Lodge: Discussion
Transcript
Hey everyone, welcome back to Board Games Unlocked and today I'm doing a discussion over Lodge. This is the newest game by what was it? Philip McFersonson. Peter McFersonson. Wow, I knew that. uh Peter McFersonson, who is the designer of uh two games that I thoroughly enjoy, Tiny Towns and uh Fit to Print. Although I feel like Fit to Print didn't get as much buzz as Tiny Towns did. However, uh I thoroughly enjoyed uh Fit to Print even though it's been a hot minute since I've played it. And Tiny Towns got tons of uh support over the years, and it's been one of my favorite spatial awareness games. So whenever Lodge was introduced, I was very excited because a I kind of like the theming uh you know for what it is of designing a kind of cozyesque ski lodge um or hotel resort and it was going to be spatial awareness because the other two I liked. Unfortunately, lodge is uh fine. It is a game that it was made and, you know, designed and and published and people bought it and that's probably all it's going to be getting. I don't I don't foresee this game getting as much buzz as uh even his his previous games. um just because
this this comes off as it it just doesn't have the same type of of sauce as the other games. Cuz for me, a spatial awareness game needs to have some sense of confinement to where when you are placing puzzles or placing pieces um you know to either fit either a diagram or you're confined to a certain you know area that gives at least my brain a very good like just sense of okay I need to make some adjustments. I need to do this and do this to be able to capitalize and feel good about the way that I'm placing everything. And this game just does not have that. It has a little bit of of that because of the guest placement. Uh you know, you have these these uh different types of guests that want to be in a specific color of room. And if you get those two colored groups of rooms next to each other, then you can just take that guest and pop them in one of the two rooms. And they want to be on a certain floor. And if you get them on that floor, then it's just you're able to get even more points.
But it's just too easy to be able to actually get that. uh especially because it's not a matter of I mean like I said this game does have the the elements of a spatial awareness where okay there's this play there's there's uh the central mat or the central thing of of tiles whichever row of tile you take that's the row has to go into your into your lodge but there's not that many types of colors so you're almost always going to get what you're needing. I think there was a few elements that I kind of had to ever use my little refresh thing. But overall, it's okay. I'm going to take this. I'm going to put it here. Oh, yeah. That's purple and yellow next to each other. I'm going pop this guest into one of those. All right. Okay. Your your turn. It just doesn't have anything that I enjoy out of these spatial awareness games. And then you have the amenities. And the amenities would probably be the most uh like the best example of trying to actually configure your lodge in uh in a specific way. But again, the amenities there's a decent variety of them, but a they're not exciting and b they're also easy to do because you're just able you're not confined to any sense. The only thing that you have to worry about is the
height of your of your lodge. You have four floors and that's it. And you can't build a fourth floor until you have a third below it. And then you can't build a third until you have a second. You know, standard stuff. But whenever the amenities come out and they just say have five yellow rooms in your lodge, okay, well, because there's a million yellow rooms, that's going to be super easy.
[snorts]
Um, some of them are just, oh, have a guest in a certain color. Have, you know, three green rooms in in a column. Oh, man. Look, there's three green rooms. And sometimes those might be somewhat challenging because, you know, you're looking at the map and then or you're looking at the the middle board and you see, oh, there's a green room in the second and the third and the fourth floor. Okay. Well, I hope no one takes those from me because the only kind of interesting part about this game is which I also don't really like, but is that the middle thing doesn't naturally refresh it. What'll happen is when a certain row is either completely um empty or there's only one color, then what you do is you take this and then you will slide it forward or you'll tilt it up and then you know to fill out the the different the empty spots and then you refill them from the bag.
All right. Well, again, it it just feels sometimes that the only type of hindrance that this game has is the fact that the map or the middle section doesn't naturally refresh. So, you're just kind of stuck by taking colors you don't want. Um, but again, that's not that big of a deal because you're not confined to a uh to a certain section because the game only ends when you either place your 12th guest. So, you can't be hosed by this because you eventually have to either place your 12th guest or the tile bag um the tile bag runs out and there's a lot of tiles in that bag. So, there's nothing that stops you from just kind of taking a level one every single time and just keep building it out or taking an amenity and building it out into a level one or two cuz those kind of get placed just like regular rooms.
So, you can just kind of stall out, oh, I I specifically need a blue room on the second floor, whatever. Okay. Well, then I needed to be in a specific spot, so I'm just not going to build there. And I'm just going to keep building out my level ones and just keep taking amenities to fill out nonsense. Uh even though you'll never potentially uh capitalize off those. There's no reason why you can't just take them. Uh it would be somewhat interesting is if you did try to build out an amenity and if you didn't do it, it was negative points. But nope, I can just take Oh, hey, this one needs uh blue, you know, even number of yellow rooms. I don't even have that. Okay, I'm just going to pop that down.
Um cuz there rooms that you can take to be able to work towards. So, the game is very just kind of loose with its its puzzle aspect. And for spatial awareness games, I feel like they kind of need to be tight. you have to have an enclosed space, you know, for Tableau building games, Everddell or something like that where, hey, you have a, you know, a 3x5 grid or 4x5 grid, whatever it was. Um, in fit to print his other his previous game, you had this the literal board, uh, depending on which day it was. I think it was Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and it was, you know, the board got a little bit bigger every single, you know, round, but you were confined to a certain section.
[clears throat]
And then of course with tiny towns, each uh each square could only hold one resource and you could only clear it out when you completed the the diagram of a building. So that you would take one of the buildings or take all the cubes of the resource, pull those off, and then put one of the buildings in one of those spots, but that was a permanent building. I think that was like a 4x4 square. This game just doesn't have that at all. So I I don't know. I just think that again, it's not bad. It's just not very good. I found myself every time I've played this just really feeling like I was going through the motions. Never once have I ever had like a situation where I had to sit here and think on what I wanted to do. And oh man, okay, if I get a yellow room there, then I'd be able to pop that guest into that. Oh, and then if I put that there, then I can fill out that amenity. Uh, no, that's never never happened once. It always just Okay, I'm I'm just going to take this. Put that there. Your turn.
Oh, wait a minute. Never mind. There's a I just put a yellow and a purple room here. So, I'll just pop him on onto that spot. And again with the way the guests are, yeah, you want them to be on a specific floor because then they're that you get the floor bonus. So if you get a guest that wants to be on the fourth floor and you do that, he's now worth four points on top of the two points per guest. Uh but you don't have to do that. The game can easily end if you could easily just start taking tiles that match the guests that are out and then just rush the end of the game. And you know, if you just have more guests than people, then okay, I'm probably going to just naturally get more points than you. Uh even if you are able to score some amenities, cuz even the amenities, like some of the amenities are five points, five, six, seven points.
But if you just get one guest onto a floor, which is very easy to do, uh then it is one, like I said, easy easier to do, and two, it gets you almost as much points as an amenity. So, and they're just there's more of those out there, and they constantly replenish. I mean, the amenities do, too. So, yeah. I just um not not really vibing with this one. Um so yeah, it is a fine game. It's not long, which is nice. Uh but neither were his I don't think his other games were that long. And if they were longer, they at least had you invested more. So, I mean, it it I guess it just kind of begs the question of would you rather have a shorter game that you don't really have to think that much about or would you rather have a somewhat longer game, but you're actually invested? I mean, kind of comes down to personal preference. And this game is very, very simple to set up. All the tiles are in one bag, all the guests are in another. You have literally just a plastic tray in the middle and then the holder for the amenities and a bag that holds the amenities.
That's it. So, it's it's a small unfortunately it's not a it's not like a travel anywhere game because you still have to have some table space to be able to put out all the the lodge tiles. But it again is a very simple one to go go out and just play. But I also don't think Fit to Print or Tiny Towns were any going off their base games. Well, Fit to Print didn't get an expansion, but Tiny Towns has quite a few. Uh, going off Tiny Town's um, uh, base game and Fit to Print. I don't really think they're that much more complex than this. This is the the lightest of all of his games, but those are all relatively light and still are just designed better. [snorts] So yeah, I and and yeah, I also don't the the art is not my style uh whatsoever. So uh yeah, this game just did not do it for me.
And on a scale of 1 to 10, I think I'll give Lodge a five. Run-of-the-mill average game. and I'll probably never think about it again after this year. So that's it everyone. That's my thoughts on launch. Let me know what you think of the game in the comments below. Other than that, like, comment, share, and subscribe. And have a wonderful whatever type of day it is for you.