Evenglow: My Favorite Mechanism
Transcript
Hey, I'm Jamie with [clears throat] Stonemaier Games and today I'm going to talk about my favorite mechanism in the abstract game, the beautiful game Evenflow. This game is illustrated by an illustrator that I've had the pleasure of working with twice, Clementine Clementine Campardou. She worked on the Origin Story and Wormspan. And her art is is really really beautiful in this game. Uh My favorite mechanism in Evenflow is the core hook. So, let me describe how it works. On a player's turn, they're going to choose one of these little cards here and they're going to face it towards them and they're going to gain two tiles. So, if if I'm the player over here and I chose this card, I'm going to gain a red tile and a green tile. All other players gain the other two tiles, so like a peach tile and a purple tile. And simultaneously, I like that this game is simultaneously, we are going to we're all going to place those tiles on our mats independently of each other.
We're just doing it simultaneously. Um when I place on my mat, the core hook of the game is the place where I put one of those tiles on the left side of the mat must mirror the same place where I put the other tile on the other side of the mat. And they're all numbered to make it a little bit easy. So, for example, if I put this red tile on the number seven on this mat, then I must put the green tile on the seven of this mat. Uh This is really really clever. I I love the It like it it kind of It's one of those games where it used a part of my brain that I don't think I've used before because I have to mirror I have to balance these two uh uh uh placements and balance two sets two different sets of objectives. Now, the rules for the game are the same for both sides, but I might be working on two completely different things on either side of my mat um because I've been placing different colored tiles on either side of them. And cleverly, the game leans into the word exactly. There are lots of different tile tile types, in fact, almost all the tile types that want to be in exact number of exact uh uh quantities of groups. So, for example, the peach tiles, they want to be in exactly sets of three. You will lose your scoring for them if you put another tile next to it. Uh the green tile is the only one that just wants to be as big as possible. The red tile wants to be in groups of five, the yellow tiles in groups of four, and I believe it was the the purple tiles wants to be in exactly groups of two. So, having that uh the precise nature of it really adds
to this puzzle where you it it can end up being a little constraining by the end of the game, but in a good way, in a good in a way that really made me think, and in a in a way that made me also appreciate the special bonuses that you can get for completing specific configurations of tiles. There are cards that give you bonuses that let you maybe uh change something that you've already already placed. But, I love the combination of this core system, you must mirror the tiles that you place, combined with the use of exact groups, uh precise exact numbers of of tiles of certain types in within the groups. Uh because there will be times in the game, at least in my first game, where my mirror placement I would have broken some of those groups. I think I did break some of those groups, and then I didn't get to score that group at all. But, that was part of the puzzle of it. That was really interesting.
Um also I I do want to give a a short shout out to the idea that many of the groups have precise shapes that they want, but you weren't limited to that. For example, the the yellow tiles, they want to be in in a in a group of exactly four tiles. That's great. You can configure them however you want. However, if you happen to place them all in a straight line like this, uh then you get some bonus points. And you you actually get a bonus card from that, too. You get one of those cards with a special ability. I think that's really really clever. I know my mouse is very small on the screen here, but you can see the yellow tiles down here in the bottom right player mat. So, yeah, that that come this combination of mechanisms, using the word exact, using the mirror placement, and uh letting players to for uh more nebulous groups, but also giving them bonus incentives for having exact shapes for each type of tile. I thought it was really really clever in even glow.
Uh I think this is the only game that I've seen that uses a mirror mechanism like this. So I'd love to hear your thoughts if you've seen another game that uses something like like this. Or if you have a different favorite mechanism in even glow, let me know about that in the comments. Thanks.