Indian Summer

EvEvanstar4,6

In this game players get a hand of tetris tiles, and a board that's sectioned off into six areas. Each tile has a hole in it. Each board has some number of printed reward spots. If you line a tile up with a hole, it will produce that reward when it's section is filled. Generally the rewards accelerate your ability to place tiles or improve your choices in terms of getting the tile you want. The ultimate goal of the game is to finish your board first. If you want to get really clever and drive yourself crazy you can line up the holes in your tiles in specific patterns so that you can claim one of the central tiles that will have those hole spots rewards produce a second time. There's some minor player interaction in the game, in that one of the tokens allows you to steal one tile from two of your opponent's hands, but this is pretty minor in terms of impact since the tile you can steal is limited to the oldest tile in their hands, which often isn't the one you or they actually needed. The art in the game is fabulous. The game is short, and light. I liked it slightly more than Cottage Garden, a similar game by the same designer that I feel somewhere between positive and ambivalent about, but really both games are good, not great. However, a low stress game like this with beautiful components appeals to my wife, so this is a keeper for the time being. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★☆☆☆ Raw enjoyment