Footprints Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Footprints, a hand management and racing game published by Chilifox Games. In Footprints, you play as a prehistoric tribe tying to survive and make your way.

When I first heard that a game called Footprints was next in my review queue, I assumed it was going to be one of those beautiful small box games with art by Beth Sobel in which players are strategically placing footprints of varying pressure and size into a grid that resembles a calm beach scene. Not really sure why that’s where my mind went, but that’s a topic for another day.

Instead, what I got was a hand-management game with its theme firmly rooted in the struggle post-ice age humans had as they tried to survive a changing landscape. Now, none of that is overtly tied to the theme (and I still question the title overall—do you leave footprints on rocky terrain?), but regardless that’s what this game is about.

Footprints is designed by Eilif Svensson, Åsmund Svensson, and Geir André Wahlquist for 1-6 players who should budget roughly an hour or so to play.

Footprints is a resource- and hand-management game in which players will move across a hexagonal grid to collect said resources and turn them in to mark their territory (in the least gross way possible). To move along the terrain, players will be using the 13 cards associated with their Clan as well as a single leader card. Each of these cards has specific terrain types that the players can trigger to move and a bonus action that will improve player abilities on their board for a future turn, thereby increasing their movement range for a given terrain.

Except in certain circumstances, players must choose either the movement action or the upgrade action on each turn. The players also have a leader card with a special power that will be triggered just once during the game. As players progress along the board they will pass spots that grant them resources in the form of food and animal remains and so on. (They’re just circular tokens in practice,