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A band of treasure hunters have left one of their number behind---and they were the one with the map. Fortunately the explorers have a really terrible radio… This cooperative or team - Landmarks - by Danilo Valente and Rodrigo Rego has players exploring an island by following word clues.
How To Play
Pick one player to be the Pathfinder; they get a map card, which they keep hidden from the other players. This has three hexes marked with single words; the Pathfinder writes these on individual tiles, then places them in the appropriate position on the map. The rest of the players get a stack of seven tiles, and a tracker board to tick off island features as they find them.
Each round, the Pathfinder looks at the map card, picks a space adjacent to at least one existing tile, and takes a tile off the stack to give a single-word clue. For example if “ship”, “castle” and “bill” were already on the map, “cannon” might be a clue to a space adjacent to both “ship” and “castle”, while “knight” would be touching “castle” but neither of the others. (Clues have to relate to meanings of words, rather than directions or numbers of letters—that would just make the game too easy.)
The rest of the players try to work out which space was intended, and eventually place the new tile onto the map.
The Pathfinder checks the map card and reveals what was in the location the players picked. It might be an empty space; or one of the three treasures that are the goal of the expedition; a curse, which stops you leaving without an amulet; an amulet; a water supply, which lets you refill the stack of tiles to 7; or a trap, which permanently reduces the size of the stack by 1.
To win, the party should find all the treasures (three in the standard game) and get to the exit, without running out of water or picking up too many curses.
There are three decks of map cards included: green ones make up the standard game, yellow ones are tougher, and red ones are for the team game—where each team has a Pathfinder and they’re trying for overlapping sets of treasures. This mode has a few tweaks: for example, it doesn’t use the water tracker, since time pressure comes from the other team making faster progress than you.
Components
There are 150 map cards, 50 each of easy, hard, and team; and they’re fairly re-usable, because even if you recognise the three initial words, you’re unlikely to remember what’s where on the card. For the truly dedicated gamer, it ought to be possible to generate new maps too. These cards are quite thin, but they don’t see heavy wear: to play one game, you just pick one at random and put it in the stand.
The other major components are the map tiles, which are simple dry-erase marker board, and the map itself, printed cloth; I suspect a folded board would have required a larger box. There’s terrain printed on one side of the map, but this has no effect in the game; if you find it distracting, the other side has a plain grid.
Summary
Landmarks is obviously competition for Codenames; the team game has a very similar setup, even to the idea that if you find one of the other team’s treasures they score it as if they’d found it. But to me it’s rather more enjoyable: the idea, of incompetent explorers blundering into trouble, suits the lightweight gameplay better than the similarly thin espionage theme of the other game.
But the primary gameplay mode is the fully cooperative one, and this suits a small group well: I’ve played Landmarks enjoyably with three players, and it could even work with two if they knew each other well. In particular it’s very pleasing not to have to mess about with special setup conditions as the number of players varies.
Ultimately, though, it’s the positional play that makes this more than a Codenames clone: as Pathfinder, I’m aiming to clue in the team to one specific location, but if that’s challenge can I find a choice of two where one Is good and the other is at least harmless? If I give a perfect clue to indicate A and B, I may have a harder time writing the next clue that uses this new one and A but not B. There’s a surprising depth to this side of the game, and as Pathfinder one can end up accidentally making things much harder for oneself. (And there’s a trick in the team game: if the opposition has three treasures, a curse, but no amulet, your team finding their fourth treasure will cause them to lose immediately, which can be an effective catch-up mechanism.)
Landmarks is easy to teach and quick to play, just one complexity step up from a true party game. Officially it accommodates up to 10 players, but other than the Pathfinder the players don’t need any individual components, so in theory one could run this with as many people as can see the board to read the clues, as long as they can come to an agreement.
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