Barenpark

Barenpark is a polyomino tile placement game, or let's just call this a Tetris game. That's probably easier to understand. It is a family strategy game about building your own bear park. Everyone builds his own, and there are several ways you score points. The game ends when one player completes his park.

You start the game with one 4x4 spaces board. Ultimately your park should have four such boards. To complete you park you must fill every single space on all four boards. At game start you get to pick one basic tile to be placed on your first board. Once the game starts, you don't pick any tile you want from the supply. To claim a new tile, you need to cover a specific icon on your board with your current tile. Only when you are completely stuck will you be allowed to take a basic tile of your choice for free. That's not a situation you want to get into because you will waste a turn. 

These are the various tiles and components at the centre of the table. The tiles are divided into three classes. The four types on the left are the basic tiles. They have no point value. The next four types are the mid level tiles. There are multiple tiles in each of the four types, but their point values differ. When you take a tile from a stack, you always take the highest valued tile remaining. The other types are the top class tiles. There is only one tile in each type, and their values are the highest. 

When you add a tile to your board, it must touch an existing tile. The icon or icons you cover with the tile being placed determines which class of tiles you can pick from the supply next. What this means is you have to plan carefully how to expand your park. You need to think about what tile you need next and what icon you need to cover to get that tile. You can take a tile of a lower class than you are allowed to claim, but usually that's wasteful. 

When your tile covers the icon showing a group of workers, you must draw a new board to add to your park area. You will expand your park area three times, so your park will eventually consist of four boards. On every board there is a hole. You can't cover that. You need to cover every other space on the board. Once you do that, you will claim a bear statue from the supply to finally cover that hole. This is how a board is completed. Bear statues have point values. Similar to other aspects of the game, the earlier you claim a statue, the more points you will score. 

These are missions. The first type on the left says if you have three polar bear habitat tiles in your park, you get to claim a mission card. The mission cards work the same way as other items in the game. The earlier you claim, the more points it is worth. 

You don't necessarily have to arrange your four boards in a 2x2 configuration. You can make a long rectangle, or a T shape, or even an L shape. 

This is a soothing game to play. Almost therapeutic. It works well as a family game. Even though you compete to grab the higher valued tiles, and all the highest valued tiles are first come first served, you don't attack or destroy. You don't do nasty stuff to your competitors. You can safely get into flow and focus on your own park. It's a peaceful life. Tiles are aplenty. It is only this year that I feel there are so many polyomino games. I have never been specifically a fan of these games so I don't seek them out. This year I just happened to have played many of them. I used to associate polyomino games with Uwe Rosenberg, but there are actually many other popular polyomino games by other designers. These games do offer a spatial element which other games don't have. 

I had originally expected Barenpark to be a little stressful because with every tile you place you need to make sure you can cover the right icon to get your next tile. When actually playing the game, I found that this was not as hard as I thought. There are many icons on the boards, and sometimes you can cover more than one, getting yourself two or more tiles. It is not uncommon to have three or four tiles in hand because of this, which means you can even miss covering any icon for a few consecutive turns and still have tiles available. I had the luxury to claim tiles not because I intended to place them, but for the sake of denying others. So much for friendly family game. 

Barenpark will work well as a gateway game. It is a pleasant game and it is easy to understand. 

I realise I have played quite a few games by Phil Walker-Harding and they are all enjoyable. They are all decent family games, like Imhotep and My Shelfie. These are all new to me this year. 

This was my completed bear park. I had three enclosures each for polar bears, koala bears as well as panda bears. I must say I was quite pleased with myself for achieving this - all three missions completed. 

This was another game and another set of missions. These three could only be fulfilled using the basic tiles. The first one required six basic tiles all connected. The second one required three 1x3 tiles lined up in a straight line. The third one required three L shaped river tiles to be connected end to end to form a long river. 

I had a very different park in this other game.