‘Parks celebrates America’s national parks and features art from the Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series. Players take on the role of two hikers who will trek trails to see sites, observes wildlife, take photos, and visit national parks over the course of the game.’
Gameplay: In this game, you take the role of hikers, collecting resources to exchange for visiting parks. The hiking route changes in each season as does the weather giving you different options of what you can do in each turn. No two hikers can be on the same space unless they first use their campfire. Hikers also are able to take pictures to gain points for end gaming scoring and use their canteens to gain extra benefits. Gear can be bought to help you along the way. You pay to visit parks in resources indicated on the park card. Wild animal wooden pieces can be used as wild resources. At the end of the fourth season, you add up all your points and the person with the most wins.
Components:
1 tri fold board - fits nicely into the box and easy to know where all the components go
48 park cards - these are beautiful representations of the national parks. The artwork is superb and so inviting and everytime we play, I’m like this place is cool, where is it? They are stunning and make the game so special
10 season cards, 12 year cards, 36 gears cards, 15 canteen cards - these cards change things about the seasons or scoring/visiting a park. Some also give players extra abilities or ways to earn resources
9 solo cards - have to be honest, I havent played with these yet but this is the kind of game I can imagine playing solo
10 trail site
1 trailhead and 1 trail end - the trail is made up of differing amounts of trail site cards depending on the season you are in. This means each game is different as the order of the trail and the sites pulled may differ. Adds a lot of replay ability.
10 hikers (2 per player) - used to move along the trail, wooden
5 campfires (1 per player) - on one side is a fire and on the other an extinguished fire - indicating whether you have used it or not
1 camera - cardboard token, old fashioned camera image in keeping with style of game and looks cool
1 first hiker marker (enamel) - possibly one of the nicest first player markers in any games we have - reminds me of a pin badge you might collector or the old fashioned walking stick badges
2 token trays (containing the following):
16 forest tokens
16 mountain tokens
30 sunshine tokens
30 water tokens
12 wildlife tokens (unique shapes)
28 photos
These are such nice components. They are wooden pieces and the photos are cardboard tokens but each photo has a different beautiful picture on it. The wildlife tokens are all unique and beautifully crafted
Overall thoughts:
Every inch of this game is presented beautifully. From the feel of the box, to the way the space is organised inside, to the artwork and the wooden components. I fell in love with this game as soon as I played it for the first time and just had to own it in our collection. It is a stunning little box game and such a joy to play. It works fine at two which is how we play most of our games but recently I had the opportunity to play it with 4 players and it was infinitely more challenging as spaces were at more of a premium and so there was less opportunity to collect resources. This made for a tighter game and I think 3 players might be the sweet spot but I haven’t had the chance to explore that yet! If you want to just open a game, and breathe a sigh of relief and awe and wonder, this is the game. It is quite literally breathtaking and we love it!
