A new game has come in from crowdfunding. Snowfall over Mountains is a solo only game from Pencil First Games about exploring the tranquil landscape of a mountain after freshly fallen snow. How do you get to enjoy that experience in this solo game? Let’s talk about it and checkout my video on Malts and Meeples YouTube.

How To Play Snowfall over Mountains

Snowfall over Mountains is a path building or connection building solo game where you place out tiles around your cabin to create scoring opportunities. You score five different elements during the game. You score rabbit trails, bear tracks, bushes, trees, and ponds. Each of them have different ways that they can score. You also lose points if you build out trails that don’t connect back to your cabin.

On your turn you look at the two tiles that you have and you place one of them. It needs to connect to the tiles that are already placed. But it only needs to overlap in one spot, not the whole tile. So no diagonal connections allowed. You do that until all of the tiles are placed. Then you look at see how many points you scored based off of the cards that were out for scoring. As the scoring cards are one for each group, but are randomly selected for each game.

You also play with tools. Tools allow you to break the rules, basically. Generally it is going to be things like you can move a tile after you play it. Or it might be something like draw three tiles and play all of them before you go back to your hand of tiles. It isn’t going to be anything major, but it will allow you to potentially get yourself out of a spot if you are having trouble finding the best play for scoring.

What Doesn’t Work?

I find no major complaints with this. I think there are two elements though that might trip up people at times. Firstly, this is a familiar feeling game. Games like Sprawlopolis and Orchard give me similar feels to it. By that I mean, it gives you the ability to play out cards or tiles to complete different scoring objectives. This one doesn’t allow you to overlap, but there is certainly an element that puts it into a similar family.

The other being that it’s tricky to keep track of all the scoring and pay attention to it all at once. Generally I let one of them go to the wayside. I don’t know that it is the best move to do that. I think that I probably messed up with that and getting a higher score because I didn’t score all of them well and didn’t use my tools well. But as you learn the game, it is going to be part of what you need to think about.

What Works Well?

I like the variety in scoring a lot. I sit down and I randomly select five different scoring objectives. Yes, they can be tricky to remember all at once, but generally none of the scoring is that complex. So I think it is more of a matter of holding it all in your head and getting practice with that. I also think it is going to provide good replayability for the game because without the mini expansion there are three per scoring objective which gives you a considerable number of combinations.

The game is also very fast. I play the game twice in forty minutes on the video. And even that isn’t a true forty minutes. The first time it takes a little bit longer as I need to remember the scoring. And there is the introduction, outro, and a brief pause as I need to check on my kid. So the game is very fast, under twenty minutes per time which is faster than it says on the box. I think it may take longer depending on how much you analyze each placement. So there is that, but the game overall is quick.

The game also doesn’t take up that much room. Now compared to Sprawlopolis and Orchard, probably about the same amount as Sprawlopolis and more than Orchard, so it isn’t the smallest footprint. But it is not large though like something like A Gentle Rain which can grow quite big. So I like how it contains itself for a solo game. It means that it is the type of game I could carry in a backpack and reasonably play at a bar or on my work desk.

Final Thoughts on Snowfall over Mountains

Snowfall over Mountains is a fun solo game. It’s light, easy to play, but offers great variety in what it does. When I put it in the same category of Orchard, a game that I like a lot, and Sprawlopolis, a game that I find good, that is very good company. A number of solo games do this, so it feels like it’s in a genre with limited space. But what it does and the variety it offers, it does it well.

And Pencil First Games always makes games with good production value. And Snowfall over Mountains is no exception to that. The artwork and the tiles are great. You don’t even need to punch out the tiles, which I appreciate. That could have made this box a lot bigger. Instead, they keep it in a small box that fits the tiles and cards easily. And it even fits the expansion in well without any additional box lift.

Finally, I want to emphasize that the game is really streamlined and easy to get to the table. Get your five scoring cards, draw your three and keep two tool cards. And then you basically start playing. The time from opening up the box to playing the game is under three minutes. I like that a lot for a small box solo only game. It means it is way easier to play than some other solo gaming experiences.

My Grade: B+
Casual Grade: A
Gamer Grade: B

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