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Funfair

Game ID: GID0135992
Collection Status
Description

Can you build the best theme park in town?

Choose and build an exciting mix of attractions in your very own theme park. Upgrade them to match blueprints, or just to stack up towering rides that pull in the crowds and make the most cash. Hire staff members and build super attractions to maximise your park’s strategy for the win!

Funfair is a standalone game in the Unfair universe. It's a lighter and faster introduction to Unfair’s ludicrously modular theme park building. With fast setup and gameplay, and only positive player interaction included in Funfair, it’s a fun family-friendly game. However, new goals, new cards, all new build strategies, and tight combos will give experienced gamers and Unfair fans plenty of challenge.

SetupThe board is set up with:

a 6 card City Event deck (there are 12 such cards in total),
a deck of 20 blueprint cards (secret goals),
a deck of 97 park cards containing attractions upgrades and staff members,
a market of 6 park cards containing a random mix of Attractions, upgrades and staff member cards.
an Award card, drawn randomly from the 5 in the game. Awards are public goals that reward players 15 points for meeting the goal.

Each of the 2 to 4 players starts with:

a gate card,
30 coins to spend,
a randomly dealt but hidden showcase card, a type of powerful Thrill Ride they may choose to build sometime during the game,
a hand of 5 park cards (attractions, upgrades and staff) they may build later - if you don’t have an attraction in your opening hand you may discard them and draw until you do.

GameplayEach of Funfair’s 6 rounds begins with a random City event which helps all players in some way, often requiring interesting decisions about how to best benefit from them, and sometimes interactively with other players.

Players then progress to the Park step and take their 3 actions, 1 at a time each clockwise around the table, to build attractions, upgrades on those attractions, or recruit staff directly from the market or their hand. Alternatively players may also draw blueprints from the blueprints decks or park cards from the park deck or market, or gain money (1 per attraction they have built).

After all players have taken 3 actions each (or 4 if they have built their Showcase attraction), players progress to the Guests step where they earn income from the stars (representing guest appeal) on the cards they have built in their parks, and perhaps from staff members.

In the Cleanup step players discard down to 5 cards in hand and reset the market, ready for the next round.

Over each game of 6 rounds and 20 or so actions players build a mix of attractions, upgrades and staff into their park tableau to generate increasingly larger incomes each round. But they also build their park to score victory points in various ways at the end of the game. Exactly how they do so will vary greatly from game to game with different public Awards & private Blueprint goals and other strategic factors and opportunities presenting themselves as the game develops. There are many efficiencies and combinations to be found during play, and numerous ways to earn points.

End game scoringAt the end of the game (after the Cleanup step in Round 6), players total their points earned from:

The number of icons in each of their 1 to 5 attractions (taller attractions score proportionally better)
Matching requirements or bonus sections on their blueprints
Their money: 2 coins = 1 point
Staff members recruited in the game
Meeting the Award goal for the game

-description from publisher

Year Published
2021
Transcript Analysis
Browse transcript mentions, sentiments, pros/cons, mechanics, topics, quotes, and references.
Total mentions: 4
This page: 4
Sentiment: pos 2 · mix 2 · neu 0 · neg 0
Mentions per page
Top
Showing 1–4 of 4
Video NklmQtThfDc Foster the Meeple general_discussion at 9:45 sentiment: positive
video_pk 13255 · mention_pk 38838
Video thumbnail
Click to watch at 9:45 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
  • Fun theme
  • Engaging attractions
  • Good for theme park fans
Cons
  • Jeff less enthusiastic than Jamie
Thematic elements
  • Building theme park
  • Amusement Park
  • Light strategy
Comparison games
  • Roller Coaster Tycoon
  • Unfair
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
  • building — Building attractions and hiring staff
  • Objective Completion — Completing various objectives
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
  • Foster the Meeple - a channel all about board games
  • we have our team jeff team jamie patreons who are going to be voting on what the loser has to do
  • i love res arcana res arcana is quickly becoming one of my favorite games
  • adult where's waldo
  • knocked our socks off
  • i love it
  • so much fun
  • winter is coming
  • board game city up in here
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video GCNeO8_OoIw Unknown Channel game_review at 0:17 sentiment: mixed
video_pk 9393 · mention_pk 27729
Video thumbnail
Click to watch at 0:17 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
mixed
Pros
  • Strong, welcoming theme and art style
  • Accessible for casual players and lighter-weight audience
  • Solid card drafting and engine-building foundation
  • Blueprints and award cards add variability and replayability
  • Pleasant presentation and theme coherence
Cons
  • Limited player interaction compared to more competitive games
  • Gameplay can feel cold or sterile at times
  • Not particularly innovative; feels like a safe, familiar design
  • Could be underwhelming for experienced heavy gamers
Thematic elements
  • Theme parks, attractions upgrades, staff management, and blueprints for bonus points
  • Theme park construction and management with whimsical, colorful presentation
  • tableau-building with light thematic framing
Comparison games
  • It's a Wonderful World
  • Unfair
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
  • card drafting — Players draft cards from a market and park deck to build attractions, staff, and upgrades; market cards can be replaced.
  • engine building — Cards interact to create bonuses that scale across the park and rounds.
  • exponential scoring / scoring by features — Rides with upgrades can reward points exponentially; blueprints and showpieces influence scoring.
  • resource management / set collection — Manage money and coins; gain income from attractions, showpieces, and guests; collect blueprint bonuses.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
  • funfair is a theme that i simply love and it's a concept that works exceptionally well for a tableau building game
  • Mechanically funfair is not spectacular. It's a safe sort of card drafting and engine building game that won't leave experienced gamers applauding it for its innovation
  • the best thing about this game is its theme and art style it's bright engaging and welcoming well done mr cuddington
  • however, funfair feels like an overreaction to their previous title unfair which was a super mean game with the same theme
  • gameplay in funfair can feel cold and sterile and the player interaction is extremely limited
  • it's a light game for a casual audience who wants to spend an hour making a cool theme park with neat rides and upgrades while playing a solid yet not overwhelmingly complex game
  • funfair: the second bowl of porridge
  • the blueprint cards and award cards in the game do offer some extra wrinkles and make the targets you want to achieve different
  • There's something intrinsically fun and whimsical about theme parks and the art and presentation of the game backs that up
  • for a slightly more complex card drafted game try it's a wonderful world
  • and for something a lot more interactive and mean try unfair
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video GUcoeJcgwfI Unknown game_review at 0:20 sentiment: positive
video_pk 6247 · mention_pk 18505
Video thumbnail
Click to watch at 0:20 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
  • Rules are clear; rulebook well written
  • Smooth gameplay and clear graphic design
  • Accessible to families and new players
Cons
  • Luck factor is noticeable due to card draws
  • Economy can feel imbalanced and may require balancing house rules
  • End-game scoring depends on blueprints and awards, potentially punishing riskier plays
Thematic elements
  • Theme parks, attractions, upgrades, and scoring
  • Theme park construction within a city
  • Economic strategy with light elimination and upgrade track
Comparison games
  • Unfair
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
  • blueprints — Blueprints can grant end-game points if completed; incomplete halves yield penalties
  • build — Spend resources to place attractions/upgrades; limit of five attractions and no duplicates by name/theme on your gate
  • demolish — Remove an attraction or upgrade to free up space or adjust strategy
  • investors — Investors help accelerate building showcases and may reduce costs
  • loose_change — Gain one coin per attraction you have; rewards are uncertain and context-dependent
  • market_refill — Market cards are discarded after use and the market is replenished
  • showcase — Showcase placement is central to scoring and unlocks additional actions
  • staff — Hire staff to gain bonuses and income; staff are placed on the left of the gate
  • take — Take action to draw two cards from park or blueprint deck; choose one or none
  • upgrades — Apply upgrades to attractions to increase points; more upgrades on higher-value attractions
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
  • Funfair is a lighter version of Unfair.
  • The artwork is great, but more importantly the graphic design is clear and concise.
  • The rule book is extremely well written.
  • Rating it as a gateway game, Funfair will surely please beginners and families.
  • Luck is prevalent in the game.
  • We hardly had any ruling problems.
  • This game is marketed for those audiences.
  • You might not want to keep a card when you do the take action.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video nj3F6vDo76c Three Minute Board Games general_discussion at 8:00 sentiment: mixed
video_pk 5714 · mention_pk 16967
Video thumbnail
Click to watch at 8:00 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
mixed
Pros
  • functional, approachable design
Cons
  • unfair (the other game) is often better; FunFair tones down nastiness and loses edge
Thematic elements
  • pranks and competitive backstabbing
  • carnival/fairground
  • light, party-ish
Comparison games
  • Unfair
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Mechanics unknown.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
  • this exorcism for those games banishing them from my presence so they can move on to a better and hopefully more peaceful existence
  • there's no point holding on to stacks and stacks of boxes of games you're just never gonna play again
  • normalizing in the hobby
  • not every game needs to cater to my very peculiar Wants and needs
  • cathartic process of moving games on from my collection
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
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