With Treehouse Diner Funtails released one of my absolute favorite games last year. Also the one delivered shortly afterwards Kickstarter Caral I liked it very much. My expectations for this year's new product, Comet, were correspondingly high. After a first game at SPIEL, the easy connoisseur game has arrived. You can find out in this review whether the game lived up to expectations.
Dodos and dinosaurs have actually been extinct for millions of years. This was due to the impact of the eponymous “Comet”. We have in Comet now some time to save some of the unique species. With our hero cards and the rescued animals, we build an engine bit by bit that allows us to save even more animals.
All good things come in threes
In order to save as many animals as possible before the comet hits, the players have three different actions at their disposal. Before you can save an animal, it must first hatch. To do this, you play one of your own hand cards into one of the three slots above your own rescue board. The animal hatches in a nest that corresponds to the nest value (bottom left) of the card.
Once an animal has hatched, you can move it. To do this, you play a card from your hand. These usually show two types of area. Some cards also show a wild symbol. These may also be played out in any number. For each symbol played, you can move one of your rescuers to a corresponding area. The special thing is that other tokens and certain types of areas can be skipped with skills. This means you can cover a lot of distance in a single train.
If you reach the safe cave with one of your own animals, you have saved the animal. The token is returned to the rescuer board and the card is placed in its own area. The card's ability is now available to you. Some cards also “only” offer victory point conditions.
Engine building with rescued animals
You can use a card's ability by rotating it 90 degrees. Which action the ability applies to is always stated in the respective description. Once used, you can only use the ability again once you have chosen the third action option.
By snapping, all used cards become available again. In addition, you now draw a gold card from the face-up display and follow up with silver cards up to the hand limit (usually five).
Depending on the number of people, there are different numbers of cards in the draw pile. If one person draws the last card, the comet phase is triggered. Everyone else can now either draw silver cards again up to their hand card limits or make all of their rescuers' abilities available. Now only the hatching and moving actions are available.
If no one can or wants to carry out any more actions, the final scoring follows. Everyone adds up the points indicated on the rescued animals. Some animals bring additional points via Set Collection. Your own hero often also shows a victory point condition. Whoever was able to collect the most points with their animals wins the game.
Information about Comet
| Number of people: 2-4 people Age: from 12 years Playing time: 45 to 75 minutes Difficulty: Family game/expert game Long-term motivation: good Classification: Engine Building, Set Collection, Point-to-Point Movement Game idea: Peter Prinz Illustrations: Hendrik Noack Publisher: Funtails, YIKES! Official Website: Link Year of publication: 2023 Language: German Cost: 40 Euro |
Conclusion
Comet does an extremely good job of combining easy rules with a lot of game depth. The three basic actions are quickly internalized. Only the mechanics of skipping are not 100% clear in the rules. You don't have to jump in a straight line. Unfortunately, it was explained incorrectly at the trade fair and the wording in the rules didn't help to identify this small error straight away.
If you play it “correctly”, you simply have more opportunities to carry out large combo moves and even dash from a nest with a value of seven or eight straight to the cave. These combos are what really make the game. While it all seems a bit slow at the beginning, things really pick up towards the end.
Because the random starting hand and the hero card provide a rough direction, every game is different. Sometimes you choose a strategy with which you particularly influence the distance from the starting nest and other times you rely primarily on being able to jump over a lot. Animals like the dodos, which simply bring (a lot of) points, are also a very good strategy if they are well combined with individual skills. The possibilities are simply extremely diverse.
Just beautiful
The excellent material is typical of Funtails. In addition to their beautiful look, which is individual for each card, the cards also have great quality. A very big plus point, especially as a novelty at a trade fair where I noticed a lot of games with poor or insufficient card quality. They can be easily stored in the included card boxes in the game box. The wooden components and the playing field seem a bit “rough” and clumsy at first glance, but they serve their purpose excellently.
The various card abilities are all very well explained and no questions remain unanswered. Only a few more different types of skills would have been interesting. So it remains quite “classic” so that even casual players won’t have any problems understanding it. The two sides of the game board feel virtually the same. We couldn't notice any significant difference in the feel or difficulty of the game.
Im Funcast (Funtails podcast) it has already been teased that author Peter Prinz is working on something new for the world of Comet is working. But even so, the appeal of replaying is extremely high because there are so many different strategies to discover.
The flow of the game is very good. The downtime is also very pleasant with four people. This is also the best cast in the game. Especially with two people you realize that there is just too much space on the field and there are so many fewer opportunities to jump over. This somewhat reduces the fun that the really big combos with more players have.
Have funtails with you Comet once again delivered a great game that can bring both frequent and casual gamers to the same table. Thanks to the fast playing time and the flexibility between playing “from your gut” and thinking deeply about your own tactics, the game works both as a quick after-work game and at the center of a game evening. For me one of the highlights of the 2023 gaming year.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
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Funtails GmbH FTGFTK1D - Feed the Kraken – Basic Edition * | 74,99 EUR |
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