Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/8268264/tranquility-the-ascent

Designer: James Emmerson
Publisher: Luck Duck Games
Artist: Tristam Rossin

For the record, this review was written after first playing this game on BGA and then buying a physical copy and playing that as well. I also tried the original game on BGA.

Tranquility: The Ascent is a quick and easy card laying game about climbing a mountain. Each round, the player adds a card to the ever-growing mountain following some serious restrictions: the new card has to be placed adjacent to an existing card, two cards of the same color cannot be next to each other horizontally, the player has to discard cards equal to the difference in the two numbers (on the existing card and on the new card), and a card cannot be placed in a row of a higher number than its value (among a few other small things). The game ends once the mountain is completed (success) or if the player runs out of cards before finishing the mountain (might want to try again).

Obviously, since I played it on BGA and then bought it, I like this game. There is definitely quite a bit of luck involved, but there are also some interesting, light strategic decisions to make. The game can get quite easy to win once you have a good strategy, but it’s still fun. It also plays very well solo, to the point I don’t really think I even want to try this multiplayer. My one main downside outside of the luck factor is that it requires a lot of table real estate. It’s not the end of the world, but for a smaller box, lighter game, it’s a bit of a pain. In general, the replayability is descent; not amazing but there are some different modules that come in the box to experiment with (which I have yet to do, honestly).

And if anyone’s curious, I like this one better than the original game, hence why I purchased this one and not that one. 🙂