As I write this review, we’re headed into the first days of winter, but the temperature outside is hot and sweltering as an early summer afternoon. It’s a shame because I love to relax on a bitingly cold day. The air is crisp enough to feel the chill, but the soporific heat from a blanket or a fire keeps you comfortable, and a steaming cup of tea or cocoa ties those sensations together in a delightful, non-denominational bow.
Those cold, cozy days are the perfect setting for a cold, cozy game like Snowfall Over Mountains–unfortunately, the climate being as it is, l have to settle for playing in the oppressive heat. I’ll try not to let it impact my rating…
Snowfall Over Mountains is a tile-laying game for 1 player, and plays in 10-15 minutes.
Gameplay Overview:
In Snowfall Over Mountains, your goal is to create a harmonious winter landscape, while also maintaining a clean network of paths through the expanding wilderness. The woods start with a single domino tile representing your cabin, and each turn, you play one of two tiles from your hand, extending those woods in any direction. Alternatively, you may use the ability of one of your tool cards (randomly dealt during setup), which provides unique abilities to alter the landscape–swapping tiles, drawing extra tiles into your hand, etc.
There are no restrictions on tile placement, but there are a number of incentives you’ll want to keep in mind. Tiles may contain any combination of five distinct features (bear and rabbit tracks, bushes, ponds, and trees), and during setup, you set out a randomized scoring objective for each feature. Additionally, some tiles have walking paths snaking across them, and at game end, you will lose points for paths that don’t lead back to your cabin. Finally, while you can use your tools for their special power, you may also choose to keep them, which provides bonus points at game end.
Once all the tiles in the deck have been played, you tally up the points earned and lost from the objective cards, and compare your score to a handy chart to see how well you did. Hopefully, you can at least avoid the infinite ignominy of becoming a Lost Traveler…
Game Experience:
As you may have guessed from the overview, Snowfall Over Mountains is a simple game, and it doesn’t do much to innovate within the sub-genre of “puzzly tile-placement solo games.” If you don’t enjoy games in that space, or if you’re getting tired of them, I doubt Snowfall Over Mountains will do much to win you over. That said, for whatever reason, I found it to be surprisingly addictive, in a way that its peers aren’t.
Part of the game’s charm is in its simplicity. The decisions you make each turn aren’t easy, but they aren’t brain-meltingly difficult, either, which lends the game a wonderful rhythm. It’s also a very flexible decision space; you can slip into the easy flow of placing and drawing tiles if you want, or you can spend minutes on end agonizing over the optimal placement of tiles or use of your tools. The second approach will lead to a higher score, but the first never feels boring or less fun, which is a difficult feat for a score-driven game to achieve.
None of that would mean much if Snowfall Over Mountains lacked variety; luckily, that’s far from the case. The order in which the tiles come out changes the puzzle to some degree (and you remove some tiles from the deck during setup), but the big draw comes from the objective cards. There are only three cards per feature, but each objective plays against the other objectives in interesting ways, and there are hundreds of possible objective combinations to play with.
My only issue with Snowfall Over Mountains is the tool cards. Theoretically, these cards should shake up your approach to the game in a similar way to the objectives, but most of them are too minor and situational to fit in with the game’s laid-back sensibilities. The tools are most effective if you spend a lot of time each turn considering their possibilities, which runs counter to the flow and flexibility I praised above. It feels like a wasted opportunity; and yet, at the same time, it’s a testament to how much I enjoy the core gameplay. Even though I regularly ignore the tool cards, I still find myself returning to Snowfall Over Mountains over and over again.
Final Thoughts:
Snowfall Over Mountains was a big surprise for me. I’m not a huge fan of tile placement games, and I actively dislike most score-driven solitaire games, but Snowfall Over Mountains hits a perfect sweet spot of engaging decisions, relaxing theme, and compelling rhythm, and it does so in a tiny box you can take with you anywhere. It won’t set the world on fire, but it’s a great game to pull out next to the fire, and that’s almost as good.
Final Score: 4 Stars – A playful and moreish solitaire tile-placement game, packed into an impressively small box.
Hits:
• Relaxed but compelling decisions
• Flexible to different play styles
• Great replay value
• Fits in a tiny box
Misses:
• Beat-your-own-score won’t appeal to everyone
• Tool cards run counter to the game’s best elements
Source: Board Game Quest
