A Puffin Puzzle!

The puffins need to retrieve their tools in order to repair their space station and get home. Can you help them complete 3 missions so they don’t stay lost in space for too long?

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What Is It?

The Goal of the game is to complete 3 missions before you run out of command deck cards
Solo Game
Grid Movement/Pattern Building – Each turn the player will use 1 of their command cards to move puffins around the grid. They may be able to swap diagonally, slide adjacent, or rotate 180 degrees. They need to align the corner puffins according to the current mission card to succeed, and connect their tethers to the center puffin in order to score well

Who Is It For?

1 Player
Ages 8 & Up – Very cute theme and approachable ruleset
Fans of small puzzle games, and working within a grid

PROS

Aesthetics – Very cute art
Rules are well-written
Easy set-up/clean-up
Fun to puzzle out your best move with each card
I like that the game kind of ramps up as you play – you discard random command cards as you get through the deck, so you have less to go through, and can’t rely on certain combinations coming up
I appreciate the flexible pricing model of the crowdfunding campaign

CONS

🔴I wish there was more card variety for changing the game up / the difficulty
🔴Rules on multiple cards versus a booklet is not my favorite, but keep in mind this is a prototype, so that might change in the final version

Final Thoughts

A super fun puzzle game! It reminded me a lot of ROVE: Results-Oriented Versatile Explorer from Button Shy – working out a puzzle within a grid – though this felt a little lighter than that one, which I thought worked well with the more cute/approachable theme. I do hope to see a bit more variety in cards to change the difficulty in the future, but I think if you like small solo games, this is worth checking out!

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Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 7/10

Designer – Edward Bell
Artist – Parker Simpson
Publisher – Red Stache Games
Kickstarter
Website