Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/8652556/adventurous

Designers: Dustin Dobson, Milan Zivkovic
Publisher: Button Shy
Artist: Fachri Maulana

To sum this game up: it’s another good one, but not my absolute favorite.

Adventurous is a card laying game where players work to form one continuous path for their ship to sail on while also working to arrange the cards in specific ways for marvels to be constructed.

To set up, players select a difficulty level and then make an associated marvel deck. These are structures you will work to “build” throughout the game. The rest of the cards get shuffled to make the map deck. You also have to decide which ship you want to adventure with!

I believe the multiplayer game unfolds very similarly, but in the solo game, each turn two cards from the deck get added to the ship’s path. They can be oriented in any direction, but the path can never be broken, nor can it branch. The game ends once all map cards are played and then success is determined on a point-based score. I’m not going to lie, I continually played where after the last marvel was placed, I considered it a victory and didn’t even place the rest of the map cards if I didn’t need to and completely ignored the scoring. 😂Oops!

The last part of gameplay I want to dig into a little more is these marvels. Each marvel is in one of three difficulty levels, and each has a specific requirement that must be met for it to be placed into the map playing area. They all require some combination of symbols, and some are pickier than others. The goal is to successfully place out all marvels because they score positive points if all are out by the end of the game, but if you aren’t able to place them all, you get negative points for any leftovers.

I like this game! Not only is the marvel artwork absolutely gorgeous, but it also has a really solid rulebook. In terms of gameplay, it’s a pretty fun little puzzle that can be quite challenging in a good way. The multiple difficulty levels are really nice; it’s an easy way to keep playing and feel like you’re leveling up some. Also, the further I advanced in difficulty, even if I didn’t do well (either score wise or not being able to place all the marvels – my own made-up condition), I still felt I was close to being successful. Along the same lines, even if I did place all the marvels, there were quite a few games I barely made it. In all, for me, the difficulty levels are a great addition and create a nice challenge without being impossible (well, I haven’t tried some of the crazy hard ones yet…).

Another aspect I really appreciate is the double-sided ship card. One side is a “standard” ship and the other adds unique events (called journey effects) that occur based on the marvel(s) in play. While the journey effects cause an increase in difficulty, they also just add some excitement to the game and increase the tension. There is also an interesting balance between deciding when to build the active marvel to replace it with a different ability, and when to keep it because the journey effect seems manageable, but then you’re not advancing through the marvel deck. It’s pretty slick.

One issue I have with thig game is in terms of replayability. Many of the map card layouts are quite similar so each game feels repetitive in that regard. There’s not a lot of differentiation in the path layout necessarily. The multiple challenge levels, different marvels, and two-sided ship do help with this though. And it’s still a fun puzzle overall, I just wish some of the map cards were more unique in their orientation and patterns.

The Forgotten Worlds mini expansion is really nice! It includes a new double-sided ship which is great, there are new marvels, a new game mode, and even more difficulty levels. It adds a lot of fun and variability with a mere five cards. If you get Adventurous, I’d highly suggest getting the expansion as well – it’s not expensive and really increases the replayability and variety.

As I started with, this game is another good addition to my Button Shy collection, but it’s not my favorite of them. There are others I prefer more and there are others I enjoy less; this one is a solid middle-of-the-road game that’s fun and enjoyable and will be played more, but it’s not one I’m dying to continually play repeatedly.