Designed by Cédric Lefebvre, with stylised angular art by Christine Alcouffe, Arctic is a clever filler-length card game from Ludonaute where the 2-4 players are competing to score points by building sequences of matching animals and by positioning tokens on a 'landscape' track.
There are six different animal types (ie: suits) and you score an incremental number of points for the number of each you have in a sequence; just 1 point for two, rising to 15 points if you have six or more cards in sequence. If this sounds like a routine set collection game, think again... You play your cards in a pile in Arctic and the twist in this game is that the card on top of your pile dictates your actions for your next turn: it determines how many cards you play to your pile and how many new cards you draw to your hand, and it determines which tokens are moved on the landscape track. You discard cards to a penalty pile if you end up with a hand size of more than seven cards, and you also add to the penalty pile if you are required to play more cards than you have in hand, so you have a constant balancing act in deciding the best card to have on top of your pile.
Added to this, 'ownership' of the animal tokens is hidden information. If I'm regularly promoting the Walrus token on the landscape track, you'll probably deduce that that's my criitter, but there's potential here for bluff and misdirection. Each animal also has special powers to be claimed by the player who last placed that animal on top of their pile; so players are also competing for powers. And once claimed, you keep the power until someone else claims it, so a player could well find they have multiple animal powers at their disposal.
Tho' the mechanics in Arctic are eminently straightforward, this is a game where players are weighing up a lot of decisions as the card you place on top of your pile is, in effect, programming the actions for your next turn. Despite this, Arctic plays quickly - our games at Board's Eye View have all run to 20-30 minutes, even with four players.