Who doesn’t love a good trip to the park? The local or state fair is one of my favorite summertime activities and one that the whole family enjoys every year. The food, the rides, the attractions and the people watching all add up to a great day! Today we are going to take a look at a game that immerses you in that very world in “Funfair”!
Funfair is published by Good Games Publishing and plays 2-4 players. It is designed by Joel Finch with art by Mr Cuddington.
Overview
Funfair is focused on building the best theme park amongst all of the people in the city. Score points based on the best parts of your park to come out on top!
Gameplay
Setup is done by giving all player a starting hand of 5 park cards, a showcase card, gate card and 30 coins. The board is set with piles of the different park, blueprint. There are 6 city cards a single award card chosen also.
Starting at the beginning of each round the city card is revealed giving players a bonus to start the game.
There are four steps to the round and the roller coaster marker slides along the tracker to show what step in the round you are at. The steps are:
1. City step
2. Park step
3. Guest step
4. Cleanup step
In City step the current player begins by picking the city card, revealing it and all players in turn order ga in the benefit. There is a stop for blueprints in this deck also, as they will close after the fourth round.
In Park step players will each take a turn one at a time around the table until all turns are taken. Each player starts with three but can gain a fourth once they build their showcase super attraction. The different park step actions include: build, take, loose change and demolish. In the course of the game you are likely to use build and take the most, occasionally but rarely use loose change and rarely use demolish.
Build will allow you to pick a card from your hand or from the market to pay the price and build into your park. You may have up to 5 attractions in your parks hat you can build or you can build an upgrade to that attraction. You can also recruit a staff member to your park as well. There cannot be any repeats of exact named attractions or staff members but the upgrades may repeat if they are on different attractions.
Take will allow you to take a card direct from the market or draw two park cards to keep one or discard one to draw five and keep one.
Loose change will allow you to pick up one coin from each built attraction and add it to your total. Demolish will destroy any built attraction along with all of the upgrades on it.
In Guest and Cleanup steps all players gain coins based on the number of exhibits they have built and then discard down to a hand of five cards. The market is cleared out and new attraction cards are placed in the row.
This will continue for 6 rounds total until the end of the game. At the end of the game players will add up all of their victory points from their attraction size, blueprints, coins and the park award. The player with the most points wins!
Impressions
Funfair is a 2.0 version of the game Unfair and takes a lot of the aspects of that game that people loved and keeps them in play. The attractions, the upgrades and the way you a build a park is all still there. The art and style of the game is very familiar to those who have played Unfair.
The difference being here with Funfair is that nothing in this game is really “unfair” when it comes to gameplay. The original thrived on the competitive back and forth and ability to hurt your opponent with the right card play or actions. In Funfair that isn’t even an option-there is little to no player interaction in this one to make that happen. Depending on your preferred play style, that may be a welcome change or not. Personally I think it makes it much easier for entry level gamers or those who wish to avoid conflict. I love some good backstabbing in a game but frankly this one does great even without it.
For Players who are looking for a smooth card driven tableau build in a game, this is worth taking a look at. The learning time is quick and the game is easy to jump into for casual and non-casual alike. It is a beautiful game with amazing art once again coming from Mr Cuddington that just makes this game pop off of the board and cards. You can see the personality in the cards and especially in all of the staff members. With only around 20 actions every game, each one should have thought and meaning behind them that make your turns efficient and productive.
So if you enjoyed Unfair but felt the game was a little too aggressive for you, this is literally the game you’ve been looking for. Even if that description isn’t you, this game may be the right choice for you to add to your library of games. It is an easy entry point for almost all players and offers a game full of depth in around an hour of play. So grab the family and bring them around the table for a game of Unfair for your next game night!
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