Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsSo Pretty and Fun That You Enjoy It Even When You Lose
Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2019
COMPONENTS
This is where this game shines above any other board game.
+ The Outer Storage Box is Pretty Solid and Sturdy
+ The player mats fold nicely. They're thick and give feel of leather finish.
+ The storage tray for cards and smaller storage compartments for food tokens, and eggs is good bonus
+ Little eggs are pretty and look like small candies!
++ The bird house and wooden dice are awesome! They didn't have to include the card-board dice tower but I'm so glad they did!
+ The illustrations on the player mat and all the bird cards is pretty and beautifully done. I do enjoy the little bird trivia for each bird that's included on the bird cards.
* The card-board bird tokens are okay.
- Now I'm nit-picking but since everything else is so good, if the player cubs could be little birds, that would be amazing!
- The play a bird row is pretty narrow. That could have a little width added to it. (but that'd just lead to bigger player mat and then bigger storage box, so may be the reason they didn't do it)
GAMEPLAY
This is an engine building game where your actions become stronger as you move to later stages in the game.
The game is played over 4 rounds where players take turns placing their tokens on one of the action spaces. These actions are 1) play a bird (in Tree / Grass / Wetland habitat), 2) Gain Food, 3) Lay Egg, 4) Draw Cards. As you take these actions repeatedly the later 3 actions become stronger and stronger as the birds that you play give you special powers which become activated. These powers could be gain additional food, cache food, lay additional eggs, draw additional cards etc.
The game also has end of round goals. Which is the only thing to make you pay attention to your opponents as you directly compete for these goals for end of round bonuses. At the end of round you use one of your player cube to mark your position. Thus subsequent rounds give you less turns. In the beginning you have 8 cubes, 2nd round has 7 cubes, then 6 and then 5.
The game is equal fun with 2-5 players. Sometimes in worker placement games it happens that player wait for their turn and don't pay attention when other players are playing. But in this game, the turns are fast. You do pay attention to your opponents for end of round goals and also certain bird powers that you have. You may have a bird which gives you extra eggs when the opponent lays eggs. Or opponets themselves could activate some powers where each opponets gains a food token or bird card or an egg. So it's not that you just wait for your turn.
GAME DURATION
The game plays pretty fast. A 2 player game can be completed in 60 mins. And a 4-5 player game can be completed under 2 hours. Both including setup and tear down time.
AUTOMA (SINGLE PLAYER)
I have tried automa few times. It's pretty good and competitive. You can adjust the automa difficulty level to normal, medium, hard and legendary.
CONCLUSION
* The game is fairly easy to teach. All the people that I played this game with, loved it and immediately wanted their own copy.
* The game is a great gateway to board games, worker placement category, engine building category or Euro games.
* The game design is thoroughly play-tested and competitive.
* The luck factor is minimal and most of games are very competitive. The first time we played the 2 player game the scores were 70-72. The multiplayer game had scores of 91, 94, 97, and 100.
* I highly recommend this game for all levels of experiences, expertise and groups.
