Looking for a charming and light board game, perfect for family or friends new to gaming? Maybe it’s time for Snow Time this holiday season!
Snow Time is a 3-5 player card bluffing game designed by Frank Meyer and published by Lui Meme. The game plays in roughly 20-40 minutes and is on the lighter side of gameplay.
Snow Time: $29.99
Get yours for less at Miniature Market
At last, the island is covered in snow; tonight, fruit will appear on the mysterious tree. The five villages around are sending their valiant heroes to fight among its branches. Which champion will manage to get the precious fruit while dodging enemy snowballs?
Contents:
1 Board
5 Wooden Totem Markers
50 Cards
15 Fruit Tokens
2 Dice
1 RulebookAges: 10+
Players: 3-5
Game Length: 30 minutesNote: Published by Lui-Même; Distributed by Asmodee North America.
Snow Time: A Treetop Snowball Fight Board Game
In Snow Time you play as the children of one of five clans. Your goal is to obtain the magical fruit that blossoms from the tree when the snow falls. Each player will try to outmaneuver and outsmart your opponent to gain victory by scoring in three different ways. You do this by playing action cards with numbers representing a branch on the tree.
At the beginning of each round fruit will grow on a random branch. You score points for gathering fruit, but beware, players above you will knock you down. This keeps you from gaining any fruit and forces you to discard the card you played.
Fighting is another way of scoring points in Snow Time. Any branch you occupy with other players causes a fight. All players will fall and score for all others as well as discarding the used cards. Being on a branch one level above another player causes a fight but only your opponents fall.
Since branches are resolved top to bottom, it’s possible to save a player two levels below because the top knocks down the middle before the bottom is defeated. This makes for a rich level of strategy for not necessarily going directly for fruit. You definitely have to bluff and keep track of the cards your opponents lost when they fall.
The third way of scoring in Snow Time is gaining Mana. Mana is found in the magical roots of the tree, so the players who remain at the lowest level gain a point.
The score track is very simple and acts as a race track. The first player to reach the end outright wins the game. There are also special bonus sections on the track. Each of these sections features one of the three scoring symbols. If you land on one by way of the matching symbol you gain extra points.
For example, say I gain two points from fighting two players and land on the fight symbol. I’ll get boosted forward one or two extra spaces. Timing is key to exploiting these bonuses.
There are also two special once per game cards that each player has access to. The blizzard will instantly knock all other players out of the tree. The watcher lets you see what everyone else plays before you play your card. Since these are very powerful cards you can never reclaim them.
The last special card always stays in your hand. It’s a healing card you play to recover two of your lost number cards.
Snow Time is a wonderfully light game which I really enjoyed. The components are very charming and the game features the amazing artwork of Xavier-Gueniffey-Durin, more commonly known by his pseudonym Naiade.
His artwork graces many great games like Tokaido and Big Book of Madness. Full disclosure- I blindly purchased this game at GenCon based solely on his art. Thankfully the gameplay was fantastic and unlike anything currently in my collection.
I recommend this as a light filler game which is great for newer players or even as a family game. With great mechanics and beautiful artwork and components, you can’t go wrong with Snow Time.
