Are you outdoorsy?

🏞️ Parks is well known and beloved by many. I was always aware of the hype surrounding it, but was never sure if it would be a good fit for us - Was it maybe too simple? Did the worker movement mechanic work at all with 2p? Well we managed to try it out at GenCon and now.. we are fans too! 😍 We really liked the game and immediately ordered it after. 😅

The core goal of the game is quite simple: gather resources to exchange them for national park cards that give victory points. 🤔 But how you get those resources is the interesting part! You put together a trail from multiple tiles - these are the action spots that give you stuff if you move your meeple on to them. It will also be seeded with random resources according to a weather card. Then you start at one end of the trail with 2 meeples each and can move forward any spaces, but never backwards. You also block each other so you are kind of leap-frogging all the time. You do have a campfire token which you can flip to go to an occupied site, but it is only relit when one of your meeples reaches the end of the trail. The round is over when every hiker reaches the end.

There are gear cards you can buy during the game which give you passive bonuses, and canteen cards that give you activatable abilities. 🧐 Also you each get a personal goal at the beginning that gives you something to work towards, and weather cards make little rules changes each round. The trail gets longer with an additional random tile every time you set up for a new round, and the sequence of the tiles also keeps changing. This all makes for very varied and exciting gameplay - even with 2p it is really tactical when and which of your meeples you move. Especially if you add the tents ⛺ from the Nightfall expansion which add additional worker placement actions. 👌

All of this is bundled with amazing and beautiful components 🤩, very cozy and inviting art 🥰 on the cards and tiles, and an awesome functional insert - though it won’t be able to hold all of the expansions unfortunately. No wonder no one is able to resist the charms of this game - I can also wholeheartedly recommend it now! 🙃