Review – Parks Game

Parks is a stunningly beautiful game and a blast to play!

I recently received a copy of the game “Parks” by Keymaster Games (Kickstarter edition) from a family member who knows that I love National Parks. The first thing that struck me about the game is it’s beautiful! The park cards (48 of them) and most of the graphics are from the stunning “Fifty-Nine Parks” print series. Accompanying the cards are beautifully cut and stained wooden tokens to represent the hikers and resources needed to “visit parks,” the primary aim of the game.

Game play for Parks is unique but comfortable for those used to playing strategy games. It combines elements of many great games including a board that changes multiple times each game, opportunity costs for every player action, a bit of deck-building, and resource collection and spending to gain points toward victory. Combining all these elements makes the instructions somewhat daunting the first time you play, but it all made sense before the end of the first game, and my 12-year-old had no trouble picking it up. Just remember, the main aim is to gain points, and the main way to gain points is to claim parks by collecting the resources needed to visit them. Gathering resources is done on the “trail” which constitutes the game board and gives players the ability to visit sites which provide resource tokens (mountains, trees, sun, water) and allow actions such as taking pictures (victory points), swapping tokens, buying “gear” (deck building for future resource advantages) or reserving and visiting parks. A game consists of four “seasons” with each season bringing a different order to the trail sites and different resource advantages from the weather.

Every move is chosen by the player (no dice or movement cards), so there’s definitely strategy involved, but it doesn’t require heavy thinking making it fun for a range of ages and skills. While players can take actions that hinder other players, it’s not as cutthroat as other strategy games. As a result, this game has an amazing ability I haven’t found in other competitive strategy games: even when the highly competitive game players in my family “lose” at this game, they still remark about how fun it was to play.

The game also includes a “solo mode” which is quite ingenious and fun. It uses some of the game cards to guide the movement of “Rangers” who make it challenging to achieve your point-based goals, and play is similar enough to the multi-player game to make it easy to learn.

Parks is a fantastic game for anyone who loves good strategy games and National Parks–I highly recommend it!