The Grand Carnival

Players design and develop a traveling fair by placing foundation tiles, building polyomino attractions, and routing guest movement across walkways. Each turn a player covers a number on their player board to select an action; the covered number determines the strength of that action and becomes unavailable until the next round. Actions let players add 2x2 foundation tiles, place attractions on construction sites, or move guest tokens along walkways to generate ticket income and trigger hireable barkers. Unlockable “Tricks of the Trade” grant special abilities when specific requirements are met, while opponents have one turn to match those requirements. After seven rounds, scoring rewards attraction sets, completed guest journeys, barkers, and collected tickets.

Players: 1–4 best 2
Playing time: 45–60 min
Age: 12+
Complexity: 2.2 / 5

6.3 on Ludoya from $45.79Grid MovementOpen DraftingTile Placement

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About the game

Design: Rob Cramer
Art: Ryan Goldsberry
Publisher: Uproarious Games

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The Grand Carnival: On the Road2023

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Full stats in Ludoya

88
Plays logged: 98
Players: 1h 9m
Average play: 27
In collections: 10
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6.3/10

from 9 Ludoya reviews

Jeremy Jackson8.0
1-4 players (still waiting on this to be shipped) - Tile laying game where you're building out a circus. It has little tetris pieces where you have to build your path and then you can build circus attractions on top of them. You're each trying to lay out your circus in the way that earns you the most points. Very easy to learn, but very hard to be good at. REVIEW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBZtHAlsxUo LEARN TO PLAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjfQyyAH1_8
Kush4.6
Tier 5- Simply average OR negatives outweigh the positives— can play if I have to! Lovely theme and production. Whats better than board where you lay down one layer polyominoes? Well, TWO layers of course! It was a must-buy for me however it did not live up. I found the core puzzle a little too deterministic. It did not matter what I wanted to do, what I could do was based on the randomness of tiles showing up and limitation of number of actions. The scoring was kind of strange too— it did not motivate me enough to try fun /crazy things. I dont get why more than a certain number of tickets are not worth anything (thematically as well mechanically) . At the cost of adding a bit more complexity, i think the decisions could be made more fun if different attractions had different effects when placed, or scored in different ways or had certain placement rules etc. I don't always think more depth = more fun, but this game seems it needs something more. A game about setting up a carnival needs a lot more "fun". An example of even simpler polyomino tile placement game which works so very well is SPRING MEADOW. It seems more complete even though it is a lot simpler in rules/ complexity.
Алексей Любавин9.0
Last played: 2025-03