetitive, you are already wrapping up and counting points.
Once you push beyond that player count, the experience starts to lose some of that charm. Drawing a card and being excited about the fish you got kind of loses its luster when you’re doing it once every ten minutes. The pacing slows so much at higher player counts that whatever thematic immersion the game builds begins to fade.
So yes, I would say Finspan does deliver a thematic experience, but much like other aspects of the game, it works best at two players, maybe three. Beyond that, the magic starts to slip away.
Gameplay
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Solid, easy to learn and teach engine builder with a very streamlined and satisfying game loop.
Cons: Lacks meaningful interaction and is an absolute drag at larger player counts.
Finspan does several things that I think are genuinely clever, but three elements in particular stand out as major improvements over the original concept established by Wingspan. Now, I have not played Wyrmspan, so I cannot say how much of that game carries over here, but it is very clear to me that Finspan aims to be a more streamlined and accessible version of the same core design philosophy, and for the most part, I think it succeeds.
After trying Finspan and seeing some potential in the series, despite my less-than-stellar experience with Wingspan, I think Wyrmspan is worth a go. Who doesn’t love dragons?!
The first thing that stands out is the sheer variety of beautifully illustrated fish cards. Every fish feels distinct, and there are countless combinations and strategic uses for them. Building your engine by carefully adding fish to your board is consistently satisfying, and watching those synergies come together is where much of the game’s appeal lives.
I would actually argue that Finspan handles this far better than Wingspan. The strategic role of each card is more intuitive and immediately understandable. You can glance at a fish and quickly grasp what it is trying to accomplish, both the short-term boost and how it fits into a long-term strategy. Wingspan’s cards are not necessarily more complicated, but I often found their place within the broader strategy less obvious and harder to piece together naturally. Admittedly, my experience with Wingspan is limited, but when playing Finspan, it was so obvious and easy to decode that it all just felt more intuitive. I did not have that experience with Wingspan.
The second major improvement is resource management. Finspan feels far more deterministic, which makes it feel like a strategy game first and a gamble second.
I do not mind randomness in games when it creates tension or memorable moments, but my experience with Wingspan was that the randomness often blocked me from executing the strategy I actually wanted to pursue. The dice tower resource system felt clumsy to me because the unpredictability existed in the worst possible place, resource generation itself. It constantly interrupted planning. It reminded me a little too much of Catan, and that is not a compliment coming from me.
I love dice towers, I’m using the word love here! But it has to be executed in a way that doesn’t undermine the game’s core decision-making. In Dirk Henn’s Shogun, the dice tower is used to determine who wins the fight. It’s used at a time when all of your strategy and planning is already in place; now it’s time to see if it works. That’s exciting, it’s fun. Rolling a die to see if you get the resources you need to execute a strategy you want is less strategy and more gambling. I just don’t think it works in Wingspan.
Finspan handles this much better. Your cards and your board effectively become your resources, and there is far less randomness interfering with your plans. You are making deliberate decisions instead of simply hoping things line up correctly. When your strategy works, it feels earned. It feels like good planning rather than good luck.
The third improvement is how the game handles scoring objectives and long-term planning. In Wingspan, I often felt that bonus objectives came down to luck. You could not reliably plan around them because card access and resource access were too inconsistent. Even when you got the cards you wanted, you still had to hope the resource system cooperated enough to let you actually play them in time for it to matter.
In Finspan, those same goals feel much more achievable and controllable. The bonus objectives are clearer, more direct, and easier to intentionally build toward. Because the game gives you greater control over your resources and a wider range of useful card options, planning ahead becomes far more rewarding. You are rarely forced into awkward short-term plays simply to chase points. Instead, your decisions feel connected to a broader strategy.
While fish cards score their share of points, one of the primary ways you are going to dramatically increase your score is by completing the weekly objectives (each round). This is a key to the game, and it’s what you are building your engine for primarily.
From beginning to end, Finspan simply feels more like a true strategy game than Wingspan ever did to me.
That was a lot of comparison, though, so let’s talk about Finspan on its own terms.
One of the game’s greatest strengths is its streamlined gameplay loop. On your turn, you are essentially making one of two choices: play a fish card or go diving, a strength it shares with the rest of the series. I love it when games with genuine strategic depth keep their core actions simple and easy to understand. It allows new players to grasp the structure quickly and start thinking about meaningful decisions almost immediately.
Finspan excels here. It is lightweight, approachable, and easy to teach, but those two simple actions create a surprising amount of depth over the course of the game. The pacing feels clean and efficient, and mechanically, I think the game absolutely sticks the landing.
That said, I have already touched on what I see as the game’s biggest issue, the lack of interaction between players. At two players, I find this much easier to tolerate because the game moves quickly enough to maintain momentum. But even then, what other players do on their turns rarely matters to you in any meaningful way.
The bigger issue is not just the lack of interaction, but the inability to affect another player’s progress at all. If someone builds a stronger engine than you, there is essentially nothing you can do about it. You cannot interfere, slow them down, block them, react, or force them to adapt. Everyone is simply building their own machine in parallel.
Because of that, playing with other people often feels functionally identical to playing solo, only slower. That is probably my biggest criticism of the game because it undermines some of the excitement generated by the otherwise excellent engine-building mechanics.
I also found the game strangely lacking in tension. Since scoring is mostly hidden until the end, you rarely have a sense of whether you are winning or losing during play. Combined with the lack of player interaction, the entire experience can feel a little too gentle and detached for my tastes.
Hidden scoring, I think, in general, is a bad idea in all games. Seeing the numbers go up is not only satisfying but also creates a natural tension between the players. In a game with so little interaction, having a score tracker on the board was one place the game could have benefited greatly.
That alone is not enough to keep the game off my table. I still enjoyed Finspan, and I do not mind playing it. But when I compare it to other games in the same general space, games with similar complexity and strategic depth that also include meaningful interaction, Finspan struggles to stand out for me personally.
At the end of the day, I think Finspan is a good game. In many ways, it is a very smartly designed game. It just never fully grabbed me because the experience feels so isolated. The mechanics themselves are solid, often excellent even, but the lack of interaction keeps the game from reaching the next level, resulting in a kind of average Euro.
Replayability and Longevity
Score: Tilt:
Pros: As a 2-player joust, it feels quick and dynamic, with plenty of strategies to explore.
Cons: This is a solo game you can play around the same table; there is so little interaction that there is no reason to play this in turn order.
This was probably the hardest category for me to judge when it comes to Finspan.
On one hand, the game taps into a very satisfying formula. There is that familiar rhythm of drawing cards, getting them into play, and watching your engine slowly come together and generate points. It is a system that is undeniably compelling, no doubt, while Wingspan is so popular. Many of my favorite games follow this variation on this pattern, and I have played some of them so much that I have quite literally worn out the components.
The difference between those games and Finspan is that those games usually include some level of interaction. Whether it is indirect pressure through shared spaces, like in worker placement, or more direct forms of disruption, other players create tension. They force you to adapt, rethink, and respond; they threaten your engine and your plan. Without that, a lot of the long-term appeal starts to fade.
With more solitary engine builders like Finspan, I tend to feel that the game gets “solved” over time. Even with variability from card draw, there is nothing actively pushing back against your strategy. No one is getting in your way, no one is forcing you off your plan. And for me, simply chasing a higher score, even with solid play like this, is not always enough to keep me engaged once the novelty wears off.
That said, I have seen the other side of this, probably something akin to what is happening with Wingspan in the wider community. My daughter really enjoys Finspan and regularly asks to play it. From her perspective, the lack of interaction does not seem to matter at all. She is fully engaged in building her own board and improving her score, and that is enough.
Finspan, I think, would have done much better as a two-player game, especially if you added some interaction between players with card selection and competition for point scoring, akin to something like 7 Wonder Duel. Trying to turn Finspan into a 4-5 player game, I think, was a bad idea; it’s clearly not a good fit for that.
My point here is that whether or not this game has staying power, that all-important replayability is not inherently a problem for this game. This puzzle has many functioning solutions, and it’s sufficiently dynamic for each game to be a unique experience. The absence of interaction, that’s a matter of preference as to whether or not that kills it for you. I recognize that my view, that a lack of interaction and contention hurts replayability, is not shared by everyone. In fact, quite to the contrary, Wingspan is proof of that. It remains hugely popular and widely loved.
For that reason, I do not see any obvious barrier to Finspan having strong replay value for the right audience. It may not be my personal preference, but if you enjoy this kind of low-interaction, engine-building experience, there is no reason to think Finspan would not hold up over time any more or less than Wingspan has. There is plenty of mechanical depth to explore a wide range of strategies, and it has the advantage of being an easier game to get into.
Conclusion
Finspan is a bit of a quandary for me. I genuinely like it, and I do think it is a good game, but it falls firmly into that category of “good, but flawed.”
The good is easy to identify. The game is simple, mechanically polished, visually appealing, and genuinely enjoyable to play. It is streamlined without feeling shallow, approachable without feeling dull, and there is a satisfying rhythm to building your engine and watching it come together over the course of a session.
The flaw, at least for me, is the near-complete absence of player interaction. In a board game, I personally want tension at the table. I want players affecting each other’s plans, forcing reactions, creating moments of triumph and frustration. That push and pull is a huge part of what makes board games exciting to me.
At the same time, I recognize that this is ultimately a matter of taste rather than an objective design failure. A lot of players don’t want confrontation in their games. They don’t want their plans disrupted or their strategies blocked. The very things I see as essential to a great board game are, for many people, the exact things they try to avoid.
So while I have to judge Finspan by my own standards, because this is my review and not a committee decision, I also understand why games like this resonate so strongly with such a large audience. This is not a problem unique to Finspan either. I often feel this same disconnect with many highly regarded Euro games.
At the start of this review, I asked three important questions, and I think now is the right time to answer them directly.
Does Finspan stand on its own within this series?
Absolutely. In fact, I think Finspan is probably the best entry point into the Span series. It feels like the most approachable and newcomer-friendly version of the formula. If you enjoy Finspan, there is a good chance Wingspan or Wyrmspan will appeal to you as deeper and more complex variations on the same core ideas. If Finspan does not work for you, I am not convinced the others will change your mind.
Is it different enough to justify a place alongside the other games?
I definitely think so. In fact, I suspect many Wingspan fans may actually prefer Finspan’s more deterministic style of strategy. The cleaner resource management and more controlled gameplay give it a very different feel, even if the foundation is familiar. I see no reason why Wingspan and Finspan cannot comfortably exist on the same shelf, and for some players, I could easily see Finspan replacing Wingspan entirely. Personally, I think it is the stronger game.
Who is it really for?
Unsurprisingly, Finspan is clearly aimed at fans of Wingspan and Wyrmspan, but I do not think that is where its audience ends. I think Finspan works very well as a light, accessible Euro game that requires no prior knowledge of the series at all.
It’s easy to teach, easy to learn, visually inviting, and mechanically satisfying. While I personally find the lack of interaction holds it back, I suspect that will not be a major issue for the audience this game is targeting. If anything, that relaxed and low-pressure style may be exactly why so many people will enjoy it.
At the end of the day, I think Finspan is a fun game. More importantly, my daughter enjoys it, and honestly, that alone probably guarantees it a permanent place on the shelf. Any game you can get to the table and entertain people with is a good game, and Finspan definitely falls into that category.
When Dewan first landed on my table, my eyes didn’t go to the rulebook, the components, or even the promise of gameplay. They went straight to that absolutely mesmerizing cover art by Arthus Pilorget. It’s surreal, vibrant, and just the right kind of strange, like a dream you can’t quite explain but don’t want to wake up from. There’s an immediate sense of identity here, a bold, artistic swagger that practically demands your attention. And yeah… I love it.
Beneath that dazzling, slightly offbeat exterior lies something far more restrained: a deeply abstract puzzle game. There’s nothing wrong with that, far from it, but when the art sets the stage this dramatically, part of you can’t help but expect something equally theatrical underneath. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe that’s just the spell the artwork casts. Either way, I always like to capture my raw, first impression, the unfiltered “wow” before the mechanics settle in. So yes, let the record show: very cool art.
Anyway, enough gawking, consider me thoroughly impressed, and let’s dive in.
I feel compelled to put this piece on my blog; it really defines the term, artwork! Anyone who says that A.I. will replace artists is kidding themselves, a machine can copy it, but nothing like this will ever originate from a machine, no matter how much we invest in them.
Dewan sits comfortably in that delicious design space of deceptively simple mechanics wrapped around a surprisingly deep strategic core. At first glance, it feels approachable, almost gentle… but give it a few plays, and suddenly you’re in deep waters, wrestling with decisions that feel sharper, tighter, and far more consequential than expected. It’s a slow burn in the best way, subtle at first, then steadily revealing layers of tension, bite, and competitive edge. And make no mistake, this game can get spicy once players find their footing. It’s a lot more confrontational than it appears or the rules suggest; there is strong, in-your-face interaction here.
What really elevates Dewan, though, is its ever-shifting landscape. The game is map-based, and crucially, you build that map yourself at the start of each session. The result is that no two games feel remotely alike. Forget rehearsed openings or safe, go-to strategies; this is a game that thrives on adaptability. You’ll need to think on your feet, pivot constantly, and embrace the chaos of a board that refuses to play by familiar rules. I really liked that a great deal; it speaks to replayability and longevity, so we are off to a great start.
I find it interesting how wildly different I saw this map during the first 3 plays of this game and how I see it now. The learning curve is not steep, but there is understanding and meaningful knowledge, a transition that takes a few plays to appear.
I also struggled to pin down a clean comparison, and that’s a fantastic thing. In a hobby full of echoes and iterations, Dewan feels refreshingly, confidently unique.
So right out of the gate, we have a strong opening and a lot of great potential. The question is, does Dewan deliver on the promise? Let’s find out!
Overview
Final Score: (4.05 out 5) Outstanding Game!
If you really want to get a grip on Dewan, the cleanest way to unpack it is to think in three interlocking layers: the razor-thin scoring system, the slick card-driven action engine, and the ever-present, quietly cutthroat area control on the map. The game demands that a player be efficient, which, coincidentally, is how I would describe the way the game was designed.
Let’s start with the path to victory, because this one is tight. Points are scarce, precious, and just a little bit elusive. You’re not racking up big numbers here; instead, most of your scoring trickles in through the completion of story cards (think elegant little objective puzzles). These ask you to control specific terrain types, mountains, forests, and deserts, and convert that control into a sort of resource checkbox. There are a few bonus avenues for points, plus a shared scenario card that sweetens the pot for everyone, but the real magic lies in efficiency, not overwhelming acquisition.
The trick is to chain your story cards together so they overlap in clever, satisfying ways, squeezing maximum value out of minimal effort on the board. It’s less about doing more and more about doing just enough, brilliantly. If that sounds like a hobbit riddle, well, the game kind of is that.
The Story cards tell you what resources you must collect, but you unlock these as you go, and there is no telling what cards will be available when it’s your turn to pick one. This might be the only time a bit of luck can help you. Finding a way to make use of the same resource in more than one story is key to a successful run.
Actions are governed by the card system, the pulsing, strategic heartbeat of the game. Each round, you’re faced with an illusively tense choice: play cards to move across the board and establish settlements (your claim to territory), or pause to draft new cards from a constantly shifting market. It’s simple on paper, but in practice every decision feels like a tiny, meaningful gamble. Efficiency, again, is everything. Waste a move, and you’ll feel it, and while you may have a plan, opportunities difficult to pass up come up all the time, and knowing when to take them and when to pass is kind of the key to the game.
At the start of the game, the board feels wide open, brimming with possibility. Resources seem plentiful, and on the dynamically built map, opportunities are abundant. You might even think, “Hey, this isn’t so hard.” The game will correct that perception rather quickly.
Because Dewan hides a beautifully designed rule at its core: connected territories of the same type only count as one terrain type. I would imagine when the designer came up with that, the rest of the game laid out for him like a solved puzzle.
You might think that having 5 deserts so close together is a lucky break; it will make checkboxing deserts quick and easy, but the reality is that you are looking at one big desert, which is catastrophically bad. It not only forces you across it, meaning you need to collect desert cards to move through them, but settling more than one of these deserts is useless.
Those four cozy mountain tiles clustered near your starting position look like a goldmine… but mechanically, they’re just a single, lonely mountain. Suddenly, the board shifts from inviting to demanding. That one rule, simple, elegant, slightly cruel, completely reshapes how you approach the game. You can’t just carve out a neat little slice of the map and call it a day. You’ll need to spread out, stretch your reach, and compete across the entire board, and you can be certain your opponents will be doing the same.
And here’s the kicker: moving across that board costs cards. Every step, every expansion, every ambitious grab for territory eats into your limited hand. So once again, the game whispers its central mantra, do more with less. The game could have been called “Optimization,” and that would have been on point.
There’s a lot more bubbling beneath the surface, layers of nuance, timing, and tactical brinkmanship, but even at a high level, you can feel it: Dewan is one of those games where the rules are deceptively simple, but the decisions are gloriously, brain-meltingly complex.
And that’s fascinating. Genuinely.
But also very abstract, and if I’m being honest, just a little outside my personal taste. I can absolutely appreciate what it’s doing; there’s a deep, rewarding well here for players who want to dive in, explore, and master its many subtleties. This is a game that could easily sustain dozens, maybe hundreds, of plays for the right audience. It’s well designed, well balanced, everything you could want as a general board game fan, but general is not my sweet spot.
Three times during the game, you will be allowed to slip a card under your board, which gives you both the terrain and resource on that card. This requires good timing and preparation, but is quite important for scoring purposes.
For me, Dewan lands squarely in that familiar category of: “This is excellent… just not entirely my thing,” which simply means I’m happy to play it, but it won’t necessarily find its way into my permanent collection.
It’s not so much a judgment as it is a preference, but I will say that games like Dewan sometimes win me over, over time. I’m not in a rush to cull it. I recognize that while I have my preferences, sometimes these sorts of puzzly games win me over, and Dewan certainly has the potential to do just that.
Components
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Outstanding quality through and through, the art is just a cherry on top!
Cons: I would have liked to see a rules reference for this one.
The component quality, judged across my three core pillars: physical durability, artistic execution, and clarity, puts Dewan on a clear path toward a perfect score.
Frankly, there’s very little to criticize here. The components are crafted from thick, resilient stock that feels built for countless plays. Visually, the game leans fully into its charming, whimsical art style, maintaining a cohesive and inviting aesthetic across every piece. The iconography does present a slight learning curve at first, but once it clicks, it reveals itself to be clean, intuitive, and thoughtfully placed; everything communicates exactly what it needs to, exactly where you expect it. And the box insert is exceptionally well-designed, snug, practical, and oddly satisfying in its precision.
The rulebook, however, is where things get a bit more nuanced. My initial instinct was to criticize it. It adopts a “teach-as-you-play” approach rather than functioning as a structured reference guide. While this makes onboarding smooth and approachable, it becomes less convenient when you need to answer a specific question mid-game. Instead of quickly locating a rule, you may find yourself digging through the flow of the gameplay explanation to uncover it.
The vivid and colorful art make this game a pleasure to look at, but I have to say it again, art this good belongs on something less abstract; this artist should be working on RPG’s!
This is a hill I will happily die on: every game should include a dedicated rules reference for quick lookups, especially for edge cases and commonly misunderstood elements.
In Dewan, those questions will most often revolve around iconography and scenario cards, which can feel slightly opaque during your first few plays. That said, this is far from a dealbreaker. The game itself is elegantly simple, and once those early uncertainties are resolved, you’re unlikely to revisit the rulebook at all. The rules are streamlined, logical, and easy to internalize.
Overall, this is a beautifully produced, impressively polished game, one that doesn’t just meet modern board game production standards but confidently exceeds them.
Theme
Score: Tilt:
Pros: If we were judging the theme on art alone, this would be 5 stars!
Cons: The theme is mostly irrelevant to the game, but as an abstract game, it doesn’t really need a theme.
The theme isn’t exactly the beating heart of Dewan, in fact, it barely registers as a pulse. Outside of its enchanting, fairy tale-inspired art style, there’s very little here to anchor the experience in a meaningful narrative, leaving me with surprisingly little to dig into.
Beyond a scattering of light flavor text in the rulebook, the game offers only the faintest hint of context. You’re… expanding a village, exploring, for reasons that remain charmingly vague and conveniently unexplained. It all feels more like a decorative backdrop than a driving force, pleasant to look at, but ultimately insubstantial. It’s an abstract game, plain and simple.
What this game lacks in theme, it makes up for in great gameplay and, more importantly, amazing style. The vivid use of light here is amazing!
I’m not even sure what else can be said. This is precisely where my tilting system earns its keep. While Dewan’s theme is undeniably thin, almost ethereal in its absence, it also doesn’t detract from the experience in any meaningful way. The game isn’t trying to tell a story, and it doesn’t need to.
So yes, the theme may be wispy, but crucially, it’s also harmless, an aesthetic flourish rather than a foundational pillar in an otherwise abstract puzzle game beautifully executed.
Gameplay
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Fantastic design, I foresee this game winning some awards.
Cons: Can be quite unforgiving, takes a few plays before it clicks.
While the theme in Dewan barely leaves an impression, the gameplay is the undeniable centerpiece, the beating heart and razor-sharp mind of the experience.
For a game with such elegantly simple rules, Dewan hides a remarkable amount of depth beneath its surface. It’s one of those deceptively “light” designs that quickly reveals a dense, cerebral core the moment you start making meaningful decisions.
If I had to distill what makes Dewan stand out, it’s that it belongs to a lineage of games rooted in mathematical integrity. This is a design built on balance, probability, and precision rather than flashy mechanics or familiar systems. It feels engineered in the best possible way, echoing the philosophies of designers like Reiner Knizia, Vlaada Chvátil, and Alexander Pfister. In that sense, Johannes Goupy and Yoann Levet have crafted something that feels refreshingly deliberate and structurally sound, without the usual copy/pasting that makes it easily definable as “just like X game”.
Where many modern games lean on familiar frameworks, worker placement, deck building, and action selection, Dewan confidently carves its own path. It doesn’t rely on genre shorthand. Instead, it builds tension and decision-making from first principles, and the result is something that feels both fresh and intellectually satisfying.
From the very start, variability defines the experience. Randomized terrain, shifting board layouts, and scenario (or “story”) cards ensure that no two games unfold the same way. Yet impressively, this randomness never undermines balance. The scenario cards feel meticulously tuned, difficult to achieve regardless of your starting position. You won’t luck into an easy 8-point score just because the board happened to favor you. That level of consistency in a dynamic setup is no small feat; it’s careful, disciplined design. Anyone who has ever tried to design a game knows just how painful balancing dynamic mechanics can be. It’s clear this game went through rigorous testing to achieve this result.
The pacing is another standout strength. Every village placed tightens the board, increasing both spatial pressure and urgency. The game subtly transforms into a race, not just to score efficiently, but to act before opportunities disappear. You want to craft perfect, optimized turns… but the game rarely affords you that luxury.
This is a pretty fast-paced game, you’re going to take maybe 12-15 actions before the game ends, and you know you’re doing well if you are the one putting the pressure on other players to keep up. There is definitely a race here; faster is in fact, better. The result is that in a typical game night, you are probably going to play this more than once.
This creates a fun and sometimes frustrating tension. Dewan is a puzzle under pressure, a game where careful planning collides with the constant need to adapt and race to the finish. Mistakes are not easily forgiven; there just aren’t enough turns for you to course correct a mistake.
Player interaction is also more pronounced than it first appears. This isn’t a solitary optimization exercise; it’s a shared, contested space. You need to track opponents closely, anticipating their moves, disrupting their plans, and adjusting your own strategy accordingly. Blocking becomes just as important as building, and though this skill takes time to develop, it is more often than not the key to a tight victory.
One particularly elegant design choice is the terrain drafting system. When selecting terrain cards, you must take two adjacent cards rather than freely choosing any combination. It’s a small rule with enormous implications. Even when the exact pieces you need are visible, they’re often just out of reach. This forces compromise, sacrifice, and creative problem-solving, adding another layer of often painful decisions to the puzzle.
Drafting cards in Dewan is really very key. I’m not even exaggerating that one bad decision, especially when playing with experienced players, can make the difference between winning and losing. It’s very unforgiving, which I actually liked quite a bit.
And that’s really the magic of Dewan. With only two types of actions per turn available, the game manages to feel surprisingly weighty, filled with difficult choices. Every choice ripples outward, interacting with the board state, your objectives, and your opponents’ plans. It’s tight, demanding, and deeply engaging.
That said, this style of design comes with its trade-offs. There’s no real catch-up mechanism. Strong, optimized play is rewarded, and mistakes can be costly. In fact, the game is so tight that even a single bad call can and often will cost you the game. It is a puzzle game that demands perfection. In many games, you may find yourself identifying the likely winner well before the final turn. Fortunately, Dewan keeps things brisk, typically wrapping up in 30–45 minutes, so even a losing position never overstays its welcome. You won’t have to wallow in your defeat for long.
At its core, the gameplay loop is beautifully simple: control space, match terrain to objectives, and position your camps to maximize scoring opportunities. But the path to doing so is filled with clever constraints and constantly shifting decisions that keep every turn engaging.
Dewan succeeds because it embraces one of the purest goals of game design: when you lose, you know exactly why, and you immediately want to try again with a better plan.
That’s not just good design. That’s great design.
Replay-ability and Longevity
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Dynamic starting setup and unique scenarios make this game very replayable. Works with all player counts equally well.
Cons: Playing with new players can be a little unfair; it’s not that much fun until it clicks for everyone.
The first couple of plays of Dewan, I have to be honest, felt a little… samey. Not bad, not boring, just oddly flat. The competitive edge hadn’t quite surfaced yet, and I struggled to see where the long-term excitement or replayability was supposed to come from. It all felt a bit too neat, a bit too contained, like a clever puzzle that might not have much more to say after a few rounds.
And then, somewhere around the third or fourth play, it clicked for me and I’m glad I stuck around to see it.
That’s when it hit me: everything I thought I had learned was not nearly as useful as I expected. The game’s dynamic, randomized setup completely reshuffles the puzzle every single time. What worked before doesn’t necessarily work again. There’s no “perfect opening,” no reliable flowchart to follow, no cozy strategy to fall back on. Dewan quietly pulls the rug out from under you and says, “Figure it out… again.”
And that’s where it comes alive.
Each session feels like a brand-new puzzle with familiar rules but a wildly different personality. The structure stays consistent, but the execution constantly shifts. The game is constantly demanding adaptation. It’s like solving a new riddle using the same language, recognizable, yet endlessly surprising.
Now, sitting here after about a dozen plays, I feel pretty confident saying this: the replayability here is, for all practical purposes, limitless. You might eventually step away from it, but it won’t be because you’ve “solved” it or fallen into repetitive patterns. This game doesn’t let you do that.
You’re not going to score a lot of points in this game, and most end-of-game scoring is going to be very tight. Every point matters in this game; you have to squeeze it for everything you can get out of it, there is no room for sub-optimal play.
If you have a soft spot for light, puzzly Euro games, the kind that reward clever thinking, efficient play, and a willingness to adapt on the fly, then Dewan is going to feel right at home on your table. It’s a sharp, thoughtful design with a wonderfully dynamic core, and that ever-changing setup does a ton of heavy lifting when it comes to keeping things fresh.
A great design, a tight balance, and endlessly shifting starting conditions, together, give Dewan a replayability that feels not just strong, but effortlessly alive.
Conclusion
I always find games like Dewan uniquely difficult to review, and not because they’re flawed, but because they’re so clearly, so quietly excellent. After decades of playing board games with near-obsessive enthusiasm, and more than ten years of dissecting and reviewing them, you develop an instinct for design, an ability to recognize when something is finely tuned, meticulously balanced, and thoughtfully constructed.
And make no mistake: Dewan is exactly that. It is subtly, almost deceptively, brilliant.
But the beauty of a conclusion is that the analysis is done. The score is set. The critical lens can finally be set aside, and I can just speak as a player.
And as a player, I can say Dewan is a game I deeply respect more than I personally love. It’s excellent, I’m just not its target audience.
It’s an elegantly engineered experience that will absolutely resonate with the right audience. For me, though, it sits just outside my usual preferences. That said, I have no doubt it will continue to hit the table. Its quality all but guarantees it, people will discover it, appreciate it, and want to play it again and again. And importantly, I never found it frustrating or grating in the way more abstract, puzzle-heavy games sometimes can be. It’s thoughtful without being exhausting, challenging without being punishing.
In the end, Dewan is a game I would confidently recommend to players who appreciate clever, finely crafted systems and enjoy abstract, brain-burning puzzles wrapped in a clean, distinctive design.
It may not be my perfect game, but it is, without question, a remarkably well-designed one that will make it someone’s top 10 list.
(4.65) Fantastic Party Game
