Smurfs Hidden Village Review

boardgamequest.com:

Games often borrow heavily from each other. The Deckbuilding in Dominion spawned a genre of games. But sometimes you want a little bit more. *In the distance some sing-song La-la-La’s float through the air*

*Lost Ruins of Arnak and Dune Imperium enter the chat*

But sometimes you don’t want to battle monsters…

*Lost Ruins of Arnak exits the chat as the singing gets louder*

Or science fiction themes. Or maybe you don’t want to compete for victory with your friends *Dune Imperium exits the chat twice as the singing gets louder* and there just aren’t any games that do those things.

*Laa–Laa–La-La-La-Laa La-LaLaLa-Laa* Smurfs Hidden: Village arrives offering a family-friendly worker placement and deck-building game for one to five players ages 8 and up. Game times clock in closer to an hour than the 30 minutes listed on the box.

Each player gets a hand of starting Smurfs, each with their own unique power. The problem is these Starting Smurf powers aren’t great and some are quite bad. Players will alternate taking turns performing the following actions:

1. Play a Smurf card and use their ability
2. Place a Smurf worker on one of the locations to take its action. Some of these spaces require two Smurfs which means the first player that plays there won’t trigger the action or pay the associated cost. Some actions are dangerous which require rolling the danger die and if Azreal (the cat) is at that location you’ll also roll the orange cat die.

Some locations will grant resources that are used for the other location actions which include construction, sheltering Smurfs, Rescuing Smurfs from the forest or the Howlibird, or drawing new invention cards. Building inventions is a free action that can be done at any time.

Players can opt to play with a white danger die which has a few positive sides or a red one that’s all bad. The danger die will also move Azreal around, which can be good or bad, depending on your needs at that time. One of the icons on both die is the