Folks generally mistake me for a health-conscious individual once I refuse Krispy-Kreme donuts or onerous sweet. What they do not perceive is that I’m such an excessive chocoholic that, with few exceptions, I imagine desserts merely aren’t definitely worth the energy if they do not include a certain quantity of chocolate.
So, in fact, my curiosity was piqued once I heard a few new recreation known as Candy Lands, the place gamers are tasked with constructing a confectionery nation stuffed with brownie buildings, espresso retailers, ice cream towers, and extra, to show themselves worthy of changing the presently struggling King Sugar Syrup. Artwork and designer duo Totsuca Chuo and Tatsuki Asano, who beforehand introduced us Ostia, have reunited for a heavier useful resource administration Eurogame that accommodates 1-4 gamers for 100-200 minutes. Does the gameplay match the sweetness of the theme?
Sport Overview:
I cannot try to explain exhaustively 20+ web page rule e-book for this heavy Eurogame, however I’ll describe some key components of the sport.
Throughout every of the 5 rounds, gamers will carry out actions by a mixture of card play and employee placement. Gamers obtain 5 to six new playing cards every spherical and should resolve to play them as:
- A part of your desk, which leads to a single, last and/or industry-linked reactivable bonus.
- Fee for employee placement locations
Inserting employees is almost all of the sport, and if you’re the primary participant to activate a given location, the price is one card plus the useful resource prices related to that location. Employee placement factors can every be activated 1 to three occasions per spherical by the identical or
totally different gamers, however if you’re the second or third customer, you’ll have to discard 2 or 3 playing cards to get there.
The principle factor you are attempting to attain with these actions is to construct a confectionery nation in your private map board consisting of terrain tiles (of 5 sorts) that should be linked to roads with a purpose to include constructed properties (of 6 sorts). Varied rewards particular to every terrain and constructing kind are awarded when sure situations are met.
In true Eurogame type, there are additionally loads of useful resource and observe conversions! Six clues primarily relate to end-game scoring with small bonuses alongside the way in which. There are a number of further tracks that primarily present in-game rewards and abilities.
On the finish of the sport, whoever has the very best rating wins.
Gaming expertise:
Do not be fooled by the cutesy baking theme, pastel shade palette, and alliteratively interesting playing cards; Candy Lands is a brutally strict Eurogame with many guidelines. It will in all probability take just a few performs earlier than you are feeling such as you’re conducting greater than the naked minimal, and at a stable 2 hours for a 2-player recreation, that is a little bit of a dedication. My companion and I completed our first recreation with solely 2 cities every in our respective sweet international locations, and solely certainly one of us surpassed 100 factors (I will not say who). Within the third recreation, we each scored round 200 with 4 cities every and, a minimum of primarily based on the scoring clues, it looks like there’s nonetheless numerous room for enchancment.
That is the type of recreation the place you possibly can’t do every thing. Quite a lot of the large scoring comes from ending sure tracks, so you will need to concentrate on sure areas and maximize them. Specialization will largely be dictated by the character you play; There are 14 totally different choices, every with distinctive and highly effective capabilities that you’re going to actually need to reap the benefits of. The deck of 207 distinctive playing cards, 6 doable variants of private map board layouts and 5-7 totally different pairs of assist tokens to pick every spherical (from 25 choices in complete) will dictate your choices for executing varied methods. Collectively, these and a number of other further gameplay components mix for some fairly first rate replayability.
As for participant interplay, there’s not a lot past the employee placement ingredient, a contest to attain sure milestones and last rating tiles, and a draft to decide on pairs of helper tiles every spherical. Contemplating the shortage of sources and actions within the recreation, I am okay with this restricted interplay, as it may be irritating in such a considerate puzzler with long-term planning that your plans are always thwarted. The sport supplies further motion factors for employee placement throughout a bigger variety of gamers, however contemplating the already lengthy recreation time and restricted participant interplay, I do not actually see the purpose in enjoying with 4 gamers, or presumably even three.
If I needed to examine Candy Lands to a different recreation, Terra Mystica in all probability comes closest, because of the issue, asymmetrical powers, scarce sources, multi-step constructing course of on hexagonal maps, and tile crafting between rounds. However Candy Lands is a really totally different recreation; It is a way more partaking manufacturing, the person maps considerably cut back participant interplay (and pettiness too), and the cardboard recreation provides an essential new ingredient.
The cardboard recreation could also be one of the distinctive components of Candy Lands, as you’ll have to resolve which card to play in your tableau and which you might be keen to discard for a employee placement place or in trade for desperately wanted sources. As gamers enter the second and third rounds of Candy Lands, new, extra highly effective variations of current employee placement places will probably be out there, though there’s a increased useful resource value to enhance the effectivity of the motion. Playing cards are equal to actions, so discarding 3 playing cards to entry a specific employee placement location may imply dropping 2 turns; You will must rigorously take into account whether or not it is price taking that motion now, ready for the following spherical, or taking a special (presumably weaker or extra resource-intensive) model of that motion.
The cardboard variability between 207 choices is each thrilling and generally irritating. Every card is classed into one, none, or all three {industry} sorts, which will be essential for the participant’s varied targets. Along with the {industry} kind, every card may have a number of forms of 6 doable sweet labels. Lastly, the price of enjoying playing cards ranges from 4 to 26 cash, and the rewards are often proportional to the price. Within the early recreation, enjoying a 20+ coin card might be prohibitively costly. Lots of the higher-cost playing cards additionally require particular candy tags that gamers might or might not have (even late within the recreation) to maximise their worth. Due to this fact, the worth of the varied playing cards relies upon largely on the spherical of the sport, in addition to the enjoying state of every participant. The rulebook suggests drafting open arms as a variation, though I believe this ought to be commonplace observe after the primary recreation. I might even suggest choosing your new 5 playing cards in the beginning of every subsequent spherical, as this helps reduce the luck issue within the enormous deck in a restricted common card draw recreation.
My solely different disadvantage is that free actions (primarily useful resource conversions) are always used, and it will have been useful to have them listed in a extra visibly accessible participant assist.
Last ideas:
Candy Lands is a visually gorgeous manufacturing stuffed with lovable dessert-themed buildings and recipe-related alliterations. The gameplay, nevertheless, is something however fairly. Gamers ought to be ready for brutally strict useful resource administration, strict guidelines, and roughly 60 minutes per participant. For lovers of Eurogames with numerous minimal interplay, this will nonetheless be a very good proposition, particularly to expertise an progressive card recreation system, an ingenious puzzle with a number of routes to victory and techniques that can change relying in your asymmetrical character and your manner of drawing playing cards. Playing cards introduce some randomness, however this may be mitigated considerably by drafting. In brief, Candy Lands provides a candy theme, a splash of spicy participant interplay, and general a really gratifying strategic puzzle.
Last rating: 4 Stars: Like its rabbit cookie chunks, it is completely lovable, but additionally fairly crunchy and might trigger an overkill headache if performed with a bigger variety of gamers.
Disclaimer: DO NOT eat the parts
Visits:
• Revolutionary integration of playing cards within the recreation.
• Fabulous manufacturing with confectionery themes.
• Asymmetrical characters and maps enhance replayability.
Failures:
• Playing cards introduce randomness; really helpful wording
• Extreme size in a higher variety of gamers
• Participant assist totally free actions would have been useful.
