Atiwa is finally here
🦇 Atiwa is the newest euro from Uwe Rosenberg and Lookout Games where you develop a community, creating new villages and spreading into new regions as the population grows. You live in a symbiotic relationship with fruit bats - they may feed on the fruit you are cultivating, in turn they help grow forests as they secrete out seeds during their flight. Atiwa has some new gameplay elements, but you can feel it shares a lot of its DNA with other agricultural euros.
⚙️ The core of the gameplay is worker placement. You place 3 workers each round, with a game consisting of 7 rounds. That means you have 21 actions to do what you need and score more points than your opponents. 🏆
There are two main elements that in my opinion set Atiwa apart from similar games:
🌳 1. Your resource board: these hold the animals, trees, fruit and families that you can gain. As you gain them you remove them from the board. If you spend something that is returned to the board. Things that aren’t on the board anymore define a kind of income. Placed animals help grow trees, trees grow fruit and fruit attracts bats.
🗺️ 2. Your land cards: these cards have a 3x3 grid with icons that show what can be placed into the spaces. So even though you might be able to get 3 trees with an action, if there are no spots for them, you cannot gain them. So you have to keep growing your land and find cards that fit your demands.
You of course have the usual Uwe Rosenberg staples 😅: a phase where you have to feed families, and a breeding phase during which your animals or families reproduce. You have to be careful here too and have a place for newcomers.
💬Atiwa is fun to play, and I enjoy every minute. I do wonder about the longevity of the game though, as there are not really any alternate strategies to try out. It’s all about doing the same thing each game, but trying to do it more optimally than your opponents, while dealing with blocked worker spots as best as you can.
It’s awesome playing with the final components (after having only played a demo before). Look at those chunky meeples🤩 There is a lot of fiddling around with these so it’s good to know they are good quality😊.
