Board game review of House of Fado: Can a simple Lacerda game be good?

Vital Lacerda is known for his complex expert games, especially because they're also very popular with players. Several of his titles boast ratings of 8.0 or higher on BoardGameGeek. Recently, the game House of Fado, a collaboration with João Quintela Martins (Évora, Bot Factory), was released, and is considered one of the board game genius's simpler titles. Thanks to Skellig Games, the game is now also available in German. Find out whether House of Fado is a convincing game in this review.

Fado is a world-renowned musical genre that originated in Lisbon around the 19th century. Today, it covers a wide variety of topics, but still follows a traditional structure. A fado trio typically consists of three instruments: a Portuguese guitar, a voice, and a classical guitar. At House of Fado, we run a fado house—a restaurant serving classic food and wine. All of this is accompanied by live fado music.

Worker placement with a twist

The goal in House of Fado is to own the most popular fado house at the end of the game by collecting the most victory points. To achieve this, we use our employees to invite critics, entertain guests, hire and promote musicians, and even have them write new fado songs. Our employees act like classic workers, because House of Fado is a classic worker placement game with a small but important twist.

If you place one of your workers on an action space, it remains there until you remove it. If an opponent places their worker on the same action space, your worker is moved to one of the bonus spaces below the action space. However, it remains in place for the action. As long as one of your workers remains in the action, the action is locked for you. This means: Before you can use a previously used action again, you must first use the worker placed there for another action in the game.

The various actions

There are a total of eight action spaces (seven on the game board and one on the personal game board). However, there are only five different types of actions, as three of them are duplicated. Depending on the location of the space, different figures or musicians are available.

The top two fields allow us to hire musicians. Depending on their popularity, we pay more or less money. Once we've paid the musician we want, they go to our Fado House, and we receive the notation tile marked on them, which is important for writing new Fado songs.

The two spaces in the second row allow us to invite either guests (black, brown, or gray pieces) or a critic (pink pieces) from one of the two adjacent street areas to our restaurant. To do so, we place any number of guests or a critic at an empty table on our personal board. Guests give money and increase the popularity of musicians, while critics increase the value of the restaurant itself. They are activated when we "ring in the end of the day" on our personal board. More on this in the next section.

Using the space in the third row, we can collect notation tiles and write Fado songs. There are always four Fado songs face up. Different notation tiles are required to write one of these. If you write one, you take the corresponding Fado song from the display and receive the corresponding victory points.

Using the two action spaces in the last row, we can advertise musicians we own on a billboard or hire the currently advertised musicians. For advertising musicians, we receive victory points equal to our current reputation level and may place one of our reputation dice next to the advertised musician. This is important for the final scoring and also unlocks additional bonuses on our game board that were previously blocked by the dice.

We're finishing work

Closing Time is the last available action in House of Fado and can be found on your personal game board. When you call it a day, you go through various steps in sequence, which you have previously prepared through careful planning with the actions on the game board.

At the beginning, invited guests pay for their food at the tables. Depending on how many reputation dice have already been removed from their tableau, the more money they receive per guest.

Afterwards, all the restaurant guests applaud the musicians' performance. Each musician has different "fans" who clap for their clapping. For example, black/gray figures clap for the vocals, and brown/gray figures clap for the two guitars. In the second step, guests are essentially given away to increase the musicians' popularity. Depending on their level of popularity, more or fewer guests must clap for each musician to become more famous.

If a musician achieves the highest level of fame, they become a star. If they are the first of their kind, they leave the restaurant, and the person who made them a star receives a star. This earns them additional victory points in the final scoring and brings the game closer to the end. If they are not the first of their kind, you can choose to keep the musician in your restaurant or remove them from the game for victory points, for example, to advertise them on the billboard later.

Finally, we retain or dismiss our musicians. The latter gives us victory points equal to the musician's reputation and frees them up for the market again, thus allowing them to participate in the first action of hiring a musician. Then the critic writes their review by removing two reputation dice from our personal game board, and the guests leave the restaurant.

The end of the game

During the game, you can earn the aforementioned stars. Stars are awarded for the first musician (Portuguese guitar, classical guitar, vocals) to become a star, for the first restaurant with three original Fado songs, and for the first "star" restaurant, which is awarded when all reputation cubes from a board have been removed. There are therefore five stars in total. Once three have been awarded, the game ends at the end of the round.

Finally, you receive points for each of your musicians in the restaurant, the number of stars you've collected, the majority of your reputation dice with the advertised musicians, the number of Fado songs you've written, and the number of coins you have left over. The person with the most points wins.

Information about House of Fado

Number of players: 1 – 4 Age: from 14 years Playing time: 30 - 60 minutes Difficulty: expert game Classification: Worker Placement Author: Vital Lacerda, João Quintela Martins Illustrations: Marina Costa Publisher: Skellig Games, Eagle-Gryphon Games Official Website: Link Year of publication: 2025 Language: German Cost: 69,90 €

Conclusion

The special trick of House of Fado is that actions you have already used are locked until you use your worker for another action. This adds a lot of brainpower to the game, as you cannot use an action twice in a row, meaning you have to plan your moves carefully in advance. It's also great that you can still use action spaces occupied by your opponent's workers, and they are not automatically locked for all players - as is the case in some other worker placement games. The fact that your opponent then gets a huge advantage, however, adds another level of brainpower. You have to consider whether or not to grant a bonus to another player. Conversely, sometimes you deliberately leave your playing piece on an action so that you can grab one of the bonuses at some point. This trick is a lot of fun in House of Fado.

Otherwise, the game is pretty straightforward. House of Fado's gameplay loop consists of hiring musicians, inviting guests, and eventually calling it a day. This gradually improves the musicians and, if necessary, your own restaurant. Additional points can also be earned by promoting musicians and writing fado songs. This loop is quite entertaining thanks to the interesting worker placement mechanism, but it becomes a bit boring over time. You essentially just keep doing the same thing and have little room for maneuver.

The game itself plays quite solitary. Although it seems like you're interacting a lot with your opponents by moving workers, you're actually pretty much just playing on your own. The highest level of interaction is the billboard, where you compete for the most reputation dice per musician. It's fun, but somehow not enough, since it really only has an impact at the end of the game. Otherwise, you're working hard on your own restaurant.

House of Fado also has a solo mode. It's very easy and fun to play at first. However, it's more of a puzzle than a truly challenging solo mode, as the automatic opponent always reacts to the action you've previously performed. Once you get the hang of it, the solo mode becomes completely uninteresting and you can simply approach it with the same strategy. From that point on, the replay value tends towards zero.

That was a lot of negative stuff, but that doesn't mean House of Fado is a complete failure. Quite the opposite. It played quite relaxed, but wasn't too simple. House of Fado somehow strikes the perfect balance between contemplation and leisurely play. Simply by keeping the gameplay loop fairly simple, but the decisions regarding worker placement interesting enough. In my test games, I certainly had enough fun throughout the entire game. And after a stressful day at work, it was somehow quite pleasant.

In retrospect, and especially while writing this article, it kept coming to me that the game ultimately falls more into the middle class for me. There are plenty of games I would prefer. In the end, it all just feels more "meh" than "yay"! I can't quite explain why, but that feeling just kept coming back to me. Nevertheless, it's definitely worth taking a look at the game or its big brother, "The Gallerist." Maybe I'll do that sometime... Because somehow I have the feeling that "The Gallerist" would appeal to me more... Even though, as a musician, I really like the theme of House of Fado.

Others will probably have more fun with House of Fado, though, because it's by no means a bad game. It's just not a game for me.

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