Osmero Board Game Review | Zing

Last week, another well-known brand appeared here. However, after the duel from the world of the Lord of the Rings, we enter a realm that does not depend on any important IP. Today we have a review of the Osmero car seat, which caught our attention so much that we could not help but write about it.

Number of players: 2–6

Play time: 15 – 30 minutes

Price: 449 CZK (Tlama Games)

Age: 10+

You need to find the best route to Osmero in eight moves.

The continent of Alooda is a wild place that literally changes under the feet of its discoverers, because in this deck, players shape it with location cards. At the very beginning, everyone has three cards at their disposal, with a card offer in front of them, consisting of a number of chips, which is always one card more than the number of players. The basic concept of this game is actually very simple. On your turn, you always play one of your cards. Then the player with the lowest value chooses from those offered, but this usually results in the loss of another card.

The creators assume that when you line up cards one after another, you need to line up the pieces so that the higher value always follows in order to move forward efficiently. When you manage to place a higher card in front of a lower one, you gain access to the Shrine Deck, from which, once you have access to it, you can choose one card at a time from a certain number, which is determined primarily by how many Card-cards you have. You can find this on location cards, as well as in Shrines. The Shrines themselves then bring their owner various resources, conditions, as well as tasks that you try to complete in the name of gaining points.

You try to think about the tasks all the time while laying out the cards. It is very important to structure your journey in such a way that you can actually benefit from it. Some tasks require a certain resource on the cards you have already drawn. In others, the authors work with the fact that they want a certain number of night cards from you. It would seem that there is nothing easier than putting eight cards on top of each other and then evaluating them beautifully, but here it is not so. After completing the entire quest, you evaluate the eight location cards that you lay out in front of you. The creators here work with the idea of ​​​​traveling backwards, so the evaluation occurs by first evaluating the last card, after which you continue to the original beginning of your quest.

Because of this, it can easily happen to you during the game that cards that at first glance look tempting will give you zero points, while those that you didn’t expect much from will still give you something. Shrine cards can become a false defense for you. This is because they are somehow outside of your travels, so they count towards the various challenges from the very beginning, regardless of when you got a certain token in your hand. In all respects, Osmero makes you very cleverly construct your path so that replaying it makes as much sense in reverse as possible, which is inherently great. There are only eight rounds in the entire game, so you don’t have to worry too much about its length. Interaction between players is minimal, as everyone has their own path that their little man is following.

Once the eight cards are laid out, each of them is evaluated. In the end, the winner of the entire game is the one who managed to get the most prestige points while traveling through the map he created. If the gameplay seems too easy for you, you can optimize the game a little. The starting number of cards can be adjusted. It is possible to make five from three, but with the fact that you immediately discard two of them, which for me is more of a cosmetic step than something that would really shape the difficulty.

Osmero can surprise with its qualities

The magic of board games is that they have different ways to interact. Their focus on visuals, which makes this game special, pays off. They have managed to create a graphically interesting card game that has you doing equally interesting activities. I really like the fact that the journey can’t be planned like in other games, but you have to take into account the fact that the assessment only happens when you return.

And the creativity with which this element is handled is the Osmero’s greatest asset, which, however, makes it primarily a tool for more experienced players than something I would recommend to beginners or completely inexperienced snowboarders. Although after a few games they will undoubtedly like it.

We would like to thank the Czech distributor Mindok for providing us with a copy of Osmero.