Festival

• Designer: Gregory Grard
• Publisher: Scorpion Masque
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The great cities of the world are challenging each other to present the most beautiful festival imaginable. The closing fireworks ceremony, held in all cities, will be the final rose in the crown of the festivities. Can you shoot the right fireworks to victorious heights?

In Festival, you select tiles to place on your tableau to create the most impressive and beautiful fireworks display possible…and of course, score the most points! You have two stacks of tiles in front of you, with each neighboring player having access to the stack closest to them; tiles come in four colors and four firework designs. Four stacks of objective cards are in the middle of the table, along with four crowd-pleaser tiles.  Each player has their own player board with a 3×3 grid of spaces on it. Everyone starts with a starting objective card that matches their player color as well.

On a turn, take a tile from the top of either stack and place it in the 3×3 grid on your board, whether on the ground level or on an existing stack. There is no limit to the height of any stack.  Alternatively, you can take an objective card from the top of its stack and place it to the left of your board (max of 6 at a time). To end your turn, see whether you’ve satisfied any of your objectives or the crowd-pleasers that are available to everyone – essentially, can you see the scoring pattern with the visible tiles on your board?. When scoring objectives, you are allowed to rotate your card in 90 degree increments to see all the valid patterns.  Move each completed objective to the right of your board and place the claimed crowd-pleaser above your board.

Whenever a player has completed six objectives or a stack of firework tiles has run out, the game concludes at the end of the round. In addition to scoring completed objectives and claimed crowd-pleasers, you have a target color and firework type depicted on your board. Each tile of this color or type at the top of a stack on your board is worth as many points as the number of tiles in that stack. If a tile matches both color and type, you score it twice.  The player with the most points wins.  Ties broken in favor of the player who claimed the most crowd-pleasers.

My thoughts on the game

Festival is a fast paced tile laying game that challenges you to juggle both short and long term scoring goals – all while you race the other players on the table. You’ll work on making these beautiful patterns on your board with the tiles.

The objectives can often be scored earlier in the game as many only need 3 or 4 tiles in the right places to score whereas the Crowd Pleasers tend to be much more complex, often requiring multiple objectives to be scored or harder combinations to form.  Finally, as the end of the game draws near, players should not forget the bonus for their color / firework type.  If you already have a scoring piece on the top of a tall stack, you might not want to cover it up and lose that big end-game bonus.

The pace of the game is lightning fast – in part because you only have 2 tiles to choose from, and you can see at least one of those options for nearly the entire time between turns (when the player after you chooses his tile, you know that the top tile of the left stack you can reach will definitely be there for you).  As a result, you often have already worked out your play before your turn comes!

There is certainly some advantage to picking up Objective cards early – once you claim them, no one else can ever score them.  Of course, on the turns you choose to do this, you lose the opportunity to place a firework tile – but it’s very difficult to score your tiles unless you have objective cards!

Though everyone’s board changes a bit every turn, it’s always good to keep a lookout on what Crowd-pleasers you think other people are going for (if any).  It might help shape your own strategy, whether you think you can grab one of them or if you should just keep focusing on your other ways to score.

As I mentioned, the tempo of the game is fast, and I have seen it go even faster when players choose to use the same token pile repeatedly, thus rushing one of the game-end conditions.  If this catches some players unaware, they might not be able to finish their objective patterns in time or not be able to set up good end-game bonuses for the color/type of firework.

Festival is a nice family weight game that provides enough to keep me happy.  The game plays fast and is a good entry point to contract fulfillment and pattern games.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale
• Neutral.
• Not for me…