Landmarks

• Designers: Danilo Valente and Rodrigo Rego
• Publisher: Floodgate Games
• Players: 2-10
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15-20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher
• Amazon affiliate link – https://amzn.to/3Mo9ItI 

Landmarks is a word game of hidden paths and clever clues. Your party is lost deep in an island jungle, relying on you to guide them to safety and treasure! In this jungle, every word matters. Use strategic wordplay to send a chain of one-word clues. The connections between them will create a path leading to fortune and glory.

To set up the game, unfold the cloth mapboard and choose either the simple or illustrated side to play on – it doesn’t affect the gameplay whatsoever – just choose the side you like better.  One player is named the Pathfinder; this player draws a map card and keeps it secret from everyone else.  Everyone else comprises “The Party” and they will work together to explore the Island, hopefully find treasure and then escape!  The Pathfinder will copy the three starting words found at the bottom of the map card and then place those hexes in the spots designated by the card.

The tracker board is placed near the board.  This board gives everyone a quick reminder of how many tiles get refreshed (water)  as well as keeping track of the different things found on the adventure.   At the start of the game, the Water Limit is 7, so placed 7 blank tiles onto the board next to this track.

On a turn, the Pathfinder will take a blank tile, write a word on it, and then give the tile to the Party.  The Party then discusses the possible locations for the tile – it must be adjacent to at least one existing tile.  The clue must be a single word, and it must be related or connect thematically to at least one of the words already present on the map (existing tiles).  No verbal hints are to be given; just the tile and the single word written on it.  Ideally, the Pathfinder is trying to get the Party to place the tile on a specific space on the board.  

The map card has a bunch of icons on it:  Treasure, the Exit, Curses, Amulets, Traps and Water.  Each of these locations has a different action associated with it.

• Treasure – this is the goal of the game, and there are 3 or 4 on each Map.  The Party will fully succeed if they can find all of these and then exit the map
• Exit – if a tile is placed on this space, the Party escapes the island, and is successful
• Curse – If you find two of these, you lose the game immediately
• Amulet – nullifies one Curse.
• Trap – Causes you to discard a tile from the tracker board and also permanently reduces your water refill unit
• Water – refill the tile supply on the board to whatever the current water refill level is

Once a location is decided upon, the Party places that word on the map.  This is a permanent placement, and the tile will not move for the rest of the game.  It does not matter whether the location was the one intended by the Pathfinder or not.

Turns continue until the game ends: when the party reaches the Exit, when there are no more tiles left to use, when two un-nullified curses are found.  Now assess how you did; if you escaped the Island – you have been successful.  But you can have different levels of success depending on how many Treasures you were able to find.  If you did not find the exit, everyone loses. 

Of note, there is also a team variant where teams play against each other, using the same map and same card, racing to find the four treasure spaces allocated for their team.  Each team has a pathfinder and only their teammates help place their tiles.  The first team to find 4 treasures without a curse is the winner.  If you have a (un-nulified) curse and you find your fourth treasure, you lose – so go find an Amulet first!

My thoughts on the game

Landmarks is a fairly clever word game, and there is a lot of room for cute wordplay here.  You always start off with three words/tiles on the board, and the Pathfinder can try to plot out their ideal path before the game even starts.  When we first started, our goals were simply to try to get at least one Treasure and then make it off the Island.  With some experience, I feel like we’re mostly trying to find all the Treasure each round.

Unlike some word games, the game gives you a fair amount of guidance.  Each card already has the starting word trio in place as well as the map surrounding it.  Though, of course, each Pathfinder might find a different ideal play – it does seem like the start of each card already has an “ideal” course plotted out.  As in, there are only so many words that will combine “shoelace” and “mattress” if you wanted the team to go in that direction.   That being said, there are a lot of words in the English language, so surely not every group will play out the same way.

While some folks I played with felt a bit of constraint from the fixed setup, most people have enjoyed trying to figure out the best path and which words to use to get the group to go in the right location.  And… of course, as good as your plan is – if the Party chooses to put your tile in a different location than you intended, you might have to revamp everything as you now may not be able to make the same words work with the unplanned locations of the tiles.

In any event, there are plenty of cards in the box, so you’ll likely never end up repeating a card as long as you own the game; or you’ll surely have forgotten the path by the time that repeat would show up. 

It’s always a fun challenge to get through the map when I’m the Pathfinder.  I do get frustrated at times when I’ve put myself in a position where I want the group to move off of a solo tile, but there are two or three free spots – so it kinda comes down to luck if the group is able to figure out what I’m trying to communicate to them.  That being said, this can also be somewhat chalked up to user error – and maybe I need to do a better job of moving in a way that I can make the Party place between two tiles (even if this means absorbing a trap or a curse to do so).

Each game of Landmarks only takes a short while, and each time we’ve played, we’ve played a few rounds – so usually at least half the group gets a chance to be the Pathfinder.  I personally find this job much more interesting than being part of the Party – so it’s nice that multiple people get a chance in a game session for us.  We have yet to play the team version so I can’t comment on that.  While the game allows the group to “win” by different degrees, Landmarks is an easy going game that everyone enjoys regardless of the outcome.

Amazon affiliate link – https://amzn.to/3Mo9ItI 

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor