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Lands of Galzyr is an open world adventure game for up to 4 players.
Embark on a quest of discovery and glory as you explore the world of Galzyr. Choose your character, receive your starting items/traits and dive into a huge world, full of possibilities and rewards.
Players can chose to play cooperatively or competitively. Each game is played over a series of days (rounds) and if you are playing the competitive variant, upon finishing a game the highest prestige scoring player wins.
A True Open world Experience
This is a game of true freedom and exploration. The choice is yours, where you go and what you do.
Setting up the game requires you to bring out the beautiful map of Galzyr, which features a summer and winter side of the board. You use a weather card to set up the game, place your locations and any previous cards from the last game. These can be quest cards, status effects on the board or event cards from a previous game.
Your chosen character, which consist of 1 of 4 wonderfully drawn animals, has a small tracker board which shows their traits, money and a skill dial. You receive your possessions, items, trait cards and any other positive or negative statuses you’ve acquired from playing and begin the game.
There is no particular goal here. On your turn you move up to 2 spaces and then using a brilliantly designed web browser, choose a scene based on where you are. These can be from a quest card you’ve found, a mysterious item, a companion or even just a location or random event you wish to draw. Simply input the scene number and follow the on screen prompts.
This transports you into the world of Galzyr, with hundreds of stories and adventures to be discovered. You might meet unusual characters, save a town, avoid mercenaries, travel to ancient temples and more. The possibilities are almost endless.
After the game has ended, you collect all the events, local quests and anything else on the board and pack it away into a global save slot. You store your characters items, gold and traits into a personal save area, advance to the next month and put it all away.
This helps make Lands of Galzyr feel alive and constantly growing, with an ever changing board state and seasonal locations to explore.
Explore And Roll
Gameplay does take a back seat here with a higher focus on story telling and world building. After you’ve moved to a location and chosen a scene, players will be given choices and skill tests too complete.
These tests involve any of the 6 skill traits and a difficulty setting, the higher skill levels result in harder tests but yield greater rewards. You will then take the 5 black dice and replace a number of them with the matching coloured ones based on your character’s skill checks.
After you roll, compare your results to the chart and proceed, this can result in more skill checks or more branching paths in the scene.
Your items and companions can help you during these tests. They can provide extra traits, allow you to roll more dice or even modify your results to gain more successes.
This simple yet effective skill check system is easy to understand and follow. There is a huge amount of traits and abilities to help modify your character.
For instance you could become skilled at negotiation and stealth, become tranquil and enlightened or even become a respected hero. All these abilities and changes help you grow attached to your character and give them much more personality.
Heavy Lifting
The true star of this game is the combination of the web browser and library system of cards. Lands of Galzyr features a whopping 480 cards. These include location, event, status, items, characters and more. The browser not only contains all the story text, skill test prompts and rewards but it also helps you organise your cards.
Players will be presented with many choices during their adventure and these can lead to collecting and returning cards back and forth from the game box. Each card is numbered and stored into the box with dividers between them.
This easy to use mechanic allows players to gain cards from the box quickly and keep them organised. It’s truly impressive how Snowdale Design has managed to create this library system. What could of been a fiddly and tiresome feature has been made effective and efficient.
Players may wish to purchase sleeves for their cards though, as the constant back and forth from the game box can lead to wear and tear.
Not For Everyone
Although Lands of Galzyr is a delightful, open world adventure, it may not be for everyone. As I previously mentioned the gameplay does take a back seat and at 4 players it will generate a lot of downtime. Waiting for other players to read through their scenes and perform skill tests might bog the game down a little.
The game can be played competitively but there isn’t really any player interaction or ways to gain the upper hand on others. It does feature the ability on certain quests to have a partner join in on. quests and help out but is only available when playing co-op
The game can also feel unfocused at times and lacking a clear goal. There is no overall mission or endgame, you just kind of keep playing.
I can see how some players may find this a little odd and unless your really engrossed in the world here, might not enjoy it as much as others.
Final Thoughts
Lands of Galzyr is a beautiful, well crafted and unique open world adventure game. A true sandbox experience full of wonderful artwork and clever story telling.
It’s easy going and quick to pick up and learn. Combining gameplay elements that we’ve seen in games like Arkham Horror mixed with the charm of Everdell. It may not be for everyone but it’s production quality, replay value and world building is truly impressive.
