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In another of our regular board game spotlights, Zatu Games traipses across the empty, cold parquet floors of its suburban bungalow, lost in a stupor, blurred vision suddenly coming into sharp focus on Lanterns: The Harvest Festival, the 2015 release from publisher Foxtrot Games and designer Christopher Chung.
The Game
Lanterns is a game in which players decorate a lake with pretty lights, giving it possibly the nicest theme since Hot Chocolate Owlet Rodeo: Everybody Wins Twice.
A game for 2-4 players, Lanterns is all about collecting sets of lanterns by placing patterned lake cards. Players are given a hand of three lake cards, each showing a multi-coloured pattern of lanterns. Another lake card is placed in the centre, and oriented so that the red side faces one player, and other, less rouge sides face the remaining players.
Each turn, players may place a lake tile of their own. If one of the sides on their card matches one of the sides on the adjacent tile, they gain a lantern of that colour. Equally, all players gain a lantern matching the colour of the side of the new tile facing them.
There are also two optional actions: dedications and exchanges. Players may use dedication cards, which show a number between one and ten, to return a corresponding number of lanterns. Doing so with lanterns in certain sets (several of the same colour; one of each colour) gains them honour, which they can use to exchange lanterns to create more sets. It’s a cycle as vicious as a bladed bike.
The game is, essentially, a much more complex, luminally themed dominoes.
The Publisher
Foxtrot Games is an independent board game publisher, owned by games designer Randy Hoyt and game artist Tyler Segel. They pride themselves on publishing beautifully designed but accessible board games.
The publisher's other two games include World's Fair 1893, where you act as an organiser of the fair and must send supporters out to gain favour with influential people in order to secure the bigger exhibits.
The companies' third game is called Relic Expedition, a jungle exploration game in-which you must explore, collect treasures and avoid wild animals!
The Designer
Christopher Chung is the founder of Flash Forward Games. Lanterns: The Harvest Festival is was his first game, and he is now working on a number of new prototypes.
Chuck a bulb into the sea and buy this game from Zatu today!
