Tenpenny Parks is much simpler than your typical euro game, and plays in roughly an hour. Also unlike many euro games, the rules are crystal clear and concise. In fact, this might be the simplest euro-style game I’ve played – more on that later. Tenpenny Parks breaks its five rounds into five steps: income, actions, bonuses, advertising, and cleanup. Tenpenny Parks is definitely a light game. The rulebook is relatively short and you can get playing from the rulebook in about 10-15 minutes. This is definitely a plus as I think this could become a family favourite in many households and I think that players of a lot of different ages can enjoy the game. The game flow elegantly and smooth. Visiting People, conveniently abbreviated to VP are the victory points in the game. The player with the most at the end of the game will be crowned victor. The stunning art direction comes from the Fifty-Nine Parks team. Your two hikers trek the span of the United States of America. You’ll marvel at the charming wooden components that sit inside the classy Gametrayz insert. You’ll bask in the phenomenal visuals on the 48 Park cards up for grabs. You’ll nod your head in satisfaction at the class that oozes out of this title from Keymaster Games. While you might not be in said breathtaking locations, you’ll make memories of your own when playing Parks.

Players can then choose to pay money to advertise their attractions. Each attraction has a different advertising cost and each attraction can only be advertised once per round. Advertising attractions will generate points. Give up any regular token and exchange it for a different regular token type of your choice. You can do this twice. So double-knot your laces and fill up your canteen with water (or something stronger, we won’t judge). Leave the map at home. Let’s go for a wonderful, meandering hike along the trails within these areas of natural beauty. Join me as we learn how to play Parks! How Do You Win? At some point, you’ll either run out of Trail, or you’ll opt to move one of your Hikers to the Trail End. When you move here, you’re presented with a few options, and you can perform any one of them. You could decide to Reserve a Park. To do this, you place your Hiker in the top space on the Trail End. If you’re the first player to place in this option this season, you also claim the First Hiker Token for next Season. Later players can also Reserve Park cards too, but not with an extra benefit.However, I love how tight the game play is. Worrying what your opponents might snaffle is an exciting lottery that keeps you invested when your opponents are carrying out their moves too. This can easily be the difference of meeting an end-game objective or not. Play begins with everyone taking their first income of 3 dollars. As for actions, players have three workers to place between five types: builder, banker, arborist, contractor, and realtor. The builder spaces appear on a rotating carousel within the board and each corresponds to an attraction for sale. Each builder space on the carousel is marked by a unique price adjuster that increases or decreases the cost of respective attractions. When workers are placed here, the player pays for the corresponding attraction and places the unique attraction piece into their park board. When placing tiles, players cannot build on top of trees, and tiles may only touch diagonally. Importantly, the builder spots are the only spots that follow the traditional worker placement rule of allowing only one worker; the rest can hold any number.

We are using a custom rating scale. Each game will be evaluated by both of us on 1 to 10 scale in five areas. When combined, this creates a possible score out of 100.

How to Play

The second option is buying a Gear card instead. Remember you dealt three out during set-up? Gear cards provide game-long benefits in Parks, or provide immediate rewards. They might be permanent discounts off Visiting Park cards. Or they might be means to fill your Canteens at certain points. There are 36 of them, so plenty of variety! Gear cards cost a range of Sunshine tokens. Are you the first player to place in this option this season? You gain one Sunshine token (so a -1 discount, if you like). Later players can also buy Gear cards, but don’t get the Sunshine token benefit. Also stated on the Season card is an effect that comes into play for this first season alone. It could be something such as gaining extra resources in particular circumstances. Or, some Park cards could come with token discounts if claimed this Season. But more about that later! Relight My Fire; That Park Card Is My Only Desire

After that players may advertise during the Advertising Step. Each build attraction comes with an Advertising option that lets you convert money into VP.My Comments: Three actions a turn and five total rounds seems to be a good mix. It often feels like the most optimal thought is one too many actions away, and there is some pressure to get the goals completed in five turns. Making this activity more interesting: treeples! Yes, trees add not only a nice visual element to Tenpenny Parks, but also a hazard that must be accommodated to get those rides into your park. It’s certainly not a massive mental puzzle, but the different tile shapes add fun planning elements to each of your actions. The trail gets longer with each passing season. With the start of a new season, the trail tiles get shuffled and re-laid out, along with an extra tile. No two hikers can share the same spot, so it’s first-come, first-served. Unless, that is, you want to use your Campfire token. But you only get one of these per season, so light it with care! Also, if you can fill a Canteen with a water token you get access to harder-to-come-by memories. Other Gear cards offer further engine building options. How will you trek through the PARKS? Tenpenny Parks continues the great run of Thunderworks Games, however just know that it is not perfect. To visit a park, you must spend the resources listed on the Park’s card, that card then being worth points at the end of the game. Of course, you may find a Park that will benefit your end-game bonus but you can’t afford to visit it. You can then look at reserving the Park, ready for visiting at a later point throughout the game.

It would be a leap to say that if you love A Feast for Odin, you’ll love Tenpenny Parks. The complexity is dialed WAY down in Tenpenny Parks. As a result, Tenpenny Parks is also a much, much shorter game. My first two games of Tenpenny Parks were played in about 90 minutes total at three players. I’ve never played a three-player game of A Feast for Odin in less than two hours. Placing tiles on your board works differently to most polyomino puzzles in that they cannot touch each other. You will also need to avoid trees and maximise bonuses on your board. OK, maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that, but anytime a new theme park board game is published, I immediately must have it. I’m not sure what is about this genre of games that attracts me so much, but I want to play them all. I mean, don’t even ask me how many hours I’ve logged in Planet Coaster…The end of the trail will allow players to either reserve a Park, visit a Park, or buy gear, cards that can offer a one-off bonus, as well as an on-going perk. There are bonuses for those that finish the trail first, netting additional resources once they finish that current trail.