You’ve got the map, but the rest of your party is lost in a jungle filled with treacherous traps, evil curses, and bit ol’ piles of sweet sparkling treasure. In Landmarks from Floodgate Games, lead your party out of the jungle using only one word clues, steering them from danger, and leading them to treasure. Can you do it without leading them into danger?
Landmarks is a fun and easy to play (depending on you and your teammates) word association game, with a cute hook and something I know I’ll play when I need something quick and rife for yelling!
What’s In The Box?
The game board for Landmarks is a double sided cloth island map and 32 landmark tiles, though not all the tiles will be used in the game. There’s also a double sided tracker board to track treasures, water, traps, curses, amulets, and the exit for a team game or competitive game, a card stand, dry-erase marker, and 150 map cards, divided into green for beginner co-op mode, yellow for regular co-op mode, and red for competitive mode.
I don’t have much to say about the components themselves as they’re all great condition, and fit nicely into the box which came with an insert for all the tiles, but the dry-erase marker fell apart after one use, so I would suggest just replacing it. We lost the eraser end at one point, and I still have not found it.
How’s It Play?
Each game, one of the players is the pathfinder, and all the others are the party out in the jungle. In competitive games, players are divided into two groups, with two pathfinders. The pathfinder takes a card and writes the 3 starting words on the map card, and places those tiles on the corresponding locations of the island mat. These are now the first landmarks used to guide the party.
Each game starts with 7 tracker tiles, but players can gain more if they’re guided to a water location on the map. Thus, tiles = water.
In each round, the pathfinder must think of a one-word clue and give the tile to the other players. The party decides together which space they think the clue is leading them to, and then the pathfinder tells the party what they’ve found in the explored space.
You lose a tile/water every time a new word is placed on the map and anytime you hit a trap. You can also be guided to treasure, which is required before you go to the exit. If you’re cursed, you’ll need an amulet, but maps only have one amulet, so if you get cursed a second time, you’ve lost.
So how do clues work? Words can be compound like daycare or playtime, but they cannot have dashes or be two separate words. The clue provided has to be related to the word or words on the tiles that the pathfinder is trying to guide the party towards.
In the example image, swamp, fence, and bubble were the starter cards. Bath is related to the word bubble, so the pathfinder gives the clue, and the team accurately places it next to bubble, and retrieves a treasure. Now the pathfinder must guide the players to the exit which is two hexagons below bath. In the example, obviously the team went in the wrong direction and placed daycare next to bubble and fence, because…there are fences at a daycare?
But that’s what makes the game fun. The party and the pathfinder must decide what fits in the spirit of the rules and work together to get out of the jungle. Words have to be related to the tiles already placed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that two different groups of players will agree that a word fits.
The game continues until the team loses, or has found a treasure and made it to the exit before running out of water.
The Verdict?
Some of the rules around the clues are also useful in keeping the game from being too easy. Acronyms are okay if you pronounce them like a word, like NASA or SCUBA, but initials are not, FBI, ATM. You also cannot use any part of a word that’s already written on the board. So if you had ice, you can’t have rice as a clue, which makes it more challenging for the pathfinder.
The pathfinder also cannot say anything when the party is working on placing the tile, or whether they placed the tile correctly (though hitting a trap or curse was obviously a fail). If you don’t have a poker face, maybe get something to hide behind, so you don’t give anything away!
Landmarks is one of those fun games that you can take with you to a game or when you’re hosting a party with really any number of people. Though at some point too many people in each party would make a competitive game a loud mess. I played the first two times with only one other person so we took turns being the pathfinder. We won when I led, and lost when my friend led. Playing with more people is fun though since there’s more interaction!
You can grab a copy from Floodgate Games or your FLGS for $24.95!
Images and review copy courtesy of Floodgate Games
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