This charming Day of the Dead board game may look tame, but it’s a brain melter
When I first started playing hobby board games, it was simple to tell the brain burners from the gateway games – did the game look ugly as sin? Yeah? Probably a brain burner. How times have changed. The recently released Ofrenda has a gorgeous art style that disguises gameplay as tense as defusing a bomb.
I’ve received a review sample of Ofrenda from publisher Osprey Games. I’ve not played it anywhere near enough to do a review yet, but I wanted to share my first impressions as I think they’ll be useful for anyone who is judging this game by its box art.
While Ofrenda has many hallmarks of a gateway board game – appealing art, user-friendly components, and a simple turn sequence with very few systems to learn – it’s as much of a mental workout as any of the best strategy board games.
It’s the Day of the Dead, and up to four players are building ofrendas, altars of offerings and photographs of dead relatives. The art for these portraits is cheerful and wholesome, and the components – from the gorgeous marigold flower currency, to the sockets in your ofrenda board that ensure cards are never knocked out of place – are attractive and very functional.
It’s so welcoming! And the gameplay is simple to learn. On your turn you’ll select a new portrait of a dead relative from the central supply, optionally collecting a candle at the same time. Then you’ll place a portrait onto your ofrenda, perhaps also placing a marigold or candle at the same time if you have the option.
Each portrait comes with an offering represented by an icon, such as chocolate skulls, liquor, salt, or fruit, and each icon has one of several shapes and colored borders. Portraits are placed on their ‘unlit’ side, on the bottom left of which is the instruction about how to make that relative happy. If you can satisfy them, you get to flip them to their lit side, scoring you points at the end of the game.
But even in death, family gatherings are a nightmare to co-ordinate. See, each relative will only be satisfied – or eternally dissatisfied – by the offerings and icon borders of the portraits adjacent to them.
There are relatives who want to be adjacent to at least two of a certain type of offering, or two of a specific color; there are relatives who want every portrait around them to meet one of two possible conditions. Some portraits can’t stand certain offerings in their vicinity.
For example, the portrait that my play group dubbed ‘tequila granny’ – she comes with an offering of liquor – wants none of her neighbours to have an offering of either fruit or salt. We assume she liked to drink her tequila straight, back when she was alive.
With all these different preferences, creating a seating arrangement that doesn’t piss off half your relatives is a heroic achievement. Anyone who has made seating plans for a wedding will relate. So despite all the rules being simple, making a decision is not – because for each portrait in your hand and each open slot on your board, whatever you choose will have an impact on all the neighbouring slots, for the rest of the game.
Look at this board – four open slots, adjacent to four as-yet unsatisfied relatives. Can any of them be satisfied with the cards in your hand? Which card, in which placement, will set you up best to play your other cards later?
That’s before we consider the end-game scoring: you score more points from lit portraits that have lots of lit neighbours. Marigolds and candles placed on your board both provide additional end game victory points. You can only place them when you surround their socket with three portraits, and they’ll get points at the end of the game for any of those candles that are lit.
But there are wrinkles that mean you may not always be able to place them when you have the chance. Marigolds are a vital currency, spent to access the central two portrait slots, or to give you more flexibility when choosing new portraits from the market – sometimes you’ve run out, and sometimes you might have to distort your strategy and place a portrait in a corner slot just to regain a marigold.
Candles and must be lit before they can score any points, by meeting certain conditions in your ofrenda. But picking up a candle that synergises with your ofrenda might also cost you marigolds.
It’s all very simple individually, but as a whole… yowza. If the decision making begins to feel easier after a few more games, this might be one of the best board games ever at turning simple game systems into juicy decisions. Or maybe it will just be a quagmire of analysis paralysis. Much more testing is needed before I pass judgment – keep watching Wargamer for a future review!
If you’re already playing Ofrenda, come and let me know what you think of it in the official Wargamer Discord community!
If you want a slightly simpler game in which you gradually fill up a board with beautiful game pieces while cursing your earlier decisions, check out our Azul review! Its on our best board games list, and ranks highly on our guide to the the best couples board games (though it’s not limited to just two players).
