“Here and there” – a variation of “Tetris” with history in the background

Here and There is another game by Ryan Laukat, who not only designs his works, but also creates illustrations for them. Just as in mountain and the bottom and closer and farther , move to the land of Arzium.

The inhabitants began to fall ill and scattered around the area. They are not aware of it, so our task will be to find them and wake them up in the hope that they will help in the search for more missing people. So much for the story that doesn’t really matter during the game.

We set out on a search

Each player receives three starting cards and Exploration markers of the selected color. Shuffle the lands / characters deck, place the pile with the locations face up, and lay out the top six, creating a 3: 2 square. These are the places we need to search to find residents. Everyone considers his moves always from the same side of the resulting rectangle. Place the coins next to it, take one (second and third player) or two (fourth player) and we can start the game.

In our turn, we choose one of our characters and reproduce the layout shown on it on the created map. The pattern cannot be rotated, so it is important to always look at the lands from the same side. The used card is turned over to mark its use. If we used all our characters, we put them back vertically, but if we want to bring some of them back earlier, we have to pay for each of them with a coin.

When all spaces in a region are covered with tokens, the person who placed the most gains that card, flips it faceup, and places it next to his previous heroes. The resident has been found and, together with the assigned layout, will help in further searches. As soon as a player has the tenth creature, game settlement begins. The others play after one more turn, and then we count the points from the characters and choose the winner.

A logical puzzle with atmospheric graphics

Ryan Laukat creates eye-catching, fairy-tale illustrations that attract players looking for an adventure in board games. While in the aforementioned titles you can feel the right atmosphere, in  Here and There  we will not feel it at all. I forgot about the fantastic creatures looking from the cards in the first minute of the game and focused only on the layout of the markers. It stayed that way until the end of the game and it did not change in the next ones.

After reading the manual, my attitude was very good, but after the first game I felt a bit disappointed. I knew it was going to be a puzzle game and I wasn’t expecting the climate, so that’s not the problem. At the beginning, I liked the Tetris-style matching to the lands. The limitation in the form of cards used makes it difficult to implement the plan, and the markers of the remaining cards prevent you from gaining new heroes. However, the possibility of using a given arrangement even if part of the half is occupied spoiled my fun – it seems too easy. On the other hand, with random hands on the cards, there is no chance that we will perfectly fill all the holes. At some point, rather quickly, no one would have a card to use. And that’s probably the whole problem. I’m playing a tetris puzzle.

Certainly, the interaction between the players speaks in favor of the title, which is quite a lot for a puzzle game. The end of the game starts when you get the tenth card, but the player with the most points wins. This forces you not only to quickly collect characters, but also to look at their value. For this we must think about the patterns that we will be able to cover thanks to a given hero. These are not complicated decisions, but they do require you to take into account several factors. We can also try to take control of the location chosen by the opponent.

In the case of a two-player game, you can still think of a normal table size. The cards, however, are quite large and we really need a lot of free space for a full set. With four players, it is impossible to keep track of what others are doing or what they are hunting. It also gets tighter in the lands and new characters hit the table faster.

For those who want to increase the difficulty level, an additional deck with artifacts has been prepared, which can be bought with coins. They give us points and additional bonuses to diversify the gameplay.

I think the game has a lot of potential and is better than I think. I didn’t love her at first sight, but it’s not that I don’t like it. I would love to play it more than once, but it will definitely not be one of my favorites.