Wondrous Creatures

Bad Comet have become known for their animal-themed games like Wild: Serengeti and Life of the Amazonia featuring high-quality wooden animal meeples. Wondrous Creatures is designed by Yeom Cheolwoong, and the premise is that you're exploring one of those lost islands that used to be beloved in movies because they were populated with fantasy creatures or those otherwise thought to be extinct.

In Wondrous Creatures the players are explorers placing their fantastical 'crew member' meeples across two hexes on a map, collecting eggs and/or picking up resources on neighbouring hexes. In lieu of a resource, you can take a card from the market display if it has that resource icon on it. You'll need to collect resources tho' to be able to pay the cost of playing cards from your hand, which is an alternative action. Played cards score you points and can give you an in-game benefit: for example, a magical energy-token action or single-use nets that can be used to nab eggs on neighbouring hexes. Some cards give you a bonus action which may score you points whenever you 'recharge' (take all your explorer meeples back off the board). Players will also be racking up points by meeting the achievement requirements for claiming trophies, and you are going to be in a race against other players to claim those points-scoring trophies. There's a bit of a push-your-luck element here too over the timing of achievement claims, so this is where you may need to keep a weather eye on what other players have in their tableaus and so which achievements they could also be in close contention for.

It's the egg and resource collection that gives Wondrous Creatures its great table appeal but, at its heart, this is a tableau-building card game where you're using the synergy between cards to build a points-scoring engine while still having an eye to the achievement requirements for the trophies. And, happily, this isn't a game that comes abruptly to an end before you get a chance to benefit from your 'engine'.

Along with some fantastic art from Sophia Kang, Bad Comet have once again delivered a game with top-notch production values. We especially liked the way your 'captain' meeple attaches magnetically to one of your wondous explorer creatures (tho' in practice that only signifies when you can activate your asymmetric power). Wondrous Creatures is a game that works at all player counts but, for us, it's at its best with two or three players because that keeps the gameplay reasonably brisk. Our two- and three-player plays have come in at around 90 minutes. The game is likely to run to two hours when you take the player count up to four. The game additionally incorporates components and rules for solo play.

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