The Hungry Gamer Reviews Oddland
Transcript
Oo, that looks tasty. Welcome folks. The Hung Gamer is back with another game review. And today we're talking about Oddland, designed by Dan Schumacher with art by Cam Kendall and published by AllPlay. And thank you to AllPlay for sending me this copy along with the expansion and the deluxe upgrade so I can make this video. Additionally, please make sure you turn your click on subtitles because if I make any mistakes in the rules overview, that is where you'll find the corrections. Now, what this game is is this is a titling game and creature placement game. And what that means will make sense in just a moment. And I'll point out that these scoring conditions here are all from the core game. And the expansion adds a few more options here that I won't be showing you right now, but just understand that that is what the expansion adds. And I'll also point out that as I said, I have the deluxe version here, which has these cool wooden meuples. And the core game has tokens that look like this. Obviously, I haven't punched these out cuz they got the cool meeples, but they are a little bit larger and they lay down flat. And so, what this game is, as I said, is a is a tile placement game where you're making this shared map and after every turn, you're going to place down one of your creatures and you will score it right away. Now, with that said, if you are not interested in how this game is played, I want to jump into my final thoughts. Then you want to go to the timestamp on the screen right now for those of us still here. Let's talk about how this game is played. So, first off, I'm going to slide these other tiles to the side. And I very quickly will show
you some of these so you have an idea of what I'm talking about when I say scoring. And I'll also point out here that each of these has an A and a B side. So, you have slightly different scoring conditions for each one. And as you're and as we are making this land, every time you place a tile, you're going to then place one of the critters. So, for example, the grizzly here, if I when you place it, you can get three points for every surrounding mountain space as well as the space that it's on. While the kangaroo here is going to get four points per species in a row or column, whichever has fewer. So, you're going to look side to side and see which rower column also has critters in it. And all of these are going to be different, but that just kind of gives you a quick idea. And I will just play out a turn or two here so you have an idea of what is going on. And each turn is very simple.
You will have some tiles in your hand to start. And on your turn, you will place a tile. And so, you place a tile and then you place a species. And so just for the sake of argument, we'll just say that I'm going to place the Pidgeorse here and I'll get two points per desert space. So if I place it right here, then I would gain two points because there's one desert space right there. And I would look at my shape or color, which is the white here, and I would find my pigor, which is down here, and I would go ahead and score that two points. Then the next player would go and then they would place down their tile. And their tile has to cover one or two spaces of what's already placed. So we'll just say that they're going to do this like so.
And then they're going to go ahead and place their flora right here. And that would get them one point for territory in the space. And so they place their flora. And now they have to place it on the tile they just placed. So I couldn't place it up here. We'll say they'll just place it right there. And then there, as I said, they get one point per territory and space. So 1 2 3. And so the red would get three points for their flora. And you simply go back and forth just like that until everyone has scored all of their critters. And then whoever has the most points is going to win the game. Now, as I mentioned with the expansion, there are two more creatures that you get and some alternate scoring variants for the flora. Though in any given game, you will have five critters and one flora scoring condition. And then at the end of your turn, you'll simply draw a new tile into your hand. And that's how this game works. So, what do I like about this game? First off, the art on the cards and the weird critters is adorable. It's It's so weird, but I'm here for it. I love how weird they are.
You can hear Snug the cat over there. She's here for it, too. The next thing I'll say is this is as is kind of all plays modus operandi a fast easytoplay game that is in a small box. And with that said, even though it's in a small box and it's easy to play, there is some significant heft to it, especially if you get that expansion pack, which adds a few more of the critters that you can use. And the real delight in the game comes from the way that you're putting out the different cards, making the the territory, and trying to figure out the best way to take that one shot that you have with each of the animals that you're going to score. And that's a delight because you kind of have to figure out which of the animals you're going to kind of sacrifice as a poor score.
And I mean, that's the core of the game, figuring out how it is that you can place a thing and put down an animal that's not only going to score you points right now, but set you up for something later on and not set up your opponent or opponents. That is a delight. The next thing I'll say is there is again if you have that expansion pack a decent amount of replay here because each of the different critters scores differently and each of the different critters has two different sides to the card. So you have a lot of different options as you start mixing and matching the different scoring conditions. And I mentioned that expansion pack because the expansion pack is also going to give you extra flora options. So that really is going to expand everything yet again.
Next thing I'll say is it looks pretty darn good on the table. Obviously, I have the deluxe meuples or I guess they're like deluxe standees I guess, whatever you want to call them. I have the deluxe ones that kind of stand up, the core game ones that kind of lay flat and I don't think they look quite as good, but they still look pretty good. And I think the game looks really good on the table as I mentioned. And again, all of that is in a very small, simple box. So, what are my quibbles with the game? And I really only have one, and that is the first few times that you play, it's slower than it needs to be because every single time you place down a card or a tile, I should say, you're stopping and looking at how does every single critter score? And until you've played through it or memorized it or whatever, you're going to be doing that over and over again. And because the game does not come with a kind of player aid that tells you how each of these critters scores, you're passing the cards back and forth every single turn. And so even though this is a light, quick, simple game, you're going to have to play it several times before you're able to just play the game straight through. And for such a small, inexpensive, and as I said, easy to learn game, that is kind of strange. And I think it's a real miss that they don't have a card in there that just tells you this is how every single creature scores, one for every
player. I think that's a huge huge miss. Well, a huge huge miss in, you know, $15 game or whatever it is. But still, I do think that's a miss. But there you have it, folks. That is Oddland. I like it. As I mentioned earlier, I really do think this is a game that is kind of a smashup of confusing lands from Envy Borggan Games and Life of the Amazonia from Bad Comic Games. Both games that I really enjoy. And it takes those two and they kind of boom smashes it together into a quick, simple to play and very satisfying game. I think this is probably one of the best of these small box allplay games that I've played. I really do enjoy it. Obviously, I haven't played all of them because I have 57 billion of them, but I really do enjoy this one. I think it's very clever. And if you like that tile laying and you like that idea of the unique scoring conditions for each of these different critters, then I think this one is one that you should absolutely take a flyer on. I quite enjoyed it. It's going to stay on my shelf for the foreseeable future for sure. But there you have it, folks. As always, if you found this video useful, please like, subscribe, share, maybe become a channel member. As always, thank you so much for watching.
Have a wonderful, wonderful day.