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It's always exciting watching a game execute what it sets out to do almost flawlessly. I'm not referring to creating a ground breaking game but, instead, creating a game that hits all the marks and provides you with a near perfect experience that you were hoping for. Tile laying has been a well worn path for many titles the last few years. As such, you've heard plenty of reviews that say a game is a “Light Tile laying game with a surprising hidden depth of strategy.” Tulikko is a light tile laying game with a light sprinkling of strategy, which matches the flow perfectly.
The core of the game is placing Forest tiles and the placement of those tiles is dictated by where they come out of the central tile dispenser. The “dispenser” is a slide puzzle, with players pushing in a tile on one of the four sides and causing another tile that they must place out of the opposite side. The symbol on the dispensed side determines where on your personal board it must be placed.
With every player having their own personal playing area, the player interaction is restricted to taking another tile or special power that another player was hoping to get. Most of the objectives are claimable by all players, so even the objectives don't really emphasize direct interaction. The goal of the game is to place all of your personal Animal tokens and River tokens. If two tiles that are placed next to each other match, you place a Animal Token. If they are different, you place a river token. The first person to place all of their tokens is the winner. There is also a secondary game end where if everyone is out of tiles to place, the person with the least remaining tokens is the winner. I call this the “Get Good” ending because if you are reaching this finale, something has gone horribly wrong.
There are plenty of objectives and special powers, which means players really need to pay attention to what they have achieved, if even by accident. For instance, every forest tile type has an award to the first person who places three of a specific type of tile and a second of the same reward for anyone (other than the initial player who achieved it) who places four of that type of tile. This is something that will occur naturally during play and can be easily overlooked. Of course, the more you play, the more you will realize that these rewards are keys to excelling in the game and will be something you strive for.
It's easy to focus on a specific goal and that's a trap you don't want to fall into. Every game you will pick three landscape tiles which will have a random River, Color and Shape goals. You will want every play you make to further all of your goals without becoming too distracted focusing on a single one. Because, while you get to place two of your animal tokens on a goal when you achieve it, you have to be placing both animal and river tokens out at a good rate during the rest of the game. I always try to emphasize this to new players when teaching the game and follow the suggestion of removing the Advanced Landscape tiles those your first few games.
For a game that depends so heavily on optimizing your turns, that one thing that can give you a sour feeling is how randomness can impact your final play/turn. Sometimes, the tile you “need” just isn't available. The key is to not put yourself in the position that, at the end of the game, only one type of tile coming out of one specific point of the dispenser is what your game hinges on. It's easy enough to blame the final turn situation on “randomness” but I was usually able to track it back to misplays earlier in the game, so it's more on a “Ah, well if it isn't the consequences of my previous actions” situation.
Tulikko is an almost perfect mixture of challenge, excitement, and replayability. Games are brisk and are usually completed in about 20 minutes. Just like something along the lines of Splendor, most games of Tulikko end with the other players going “Ah, if I only would have had one more round, I could have...” because the game just flows effortlessly.
A review copy of this release was provided by the publisher. Therewillbe.games would like to thank them for their support.
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