A beautiful deduction game!

❓Are you good at logical deduction games?

We love them, so we are excited to showcase Tiwanaku! ☺️ It has a very unique concept, and no app is needed, which is a huge plus!

This game is about exploring new lands around Tiwanaku and trying to plant the right crop to honor Pachamama (Mother Earth) by respecting the great principles of diversity and complementarity!

On a turn you either move one of your meeples to explore the terrain, or try to divine, meaning you guess the type of crop to be planted. Both of these involve checking your coordinates on the cardboard wheel and opening one its windows to see what is there. Moving is interesting because you can “slide” through your own meeples and already placed crops, only empty tiles and opposing meeples stop the movement.

Divining isn't random of course. This is where the logical framework of the game comes into play! The map is made up of groups of terrain types - every group 1-5 tiles big. Each of these terrain groups hold crop tiles, but the crop value can never be bigger than the group´s size. Two terrain groups of the same type can never touch, and a crop cannot be adjacent to the same crop type either.

With these rules a Sudoku-like map emerges and you can make more and more informed guesses. If you are better at puzzles and notice patterns more easily, you will have an advantage! Wrong guesses not only get you minus points but also aid your opponents at the same time! At the beginning only a little information is revealed. No one is sure of anything, and no one wants to make wrong guesses which can lead to “Mexican-standoffs”. 😅 As more terrain and crops are added, it all becomes easier.

There are also some clever touches with the scoring, both for exploring the terrain or collecting sets for correct crop guesses. This switches things up to make you not just camp a certain corner of the map.

Tactics ♟️ also plays a major role, as you can block opponent meeples with yours. So sometimes you can cunningly “protect” some areas so you get to reap the points. Timing ⏱️ and positioning are important too, as correct guesses allow additional tries, so you can plant a bunch of crops and earn points in a row.