Extreme sightseeing – a review of the “Dragon Parks” board game

How to attract tourists?

The first look at the box promises a very nice family board game. After opening, scoring tokens await us, i.e. the number of tourists visiting us, island and dragon cards, the board, legendary beast tokens, airship and player aids. Just like the cover, the components are also colorful, eye-catching and pleasant to look at.

Our task will be to create a park. The variety and specific species of dragons will provide us with more visitors, and that’s what they are all about. The person who visits the park with the most tourists will be the winner.

Sightseeing plan

Each player receives three islands that he places in front of him on any side, four transparent dragon cards in his hand, five visitors and a cheat sheet. In the center of the table, place the board with the airship in the first cavity and the legendary dragon tokens above the top, and next to the other visitors and the face-down deck of dragons.

The players choose one card from their hand and simultaneously place it in front of them on one of their islands. Each covered egg attracts two tourists, while covering a nervous dragon with an eye symbol deters one. Then we pass the remaining three cards to the person on the left and make the same moves. After selecting the third, the last one is set aside and we move on to the spring summary.

At the end of each season, the player with the most yellow dragons gets a legendary token, while the player with the most blue dragons gets three visitors. Additionally, at the end of the rounds, a different color of the beast is attractive to tourists, so we attract them with the indicated species. In addition, each of the three islands is scored separately for the different dragons on it. There is still feeding – the number of sheep in our park must be equal to or greater than the number of dragons. For every failure, one tourist leaves our attraction.

After spring, summer and autumn come. They are played in exactly the same way. Each time we move the airship, which shows us what we get points for at the end of the round. The person with the most tourists after three seasons of the year is the winner.

Family trip

Above all, the Dragon Parks is very nice. I already praised the performance that will attract families with children. Transparent cards are an additional attraction and a nice idea for a slightly different arrangement. Even though the symbols show a little puncture and are visible to others, we focus more on what we have in our hands, rather than trying to peek at our teammates.

The card draft mechanic is not my favorite because it does not allow for too much planning, but it works very well in family games. It gives the younger players a chance to win against the adults who also have to submit to randomly incoming cards. You may have already encountered a slightly different version of this solution in the recently reviewed game of Nasza Księgarnia – Draftozaurous . Both offers are intended for players from 8 years of age, in a group of 2-5 people, and the duration of the game should be less than half an hour.

I must admit that I liked the dinosaurs more than the dragons without thinking, thanks to the greater variety of scoring rules. Dragon Parks , however, has the same target group, so depending on your individual preferences, the dragon game may be more to your liking. It seems to me that despite the identical parameters on the box, it is a bit simpler. Thanks to easy rules and beautiful workmanship, it will find its group of fans, especially among children and families.