Souvenirs from Venice
- Board's Eye View
- 6 hours ago
- 2 min read
The premise for this small-box game from Oink Games is that the 2-5 players are tourists on holiday in Venice. You have to find souvenirs to take back as gifts for your three friends but you must treat your friends equally, so you can only take back sets of three identical gifts... Souvenirs from Venice then is a set collection game. It's designed by Jun Sasaki and Goro Sasaki, and it's one of Oink's lighter games.
Leaving a gondola wide gap between each tile, you lay out all the 48 tiles face-down in a 7 x 7 grid with the Airport card at one corner (for a two-player game you take out some tiles and play on a 5 x 5 grid). Players all start off with six coins apiece. On your turn, you flip one of the face-down tiles to its face-up side, you roll the custom six-sided die (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3) and you move your gondola that distance along the 'canals' between the tiles. If you are adjacent to a revealed tile, you can buy it by replacing it in the grid with one coin. Alternatively, you can peek at a face-down tile to which your gondola is adjacent and you can choose to buy it for 1 coin. If you're adjacent to a coin, you can take it, replacing it with a tile you've previously bought.
The tiles show the value of a set of three of each type of souvenir as well as the number of tiles that show that souvenir. This is one of the push-your-luck elements to the game as it's harder to collect a matching set of three high-value souvenirs than three more common low-value souvenirs. You can only at best end the game with six souvenirs in two sets, so if you pick up a souvenir you can't get into a set, you'll need to 'sell it' by exchanging it for a coin in the grid. The other push-your-luck element is how long you stay shopping in this way for souvenirs: every turn involves a tile being flipped face up, and the game ends immediately there are no face-down tiles left to flip. If a player hasn't returned to the airport by then, they miss their flight home and score zero points regardless of what sets of souvenirs they've collected... Among the tiles in the grid, there are pigeon and pigeon-food seller tiles that can screw with players' planning by forcing players to pass one of their tiles to the player to their left...
With its 'picking up doubles' format and roll & move mechanic, there's enough that's familar about this game to make it readily playable by children and non-gamers. That's not to say it can't also be enjoyed as a light filler by board game enthusiasts. And, of course, as a game that's packed into one of Oink's characteristic small boxes, this could be a great game to pack with you to take on your holidays.
Souvenirs from Venice is distributed in the UK by Hachette Board Games.
