A family game of tile-laying, drafting and memory

🌬️Pfad der Elemente (aka. Path of Elements) by @apex_ideenschmiede is a family game combining tile-laying, drafting, memory and pattern matching into one package. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that combination before. 😮 It’s a quick game with a relatively simple flow - let’s take a look! 🕵️

The game is split into 2 phases. ✌️

The first one is about drafting your hexagonal path tiles. Depending on your player element you start out with some tiles, but there is also a deck of tiles split up between players - players will take turns choosing a tile and passing their hand to their neighbour, continuing until all tiles are taken. Then you have to build your player area with your tiles, taking specific spatial scoring conditions into account.

Then the second phase of the game starts, which works just like the 🧠 memory game you might know from your childhood. You turn 2 tiles faceup, if they match you take one and place it on one of your tiles. You have to place the second one into the play area of an opponent - and this is where the player interaction comes from. The tiles depict elemental spirits and if you place them on your turn, you also get to activate their ability, flipping, moving or switching spirits around. 🧐 The goal is to have spirits on matching path tiles so they score points. Certain spirit effects let you interact with spirits on an opponent’s board, so you can make things harder for them.

After all the spirit tiles are found, the game is over. ⌛ You can use up the offer tokens you started the game with if you have some remaining - these let you use the spirit abilities or double the points of spirits. Then you count up points, depending on your path and placement of spirits. There is an advanced variant that shows you certain constellations you can match for bonus points.

💬We liked the colorful artwork and that it uses an unusual combination of mechanisms. Still, I don’t think we are the target audience - this really is more geared towards families and kids, who enjoy the occasional take-that player interaction through some abilities, which are usually not present in similar tile laying games.