برچسب: Family

Shallow Regrets Preview – One Board Family

The dark and creepy fishing game Deep Regrets is one of our favorite releases this year. But sometimes, you’re looking for a shorter fishing excursion. That’s were Shallow Regrets, a new wallet game from Button Shy Games, comes in handy. This eighteen card experience was created and illustrated by designer Judson Cowan and offers a bitesize experience of its more robust sibling, Deep Regrets.

Catch of the Day

Shallow Regrets plays two to three players and takes only fifteen minutes to play. In this fishing filler game, players can cast into six “shoals” in the center of the table. Each shoal is a pile of three cards that contain fair or foul creatures or objects from the ocean.

Cards have a coin value (victory points), catch difficulty, and unique ability that can be activated when you have the card in your possession. Some cards contain fish hooks on the left side below the coin value. These hook icons will give you the strength to catch larger creatures as you fish the briny deep.

Players are given information on the size of the fish based on the size of the shadow that’s shown when it’s on the top of the shoal. There’s also a hint at the bottom of the card back that gives you the range of strength you need to reel in that catch.

Throwing Back Your Catch

On your turn, draw two cards from the top of the shoal(s) in the center of the table. You can catch one of the two cards you picked up and must toss the other back. The rejected card is placed back on top of a shoal or in an open space if all the cards of a shoal have been fished. Players can strategically toss back a card to cover a card that another player was potentially planning to catch.

Shallow Regrets is all about gaining strength as you gradually work your way up to catching bigger and more valuable creatures. While the coin value is victory points, sometimes the special ability on the card can be extremely advantageous. You can use a cards special ability by exhausting it (turning it sideways) at the start of a turn. You’ll be able to look at more cards on your turn, swap a creature for another players, pass a card to your neighbor, or even flip over the top card of each shoal.

These abilities are really helpful in getting just the right cards in front of you. As a seasoned fisher, you want to dabble in catching foul fish, but you definitely don’t want all the foul fish! The foul fish in the game can give you the hooks you need to reel in a big catch. But, most of these come with negative coin values that will bring down your score.

Fair fish have some of the highest coin values but may not give you any hook icons to increase your strength. The game has a nice balance and forces players to keep a variety of fair and foul creatures. The game ends when all the cards have been taken from the shoals or when players don’t have enough strength to catch the cards that are left.

A Stench Most Foul

The player who reeled in the most foul fish will have two points deducted from their score at the end of the game. Players count the points on their cards, even their exhausted cards, to get a final score.

Shallow Regrets is a really enjoyable, ultra condensed fishing experience that we really enjoy. The player count is small, supporting only three players. This has been the game Erin and I choose to bring on date nights because it’s such a tight and casual experience. When players lean into using the card abilities, the game is a little mean and that’s a big part of why we like the Shallow Regrets so much.

Judson Cowen did an excellent job with illustrations. The creatures feel like a more cartoony version of their Deep Regrets counterparts. As many times as we’ve played Shallow Regrets, we still get excited when one of us finds and is able to reel in the five point Kraken card. This is an easy filler card game to suggest to anyone who has fifteen minutes and a couple friends to play with.

Shallow Regrets is on Kickstarter through May 17, 2025. Check out the campaign today!

A prototype of the game was provided for this coverage. Components and rules covered in this preview are not finalized. Read more about our preview policies at One Board Family.

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07/05/2025
Family Games — The Treehouse

The Adventures of Robin Hood is another new one, this time an elaborate adventure game packed full of surprises. Players take on the roles of Robin Hood and his Merry Men and embark on a range of missions to help the poor and thwart the Sherriff of Nottingham’s evil schemes. A hardback story book and a great big board full of secret advent calendar-style doors to open are just a couple of the delights in store in this box!

Browse the full selection of games in our shop here or use the ‘family games’ filter to narrow down your search. We’re hoping to manage one more ‘Top 5’ list before Christmas arrives… watch this space, and click back through our previous posts for more suggestions.

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30/04/2025
Conservas Review – One Board Family
I’m a sucker for a good fishing themed board game. For some reason, fishing of the cardboard variety is far better than the real-life kind. Conservas is a solo bag building game from Scott Almes, a designer that I really enjoy. Even though I’m not a fan of solo gaming, Conservas has its hooks in me and keeps reeling me in.

The Daily Catch

In this game, you’ll run a fishing and canning operation off the coast of Spain. Each season starts with a single boat, some cash in hand, and a bag of tokens that is dictated for that season. Conservas takes you through 12 months of fishing using a spiral bound book. Each month will have a unique win condition, some have special rules, and two difficulty goals to reach.

In each round of the season, you’ll draw five tokens blindly from the bag for each boat you own and the Open Water card on the table. You’ll have to assign the five tokens before drawing five more, eventually filling each available card.

Each boat in the game has a catch requirement that has to be met. You can meet this requirement with fish tokens or the worthless water tokens that are clogging up the bag. All the other tokens are placed at the bottom of the card, showing that they are still in the “open water” and not on the boat.

To Can or Not to Can

As you pull the sea life on board, you have to make decisions on how to use these tokens. Each season has spots in the book that pay cash if you choose to can your fish. Money can be tight in this game and you’ll need cash to purchase new boats to expand your saltwater empire.

The canning requirements can sometimes be a single fish type, or multiples of a specific fish in order to get paid. In some seasons, you’ll earn more money as you can specific types of fish. In other seasons, you can saturate the market, earning less money if you keep canning the same type of catch.

Your fish tokens can also be spent on Upgrade cards which give your operation some nice perks. Conservas does a great job of giving players multiple avenues to solve the puzzle. Some Upgrade cards definitely feel more powerful than others. You’ll start to look for some of these after your first couple games.

Before the end of each round, you can purchase a new boat and wipe the Upgrade and Boat cards to get a fresh set of three on the table. During the night phase of the round, you’ll spend your cash to maintain your fleet of boats as you head into the next day. By the way, the punny boat names in the game are fantastic.

Conservation is Key

The fish you catch in Conservas is almost as important as the fish you leave in the sea. During the night phase of each round, any fish that were in the Open Water (this includes the fish under the boats that were not caught) will spawn new tokens. If you leave three mussels uncaught, you’ll spawn that number of mussels minus one. This is vital to making sure that you have fish in the bag as you move from round to round.

Conservas is all about making sure that you don’t overfish the sea and long term planning to meet the goals of that season. In my first two games, I bought a fleet of boats too early and sold every fish I could. I found myself grabbing water token after water token, unable to fulfill any orders and failing pretty quickly.

Since Conservas is a bag builder, a big part of the game is keeping a mental tally of what you believe is in the bag. Unless an Upgrade card gives you the chance, you cannot look into the bag to survey what’s available.

Trial and Error

While I love the artwork and I’m a fan of the designer, I was immediately repelled because it was a solo game. I’m an extravert that loves this hobby so much because of the social atmosphere that gaming brings. I gave Conservas a try and it’s been one of my favorite gaming experiences this year.

Each game of Conservas takes around twenty minutes and there are times when you know the mistakes you made in round four are going to sink your operation. The game plays quickly and I’ve gotten into the habit of playing back to back games because of it. Also, because I’m terrible at the game.

I only found success after five attempts at the first season of the game. Since then, I’ve crawled my way past three more seasons. The game is tough and sometimes I’m just barely clearing the standard difficulty. Each time I fail a season, I take a look at where I went wrong. Most of the time, it’s a mix of overfishing or not using the Upgrades that were available to me.

There’s an economy to Conservas that works really well. It’s a tight game that rarely leaves you confident that you’ll succeed until the last final round of a season. This is why coming back to the game and enjoying its twenty minute playtime is so enjoyable.

Final Thoughts

Conservas is a perfect storm of theme, art, and gameplay that has me excited every time I sit down with the game. I could never see myself playing solo games on a regular basis, but Conservas has shown me how enjoyable they can be. My time with A Gentle Rain, another amazing solo game, was all about relaxing and finding a moment of peace. Conservas is all about pressing my luck, practicing moderation, and finding a delicate balance to succeed.

If you had told me a couple months ago that a solo board game would be one of my biggest surprises of the year, I would have laughed in your face. But here I am. Sitting alone at my kitchen table, smelling like an old sea captain, playing a board game by myself, and loving every minute of it.

Conservas is published by 25th Century Games in the US and Salt & Pepper Games in Europe. You can find Conservas at your local game store, on the 25th Century webstore or online through Amazon today.

This game was provided to us by the publisher for review. Read more about our review policies at One Board Family.

Highs
- Twelve seasons with multiple difficulties
- Excellent art and components
- Great balance in conserving and catching sea life
Lows
- Some might be turned off by the repetitive gameplay
- Kind of wish there was a multiplayer version
Complexity

Time Commitment

Replayability
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25/04/2025
Disgraced House Review – One Board Family
Clans of samurai cats are in a battle for dominance in this suitless trick-taking game from Shiny Pigeon Games. Be careful though, each season ends with a peace treaty, and showing too much force will bring disgrace to your clan. Let’s dig into this card game from designer Caner Cooperrider and see what sets it apart.

Managing Your Clan

Disgraced House feels familiar because it uses a standard trick-taking mechanic. What makes it unique is that there are no suits or trumps in the game and it’s solely based on numbers. Each envoy card, which makes up the majority of your hand, has two values on the card. The standard value is in black at the top of the card while the red value at the bottom of the card can be unlocked by using a fate token. With cards having two values, players have flexibility with each card as long as they have fate tokens that they can spend.

When a player leads, they can play a single card or pair with identical numbers. Followers have to play the same quantity of cards but there are rules on what numbers you can play. Followers have to play the same number or higher. If they cannot or choose not to beat the played cards, they have to play the lowest card(s) in their hand.

Playing a high card(s) means that followers are going to be forced to play their highest cards or flush away the low cards in their hand. The twist here is that players need low cards for the final trick of the round.

The Peace Treaty

The final trick of each round is a single card trick called the Peace Treaty. Players will play the final card left in their hand but there will only be one loser in this trick. The player who played the highest card has used too much force during the Peace Treaty and becomes the disgraced house. All other players score points based on half the value of the card they played during the Peace Treaty. The Disgraced House will miss out on this bonus but is given a +1/-1 modifier card that they can use in the next round of the game.

Players score a point for each trick they won during the round plus any bonus points they received during the Peace Treaty. This final trick of each round is really creative. Players who choose not to plan for the end of the round may miss out on a significant number of points.

You also don’t want to hang on to cards that that have too low of a value. By holding on to a 0 value card, you’re guaranteed not to be the disgraced house, but you also don’t score any bonus points during the end of the round.

Samurai Legends

Disgraced House has one more trick up its sleeve in the format of Ally and Advisor cards. At the start of each round, players get one of each. The Ally card will go into your hand and gives a unique ability you can play during the round. The Advisor gives you an additional ability or scoring opportunity and this card sits on the table in front of the player for everyone to see.

Either of these cards can be discarded before the round starts to take a fate token from the supply. These fate tokens allow you to flip your envoy card during the round to the red value at the bottom of the card. More fate tokens means more flexibility during the round. These tokens roll over to future rounds so saving up over a series of rounds isn’t a bad strategy.

Honor in Battle

Disgraced House has enough twists during a round to keep everyone engaged. Players are trying to be the first to earn thirteen points. There’s even a catch up mechanic that gives players a free fate token when they are more than three points behind the lead player.

I think the only thing that I’m lukewarm on is the cat theme of the game. The samurai cat artwork from Parker Simpson is gorgeous in every way. But, it’s not a theme that really drew me into the game. I’ve taught this game to dozens of people and the theme wasn’t a huge selling factor for them. Players really loved how rounds shifted as players utilize Ally and Advisor abilities and force cards from their opponents hands.

As each game advances, the hand sizes of the players decrease based on how close a player is to thirteen points. Rounds become faster with less cards in hand. Leading with a pair of cards will also limit the number of tricks that can be won which is another satisfying strategy.

My very first game was at just 2-players and my expectations were low. Trick-taking games at just two is usually a bust. Disgraced House played really well at 2-players and can be played with up to six.

At the five and six player counts, you play a variant of the game called “Crowded Court”. Players always receive six cards in the round and have a new option to “bow out” during the trick. The first player to do this can play any card(s) they want, intentionally losing the trick and playing their card(s) facedown, ignoring the high/low rules. Bowing out locks other players who play after you from doing this which can be really strategic. There’s even a team play variant in the game that we’ve not played yet, but I’m sure that we’ll dig into that one soon.

Final Thoughts

Disgraced House does just enough to set itself apart from other trick-taking games in our collection. With each card having two values, fate tokens are incredibly important if you want options in your card play. This makes for dynamic gameplay and fun surprises during the game. In a year that was filled with trick-taking games, this one has flown under the radar because of its small print run. Thankfully, Shiny Pigeon Games is bringing this game to a broader audience with a larger print run through Kickstarter.

I really enjoy Disgraced House and it’s a game that I love to teach. It hits the table more often because of how smooth it plays at just two players which has been a huge plus. Don’t miss out on this card game has it hits a broader audience in 2025!

Join the Kickstarter campaign for Disgraced House when it launches this spring.

This game was provided to us by the publisher for review. Read more about our review policies at One Board Family.

Highs
- Flexibility to play single or double card tricks
- Plays surprisingly well at just 2-players
- Peace Treaty phase in each round works really well
- Great variety of Ally and Advisor cards
Lows
- Games with six players can overstay its welcome
- Cat theme could be a hit or miss with players
Complexity

Time Commitment

Replayability
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18/04/2025
Tiny Towns Review – One Board Family
I’m a big fan of spatial reasoning games. Over the years, games like Patchwork and Isle of Cats have always brought me joy. I don’t know if it’s something left over from all the Tetris I played as a child, but figuring out little puzzles to get everything to fit just right is just… fun!

So when I was first introduced to Tiny Towns, I was immediately intrigued. I loved the idea of having to put your resources on the board just right, but adding in different scoring elements? Oh yeah, this one’s gonna hit the spot…

We Built This… Town…

Each player is the mayor of their own… well, tiny town. There’s a back story about creatures and predators and all that, but it’s not really that important.

What is important is that the game tasks you with building structures in the 4×4 grid on your player board. This construction happens by placing resources in the patterns specified by the available buildings. A tavern, for instance, requires two bricks and a glass resource to be placed all in a single line, while the cloister requires four resources in a very particular L-shaped arrangement.

On a turn, one player is designated as the “master builder”. That player announces one resource type, and all players have to add a cube matching that resource to their player board. If anyone has resources in an arrangement that matches a building, they may remove the matching cubes from their player board and place a building token. The building has to be placed on a site where one of the resources was that built the structure.

Watch Where You’re Going

Placement is important for a few reasons. For some of the buildings, you get points based on location. The inn, for example, gets points if it’s not in a row or column with another inn. The bakery gets points if it’s next to buildings of a particular type. You’ll also have to be careful to keep your board open for future buildings. If you don’t leave enough room for the pattern needed for a particular building – well, tough. You won’t be able to create that building for the rest of the game.

If you ever reach a point where you can’t build anything else, then your game is done and your town is complete. You’ll wait for everyone to finish their building, then calculate your points. And, as per usual, the player with the most points at the end of the game wins!

Lookin’ Good

When Tiny Towns hits the table, its charm is immediately evident. The box art is great, and all of the little building meeples are great. The artwork on the different building cards is also wonderful, and it all comes together to create a really attractive look.

The game is also very creative in how it adds variety. Each building meeple is associated with four different building types, and you randomly choose which building for each type at the beginning of the game. It’s a small thing, but it allows for increased replayability without having to have a bunch of components that are only used for certain setups.

Monuments are another element of the game that add a little spice. Each player is dealt two Monument cards at the beginning of the game and select one to keep. These special buildings are unique to each player, and they can provide some major scoring opportunities if used correctly. This small wrinkle ensures that everyone will have their own strategies and approaches as they move through the game.

Like Coming Home

Tiny Towns is a game that strikes a perfect balance for me. It’s simple enough to teach in just a few minutes, but it’s complex enough that I have to weigh my options on each turn to decide what I should do. It’s not so complicated that I will sit for several minutes trying to decide what to do, but it also has enough going on that I feel that my choices are important.

People that don’t like spatial reasoning games are probably going to get a bit frustrated with this title. However, given that you’re not putting down polyominoes or anything like that, maybe it’s easier? I’m not sure.

What I do know is that Tiny Towns is a game that I really enjoy. It’s one that I could play with almost any group, and each time it’s going to be a solid experience. With the addition of a few expansions over the past few years, there’s a ton of variety that can keep people coming back for more. Tiny Towns is a game that I’d recommend for any hobby gamer to add to their collection. It’s certainly one that I’ll be keeping on my shelf for a very long time.

Tiny Towns is available at your local game store, from the AEG webstore or online through Amazon today.

Highs
- Easy to learn while still providing enough challenge
- Looks great on the table
- A decent amount of variety right out of the box
Lows
- Spatial reasoning haters beware!
Complexity

Time Commitment

Replayability
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18/04/2025
Scoville 2nd Edition Review – One Board Family
The original game of Scoville was published in 2014 by Tasty Minstrel Games (R.I.P.). This auction and set collecting game has been out of print for a while but is highly regarded by friends who have played it.

For years, I’ve wanted to add this game to our collection but wasn’t ready to spend the money for a used copy. Trick or Treat Games picked up the license and recently published Scoville Second Edition. Now that I’ve played this modern classic from Ed Marriott, does it live up to the hype that was in my head?

Mornings on the Farm

In Scoville, players are pepper farmers who are planting, harvesting, fulfilling pepper orders, and making chili. Each round starts with an auction where players will bid for their turn order in the round. The turn order allows players to choose a pepper card from the auction display, earning the pepper(s) on the card. Choosing your position matters because planting and order fulfillment takes place in turn order, but harvesting takes place in reverse turn order.

Each round follows this order:

Planting: In turn order, players will place a single pepper from their supply into the central board. Peppers will cross-breed with the peppers next to them. Each player has a player aid showing the color pepper that is created between two pepper colors.

Harvest: In reverse turn order, players will move their farmer up to three steps in the garden. The player will harvest a new pepper(s) from the supply based on the two peppers they are between on the board. For example, being between a blue pepper and a yellow pepper will produce a purple pepper.

Fulfillment: In turn order, players can turn in peppers to fulfill cards in the farmers market and/or fulfill a chili recipe card. This is how you earn more money and victory points. Players can also earn money by selling a single color of pepper, earning $1 for every two peppers of that color in the field.

Each game is broken into two halves, the morning and afternoon. Once players trigger the start of the afternoon phase, the auction block will gain better cards and the Farmers Market cards become tougher to fulfill but earn much better rewards.

Players also have three one time use actions that allow them to double-back with their movement, plant an additional pepper, and move an extra step. If you don’t use these special actions, they are worth four victory points each at the end of the game.

A Slow Burn

The gameplay is Scoville is a bit of a slow burn as you increase your pepper supply, gain new pepper colors, and move your way into the outer edges of the field. In your first couple turns, you’ll plant and harvest some of the same peppers. Players can choose to be selfish with their new cross breeds by planting a new pepper color out of reach of the other players.

Once players unlock the coal and white colored peppers, things really open up to fulfill high point chili recipes. Players are always looking to gain white and ghost peppers since they are present on the highest value cards in the game.

Scoville plays up to six players but I would rarely suggest playing with the max number of players. Often, players are referencing the cross-breed player aid and looking at what chili recipes they are close to fulfilling. This can make rounds drag out at the highest player count. If everyone knew how to play the game and had some experience with Scoville, I think playing with six players could be smooth. I would never play with new players at this player count.

When you get into the five and six player count, the pepper field begins to have hot spots where all the best peppers are located. We’ve seen two players break away from the center, dropping important pepper colors as far away as they can in order to limit access to other players. It’s important to watch what other players are doing during the planting phase and anticipate where the best peppers are being placed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvmdMtztvfM

What’s New?

This second edition printing has a lot of upgrades that players should know about. The original printing came with wooden peppers, and colorblind players had big issues with the color choices. Trick or Treat Studios fixed this with new plastic peppers that have a very clear letter embossed on each pepper that helps players to know what color they have. I love the rounded, plastic peppers in the game and think it’s an absolute upgrade from the original wooden ones.

Vincent Dutrait also did a complete overhaul of the artwork which looks fantastic. His signature style is present on the board, cards, game box and even player screens. The board pieces together like a puzzle and is double-sided with the solo player experience on the back.

The game also comes with a brand-new solo experience for players to check out. At the time of this review, I’ve not played it yet, but I’ve been enjoying the game enough that I will absolutely check it out. Also in Scoville Second Edition is the Scoville Labs expansion that many struggled to find for the original game.

Players are given a lab board where they can plant additional peppers, immediately gaining the cross-bred peppers that are created based on adjacency. This expansion also adds a few new cards and will speed up the access to more rare peppers for individual players.

On top of all this, there are new fulfillment cards that haven’t been seen before. The number of chili recipe cards is impressive and no two games will have the same cards. This is nice for replayability.

Final Thoughts

Did Scoville live up to the hype that I had in my head? For the most part, yes.

Scoville has been a “grail game” for me for a long time. It connects with my love of spicy food, gardening, and includes some of my favorite mechanics. I’m a big fan of this game and I think the upgrades that were made in this second edition are fantastic.

I started to appreciate the slow burn of the game in those first few rounds after a couple games. Scoville is a game that is going to take every bit of 60 to 90 minutes but I really enjoy everything it does. Players are always working to fulfill orders, with their turn order in the round playing a very important part. The bidding and turn order felt less important at three players but is absolutely vital at four to six players.

If you missed out on owning the original printing of this game or just want the upgrade, Scoville Second Edition is a great addition to your game collection. This is one that I’m proud to finally have in our collection.

Scoville Second Edition is now available at your local game store, or on the Trick or Treat webstore.

This game was provided to us by the publisher for review. Read more about our review policies at One Board Family.

Highs
- Big fan of the updated visuals from Vincent Dutrait
- New edition includes new solo experience and Labs expansion
- Loads of chili recipes and Farmers Market orders
- Bidding mechanic really shines at the higher player counts
Lows
- Would probably never play at 6-players
- First couple turns can be slow
Complexity

Time Commitment

Replayability
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17/04/2025
Cleariosity Review – One Board Family
Cleariosity is a new title that might tickle the fancy of gamers looking to add a small box word-based game to their collection. The game features dozens of small, square transparent cards that feature a few opaque letters, taking up spaces in a 3×3 grid. Each player is given a stack of these cards that they will all flip simultaneously to begin the game.

Three Letters at a Time

The goal here is to figure out a configuration of cards that can stack on top of each other and spell a three-letter word in one column, row, or diagonal. There are a few rules that apply:
- vertical words must start at the top and end at the bottom
- words cannot contain any letters that overlap letters from other cards
When a player finds a word, they shout it out and point out their word, then take the cards they used and add them to their scoring pile. Play continues until all combinations of words have been exhausted, at which points players count how many cards are in their scoring pile. Whoever has the most cards wins!

When we played this game, it brought up a lot of memories of the game SET, which I played a ton as a student and later on as a teacher. If you don’t know that one, it involves laying out cards, then trying to find three cards whose shapes meet patterns. While Cleariosity involves letters, you’re still having to use your brain in a similar way.

You have to keep certain things in mind about some cards while you look around at the others. You’re also trying to move quickly, hoping to shout out your word before any other players. It’s the kind of mental gymnastics that can get some players standing, jumping up and down, and shouting out words at the top of their lungs.

Final Thoughts

Cleariosity is quite simple, and it only takes a few minutes, so you can probably sneak it in between your “main” games. Word games don’t always hit with every audience, and there are some who will hate the real-time aspect of the game, so there may be some people who won’t really enjoy this title. For those looking for a new letter-based challenge, though, this could be a good portable game that is worth adding to your collection.

Cleariosity is available at your local game store, through the White Beetle Games webstore or online through Amazon today.

This game was provided to us by the publisher for review. Read more about our review policies at One Board Family.

Highs
- Small box makes it very portable
- Overlaying clear cards is clever
- Great filler game for players who enjoy word games
Lows
- Real-time aspect may be a turn off
Complexity

Time Commitment

Replayability
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16/04/2025
Top Tier Review – One Board Family
Tier lists are everywhere, because everyone needs to know our opinion. Top Tier is a party game from Indie Boards & Cards where players build rankings in some ridiculous categories.

In this video review, I share how to play Top Tier and talk about the best setting for this tier-making party experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WMDPncGfmo

Top Tier is available at your local game store or online through Amazon today.

This game was provided to us by the publisher for review. Read more about our review policies at One Board Family.

Highs
- 100 category cards with lots of variety
- Lots of laughs as players discuss the ranking
- Players can jump in and jump out of games
Lows
- Game is very dependent on players at the table
- Typos and misspellings in the game
Complexity

Time Commitment

Replayability
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15/04/2025
PASS Review – One Board Family
Small box card games are the easiest games to get to our table. PASS is a ladder climbing game the was brought to the US from Grand Gamers Guild toward the end of 2024. The game from designer Wang Yu supports two to five players with mechanics and card combinations that feel pretty traditional. So is this game a keeper or will we pass on it?

Follow the Leader

In each game of PASS, the cards will be dealt out evenly among the players at the table. Over the series of rounds, players are trying to shed cards from their hands by leading or following the card arrangement that was played. The player who was dealt the number “2 start” card will go first and can play any arrangement they would like.

You can play a single card, pair of cards, three of a kind, run of five cards, or a full house. Players can also play four of a kind and five of a kind, but might want to hold these for a critical moment since they will beat all the other card arrangements.

After the leader plays a card(s), players must follow in beating the previously played card(s). Player A plays a pair of fours, Player B must play a higher pair or they are forced to pass.

Each card in PASS is double-sided, giving players two options. Players are rarely out of options because of the range of values on the cards.

Tokens

In the game of PASS, choosing to pass during a round gives you more flexibility in your card play in the future. When you pass, you earn a two-sided PASS token that can be used in future rounds. Each token gives you two options.

Use the Upgrade (yellow arrow) side of the token to flip as many cards as you want when you play. Use the Augment (multi-colored plus) side of the token to play a better version of the same card that was previously played. You can use as many tokens as you want when playing cards.

I really like how the Augment side of the PASS token works. If the player before me played a pair of threes, I can also play the same value cards and spend an Augement token to increase it’s value. Players can continue playing pairs of threes, augmenting them with one more token than the previous player if they’d like.

The more PASS tokens you accumulate, the more flexibility you have. Cards follow a traditional range of Ace through King, with the Ace being the lowest card or the highest card in a run. PASS also gives the Ace cards a yellow value of a double digit number that can be played as a high single card, or as a pair of numbers. Aces can be very powerful in the right hands.

Empty Handed

The ultimate goal of PASS is to be the first player to empty their hand. There are two options when it comes to scoring. The player who goes out first gains a crown token, with the first player to earn three crowns winning the game. Or, players can earn point tokens with 4 points being awarded to the first player to go out, 2 points going to the player with the least cards in their hand, and 1 point to the player with the second least about of cards. The first to have 10 points worth of tokens wins the game.

In our plays of the game, the point scoring system is absolutely the way to go at five players. When playing with three or four players, the crown scoring tokens work just fine. The point scoring variant usually means a shorter game in our experiences.

Final Thoughts

I really enjoy the ladder climbing genre of card games. It reminds me of playing cards with my grandma and PASS is no different. I was able to teach my Mom how to play the game on a recent family trip and she immediately connected with the gameplay. Following the standard hierarchy of a deck of cards also means it’s accessible to a wide range of gamers.

It’s tough not to compare PASS to Scout which was released in 2019. They both have this double-sided card layout but in a lot of ways, PASS feels less restrictive. In each game we’ve played, PASS tokens are readily available when you need them. Because they carry over from round to round, it’s not unusual to have half a dozen tokens at your disposal at some point in the game.

There’s also a variant in the rulebook where players have to spend a PASS token for every card they want to flip. This is nice for gamers who are wanting more of a challenge.

PASS has a classic card game feels that has been very easy to introduce to new players. The gameplay is smooth and each card giving you two values allows you to pivot quickly in the game.

This is a card game that will absolutely stay in our collection. I’m not sure I would choose it over Ladder 29, my absolute favorite ladder climbing card game. PASS is definitely a solid entry into this genre of card games and has enough twists to keep players engaged.

PASS is available at your local game store, or online through the Grand Gamers Guild webstore today.

This game was provided to us by the publisher for review. Read more about our review policies at One Board Family.

Highs
- Double valued cards give players more control
- Passing gives players more options in future turns
- Using a token to Augment your cards keeps players in the game.
Lows
- Games can drag at the highest player count
Complexity

Time Commitment

Replayability
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14/04/2025