Adventure Land

Designed by: Michael Kiesling,Wolfgang Kramer

Adventure Land is a simple adventure game for families, where players move their adventures across a landscape of forests, mountains and cities, collecting things on the way – and doing battle with Fog Monsters!

The board shows the landscape in question, made up of a grid defined by letters and numbers. Each player has a set of adventurers in their own colour, and these are placed at the top left of the board. During the game you can choose to move either two of your adventurers (as far as you like in one direction) or move one adventurer twice, but they must always move either rightwards, or downwards – they cannot ever go up or left. At the start of each player’s turn two cards are flipped revealing either swords, herbs, companions, gold, or fog monsters. If you stop on a square that has anything but the latter on it, you gain the item in question – swords, herbs and gold go into your supply, whereas companions will now travel with you.

If you stop on a square containing a fog monster, you must do battle: your combat score is the amount of adventurers on the square plus the value of any herb tiles you choose to add. You can discard swords in order to roll dice as well – as long as the total equals or exceeds the monsters combat score, you defeat it and claim the points. You can re-roll or manipulate rolled dice by discarding gold.

The game comes with three different ‘adventures’ that all have a variation on the above, but essentially function in a very similar way. Apart from a deadly sprite that moves up and down the river, the main thing to bear in mind is how quickly to move your adventurers – the fog monsters gather in the south, but you don’t want to rush their and miss out on goodies to be found in the north… Play continues until both the swords and companions have run out, then scores are totalled.

Sam says

A very accessible game for kids 8 and up or even younger: there's usually a productive turn to be had, so you're almost always picking stuff up; gathering your forces for battle. Although it's pretty light on rules it does encourage a bit of strategic thinking too.

The guru's verdict

  • Take That!

    Take That!

    Minimal from each other - the worst you can do is take a herb or sword someone was hoping for. But the game itself can bite back occasionally, if you are defeated by a fog monster or eliminated by a sprite.

  • Fidget Factor!

    Fidget Factor!

    Very low indeed. There's nothing in Adventure Land that should stop the game moving briskly.

  • Brain Burn!

    Brain Burn!

    Light. You only really have to choose where to go.

  • Again Again!

    Again Again!

    Variations come in the game itself (there are three games on the basic principle) then the cards come out randomly as well.