SNAP Review – Mezen

We’re going to talk this week about a game that is literally ABOUT an art style: Mezen, a Russian folk art of two-color painting, primarily on wood. Unsurprisingly, that’s the name of the game, too.

Game

This is a SNAP review for Mezen.

Mezen is a tile-shifting puzzle game for up to five players, designed by Nikita Sorokin. It takes about half an hour, and it’s best for ages 12 and up.

Mezen is published by Hobby World and Arcane Wonders.

Art

All right, since this game is named for its art style, let’s talk about that.

Mezen painting designs feature blocks of red, with outlines and details added in black. That’s echoed by the components in this game.

Everything is red and black and white: from the cards, to the tiles, to the scoreboard, and even the scoring tokens.

Because there’s intense blocks of such few colors, each player gets assigned a distinct shape, instead of a color.

Mechanics

So let’s talk about the mechanics of Mezen, and how we play the game.

Each player takes the 25 tiles in their shape and randomly arranges them, light-side up, in a 5 by 5 grid in front of them. They get a matching shaped scoring token and put it on the central board.

They also take five of these tiny amulets. The rest go in the middle of the board.

Set up a deck of goal cards by looking for twelve with the same symbol. Then shuffle them and deal ten face-down to the two long sides of the board where the spots are. Reveal the first two goal cards, over here.

Mezen takes ten rounds to play. In each round, examine the goal for the current round to see what kind of arrangement will award points. Then, the Active player announces one of the five animal symbols: bird, horse, fox, hedgehog, or fish. Everyone finds a connected group of tiles with that symbol on their own grid, removes them, and sets them aside.

If you don’t like the animal named, pay the Active player one amulet to make a different animal grouping on your own grid.

You can also place an amulet on top of a tile, turning it into sort of a wild. This tile temporarily serves as a connector between two groups of tiles, letting you make a bigger group. But it also excludes that particular tile from being removed, which sometimes may be helpful.

Once you’ve removed your group of tiles, slide the rest of the tiles down to fill the empty spaces. Then flip over all the tiles you set aside, and put them back in to the new open spaces at the top of the grid, however you like. Try to arrange them to contribute to this round’s goals!

Once everyone has placed their flipped tiles, score victory points for each tile in your grid that meets the conditions of the current goal card.

Then flip the current goal face down to show the round is over, and flip the next goal card along the row, so there are always two goal cards revealed. Then, pass the Active Player reindeer to the left.

After the first round, you may see one new symbol on some of your dark-side tiles: the Spruce. This tree symbol acts like a wild when making and removing a group – in fact it MUST be a part of any group it touches. But it doesn’t act like a wild when it comes to scoring specific animal symbols.

Some goal cards may specify Spruce symbols as part of their requirements.

That’s most of the game, but we’re not quite done.

First of all, you need to know that there is a way to get more amulets. At the end of any round, you can choose to get two amulets instead of scoring that round’s goal. (This is a great option when you wouldn’t otherwise get any points that round!)

After the fifth round scoring, count up how many dark tiles you have in your grid and give yourself one point for each.

After the tenth and final round scoring, give yourself a point for every light tile you have, and one point for every amulet, and one point for every tile in the largest connected group you have – which can include Spruce tiles.

Whoever has the most points, wins the game.

Expectations

So that’s how we play Mezen. Anitra, what did you expect from this one?

I thought the art in this looked really really cool. And the idea of each player having a different shape is super clever. But once we started going through the instructions, it felt really confusing. I wasn’t sure exactly what the point of the game was, or what we were really trying to do.

Art-wise, I totally agree with you. The art on the front of the box grabbed me, and the more I looked at it, I realized it reused a lot of different shapes to be different things. Like tear drops could be hair, or fins, or leaves. It really reminded me, this is a unique and primitive art style. But Mezen is just that, an art style. So I had no idea how that would translate to the mechanics of a game.

Surprises

So what surprised us about Mezen?

Since this game was kind of hard to learn, I was surprised to eventually realize that it’s basically a solo game. In fact, there are rules to play solo, and the only major change is in when and how you get amulets. Playing solo, you always get to pick exactly the animal you want to use for a grouping, so you’ll never give up amulets to change it – or gain amulets when someone else wants to bypass what you named. Instead, you get one additional amulet every two rounds – put these on the goal cards, and unlock an amulet when you flip the card that it’s on.

There’s a lot of variability in the goal setup, but it doesn’t actually change the game that much. You’re always going to look ahead at what the next round’s goal is. And try to see if you can piece together an animal grouping that will let you re-arrange the tiles to better meet the next goal and the goal after that. Sometimes it will work, and sometimes it won’t.

For me, I really liked the sliding puzzle aspect of Mezen. I loved that you were constantly pulled back and forth, trying to please all of these different goals that are so wildly different. The only ones that are consistent are the dark and light tile goals at the fifth and the tenth rounds. The rest could be anything! And I love that variability.

I am a little disappointed in the rulebook in general. It seemed to take a really convoluted path to explain the game, and then when I got interested in finding out more about the Mezen art style, it was really hard to wade through the language used to describe it on the last two pages. I ended up doing research online instead, which was a little easier to interpret.

One other thing I want to add here is: the component quality on Mezen just isn’t that great. The cardboard is very thin. Our board came warped. So, if you are going to play this with a family, just be mindful that it might not be as robust as some of your other games.

Yeah, it’s fine but not amazing.

Recommended?

I would recommend Mezen to two distinct audiences. First, families who want a jumping off point to study more about folk art, especially in Russia or Scandanavia – this is kind of a Nordic style as well as Russian. Secondly, gamers who want a puzzle-y game with no player interference and challenges that never feel punitive.

We give Mezen 3½ animals out of 5.

And that’s Mezen, in a SNAP!

Find Mezen on Amazon, direct from Arcane Wonders, or at your friendly local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Mezen from Arcane Wonders 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?