SNAP Review – Landmarks

Andrew, when you’re driving somewhere, how do you usually navigate?

I usually have a pretty god sense of direction, so I can generally just get a feel for north/south, east/west. And then I usually go in the general direction I’m trying to get to, and I figure I’ll notice something eventually that I recognize. And then when I get close, I pull out ye old Siri GPS.

For me, I usually look at a map before I get started, but then I really depend on landmarks to keep me oriented. Because my sense of direction is terrible.

What if we stopped talking about how we drove around, and instead we talk about a game that’s all about finding – or giving clues to – the right landmarks?

This is a SNAP review for Landmarks.

Game

Landmarks is a cooperative word-guessing game by Danilo Valente and Rodrigo Rego. The box says it’s for 2-10 players, ages 10 and up, and it plays in about 20 minutes.

Landmarks is published by Floodgate Games.

Art

So Anitra, let’s talk about the sweet art in this game.

The very first thing I noticed about this game was the board – it’s actually a cloth map overlaid with hexagons. It’s a great way to really imbue this word game with some thematic flair.

And the reverse side is just plain hexagons, if the map style is visually confusing for anybody on your team.

The second thing is the dry erase components: there’s a marker, a bunch of double sided hexes, and the tracker board. They’re all pretty good quality and erase pretty well.

The third, and maybe the most important feature, are the cards. Each one of these has a mini-map with symbols for everything the clue giver needs to know – and there’s a cute little stand to hold it so that only the clue-giver can see it.

Mechanics

So, we’ve got a map and dry erase tiles, but you said this is a word-guessing game. How does that work?

One person is the Pathfinder, while the rest of the players make up the Party. The Pathfinder randomly selects a map card: green for an easier challenge, or yellow for a standard challenge. They place it in that card stand so that only they can see it. Then they write the three starting words from the bottom of the map, each onto a separate hex tile, and place them in their corresponding locations on the island mat.

Put the tracker board where everyone can see it, with seven blank hex tiles in a stack.

It’s the Pathfinder’s job to help direct the party to find at least one treasure and then get to the exit, before their tile stack runs out.

Each round, the Pathfinder comes up with a one-word clue and writes it on a hex tile. They reveal it to the party, and then the party decides where to place it on the map. The new tile must physically connect to at least one existing tile.

How do you figure out where it should go? Well, the Pathfinder should give a word clue that thematically connects to other words on the board.

In this example, the landmarks we’re starting with are CURLING, VILLAGE, and FROWN. The Pathfinder writes “Winter”. Where should that tile go?

The party can discuss where they think the new word should go, but eventually, they’ll have to make a decision.

Now the Pathfinder consults their map and announces the effect of the space the party chose. The possible effects are:

For a blank space – Nothing happens.
A Treasure space – Mark a treasure on the board. You’re one step closer to winning the game.
A Curse – Having a curse prevents you from leaving the island. Oh no!
But there’s the Amulet – The amulet cancels out one curse. It doesn’t matter if you get the amulet before or after finding a curse.
Water – Refill the tile stack on the tracker board, up to your water limit.
Trap – A trap makes you remove a tile from the stack on your tracker board immediately, AND permanently reduces your water limit.

And of course, there’s the EXIT.

If you found the exit and you have at least one treasure, and no active curses, you win! If you have all the treasures, you super-win.

But, if you found the exit and have more curses than amulets – you lose.

And if you run out of tiles before finding the exit, you lose, too.

In addition to the two difficulty levels, there’s also a team vs. team variant, with a different set of map cards.

Flip over the tracker board to the team side. Now each team has a Pathfinder, who gives clues to help them find their own color-coded treasures. There are no limits on the tile stack and no exit. But there are still curses, which will prevent a team from winning the game.

Whoever finds four treasures first will win.

Expectations

So that’s how we play. What did we expect from Landmarks?

I was a little skeptical at first. We’ve played a lot of clue-giving word games, and they start to feel very same-y after a while. Landmarks was pitched to me as Codenames meets Just One, so that’s what I was expecting.

I saw a demo of this game, and it looked like it had enough of a twist that it would stay interesting. This sort of exploration vibe does feel a little bit like Codenames, but in a way that much more obviously builds off of previous clues.

Surprises

So, that’s what we expected. What surprised us?

Being the Pathfinder is a lot harder than you would think – a lot harder! Obviously it can be hard to come up with really good clues to direct the party in the way you want them to go – but you also need to be thinking ahead, of how the clues you give are going to affect future clues!

We played a game where you kept trying to direct us with similar clues, and we ended up debating as a group if “mission” belonged only with “crusade” or if it also belonged with “treasure”.

So this is the interesting thing about this game – you really do need to think multiple clues ahead. You described exactly what happened when I was the clue giver.

If you’ve got a hexagon with multiple edges that are open and don’t relate to other hexagons, there’s no way to clue your friends into WHICH ONE of those faces you actually want them to use!

Yeah, we want that one, not that one – you’re not allowed to do that!

And so the strategy there gets really interesting.

That being said, for me this game varied wildly from very easy to very hard depending on the map tile that we happened to use. It felt like there was a lot of opportunity that was kind of wasted if the only goal is to get at least one treasure and get out.

I know there’s supposed to be this goal of getting four, but really, most of the time, ANY success is what we ended up going with.

This is one of the reasons why I think the team mode is going to stand the test of time better than the fully cooperative mode in this game. There really is a race in the team mode – and it’s a much more desperate goal to get all four of the treasures, which is, honestly, way harder.

For my money, future games of Landmarks are going to be in the team vs team part of the game. Otherwise, I’d rather just get one of those games that are way easier to get to the table, like So Clover or Just One.

Recommended?

We recommend Landmarks if you’re looking for a new way to play word guessing games with a group of people who like to battle it out.

This combination of navigating around a map, and planning for future word clues, does breathe a little bit of new life into this genre.

We give Landmarks 3½ map tiles out of 5.

And that’s Landmarks, in a SNAP!

Find it on Amazon, directly from Floodgate Games, or at a game store near you.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Landmarks from Floodgate Games for this review.

This post contains affiliate links, which do not change your price, but help support The Family Gamers.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?