Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/9200581/the-daily-weather

Designer: Ian Tarter
Publisher: Button Shy
Artist: Manon Mergnat

If you don’t want to read this whole thing, know that this game is an absolute gem. I was really pleasantly surprised by it, and it’s probably one of my most played Button Shy games at this point! I do think it helps that I’m fascinated by the weather, but it’s a really solid design regardless.

In The Daily Weather, the player selects the Month, Date, Day, and Week cards relevant to the current day in real life (or you can pick a random one if you want). The Month and Date cards get placed into a grid based on the pattern shown on the Week card, and then the Day card, based on the season, depicts a specific pattern that needs to complete with a certain symbol by the end of the game. Besides that, there are six weather cards that get shuffled into a pile, and the game starts!

Each round, the player places one weather card into the tableau area with the goal of only having the month and date of the chosen day visible, and to achieve the pattern indicated by the Day and Week card. The main rule with card placement is that at least one cell on the new card must cover a matching cell on an existing card, both in terms of icon and background. The game ends when all six weather cards have been added. If you succeed in the three main goals, you can score your tableau and try to meet the scoring condition on the Day card.

Honestly, this game is super easy to understand and play, but there’s a good amount of strategy and there’s a fun, tricky puzzle to figure out. It plays quickly, it’s infinitely replayable, has a great, prominent theme, cute art, and clever game design; what more could you ask for?! It’s a lovely little five to ten minute daily puzzle you can do every day if you want. There are even special holiday symbols on a Date card that you can use on major holidays.

If you’re a fan of spatial puzzles, this one is a must-have in my opinion. The amount of variability is unprecedented, even to the extent that playing every day for multiple years straight would likely continue to provide new challenges because each of the six weather cards is double sided, so there are 12 possible weather cards, plus all the other day, week, season, month, etc. constraints and combinations. 10/10 would recommend!

One thing I do want to note that most other people probably understood but I didn’t (it’s probably just a me problem): there’s a rule in the rulebook that states, under placement rules, “Cards must align to the grid set by the Month and Date cards.” The Week cards have a grid that shows where the Month and Date cards need to be placed to start, so I assumed that the grid shown was a constraint and that you can’t place cards outside of that grid, which made certain date combinations impossible. What this really means is that you can’t offset a card when you place it, that’s it.