Let me take you on a Journey
Specifications
Mechanics: Hand Management, Variable scoring options, drafting, Set collection, There and back again, weird reverse scoring, Alula
Number of Players: 2 - 6
Play Time:15-30 mins
Age: 10+
From the Catch Up Games website:
"The land on this mysterious continent regularly shifts, twists, and reforms itself, making any attempt at mapping it obsolete. The only way one can master Alula is by walking it time and time again to make one's own atlas. Travel this ever changing-world, meet its inhabitants, and gain more Fame than your competitors.
Over the course of the game, you will play a row of 8 cards in front of you from left to right. These cards represent the Regions you will encounter while exploring the lands. Characters on these cards will grant you Fame if you later fulfil the conditions they demand. However, at the end of the game, you walk back the way you just explored, scoring cards in the opposite order you played them. The player with the most Fame after scoring Regions and Sanctuaries wins!"
Table of Contents
Welcome to Alula
Faraway is a game that has gained a lot of interest throughout the early part of 2024, and I was fortunate enough to pick up a copy at Airecon 2024. It is usually the big ticket games that have all the buzz, so I was really interested to see a small box game, with a quick play time that people seemed to be enjoying so much. I am always looking for games I can throw in the bag or play in a cafe or pub, and Faraway has found that place in my collection.
In Faraway, you are presented with a deck of 68 beautiful cards representing one of 4 regions or Biomes: The Endless River, The Cave Cities, The Mushroom Forests and the Rocky Deserts. Through your journey, you will make your way across the continent visiting these regions and the Denizens of Alula that live there.
Alongside your deck of region cards, there is a deck of smaller Sanctuary cards. During the game, you will have the opportunity to locate these sanctuaries that have the potential to give you extra fame and bonuses and sometimes make all the difference!
That’s everything in the box!
How does it work then?
The first thing to point out is that this is a straightforward game to pick up. On your turn, you will do 3 things:
- Explore a region - simultaneously play a region card from your hand.
- Finding sanctuaries - check to see if you have met the criteria to gain a sanctuary card.
- At the end of the exploration - players will draft a new region card from those available in order depending on the region they last played.
That’s the game. Sound simple? So why did I find myself agonising over which cards to play? Why did I enjoy it so much? Because this game has a brilliant twist that will make your brain hurt a little bit and regret your early journey life choices!
In Faraway, you are attempting to explore Alula, and your journey will come to an end when you have visited 8 regions or, put another way, you have taken 8 turns. Once you have reached the end of your journey, like any good trip, you have to come back again. This is not a one way ticket! Therein lies the twist of this game, you lay your cards from left to right until you have placed 8 region cards, then you flip the cards face down, and starting with the last card you played, start the journey home again. You reveal that last region card and see if you met the requirements to score the points. You then revisit each region card from right to left on your return. This creates a really clever mechanic. The regions you play often rely on certain resources to unlock the fame on the card, gifts to the denizens of Alula. Each time a new card is revealed, it is only the face up cards that contribute towards the scoring criteria. The order you play your cards is absolutely vital, and it is amazing how frustrating it is when you know you have what you need but you just haven’t revealed those regions yet!
This will make far more sense after we have looked at the region cards in more detail.
Visiting a Region
As previously stated, your turn will start by selecting a region card from your hand of 3 cards to visit. Every card comes complete with various bits of information. Firstly it represents a biome, essentially a colour: Blue, Red, Green and Yellow. Many regions also produce a resource located in the top right corner of the card. These could be the common Uddu stones of the mineral kingdom, Okiko, the stately Chimera of the animal kingdom or the rarer Goldlog - the soothing thistle of the plant kingdom. These are going to be key to your success in Faraway, as many of the quests set by the Denizens rely on finding them. This is one of the main ways to gain fame or victory points.
This leads me to the Denizens themselves. Many of the region cards will display them and alongside these crazy folk, at the bottom of the card will be a quest. The Denizen will offer you fame in return for you achieving a goal: that might be fame for every Uddo stone you have represented or for visiting certain types of regions. The quests will help guide the kind of regions you are trying to draft and visit. However, in order to unlock the quest and the fame provided, most will have a prerequisite you have to meet in order to be awarded the fame. So it could be that your quest will give you one fame for every yellow or blue region you visit, but in order to receive that fame, you need to have found 2 Okiko’s and a thistle.
Why is this Such a Brain Burner of a Game?
Well, that all makes sense and is fairly straightforward. You will head through this game merrily selecting new regions, playing regions and enjoying your exploration of the beautiful continent of Alula. Then as you reach the furthest point of your journey, you will breathe and be happy, ready to turn round and return home via the denizens you met! As you reveal your first region card displaying an amazing 24 fame points, it hits you, those 4 Uddo stones you need are somewhere face down in the cards yet to be revealed. You will look sadly from the region card to your “friend” and watch them happily put a zero on the scorecard.
Faraway comes to life in that reverse scoring mechanic. Every region you play you have to be aware of the prerequisite you are going to need to meet to unlock the fame. The subsequent cards you play will ideally work towards the quests on the regions you previously visited. As you draft new cards you will find yourself hoping certain types of regions/resources become available. The challenge is that your opponents may be looking for the same types of cards forcing you to make difficult choices in order to gain an advantage in the draft instead of a region preferable to your quests. Let me explain!
You Took How Long?
There is one more piece of information on the card I have not explained: the hours it took to explore the region. On every region card, you will have a number in the top left corner representing how long it took to explore the region, and this is important for two reasons, both will massively impact your chances of victory and the choices you make:
- The player who took the least amount of time exploring the region they placed gets to draft first from the available cards on the table. At the start of each round, there will always be one card for each player plus one face up on the table. If a fantastic card is available, you may want to play a low numbered card to try and get the advantage in the draft and grab it. That Goldlog Thistle you never thought would come must be yours, your precious! In doing so though, you may not gain the other bonus linked to that number:
- If you took longer to explore the region you last played than your previous region, you found a Sanctuary! You need to be more excited, these suckers will change the game. On a side note I think this is a nice little thematic touch, the longer you take to explore, the more likely you are to find the hidden secrets of the region.
So, low numbered cards are good; they represent a potentially better choice of cards. However, higher numbered cards are good, they give you more chance to find a Sanctuary, the choice is yours!
I Better Tell You About Sanctuaries
As I said at the start, alongside the region deck, you have a smaller deck (both in number and in size) of Sanctuary cards. These bring a number of benefits. They may represent additional resources to supplement the ones you found in regions. They may represent a colour towards region based fame quests. They may also give you additional end game scoring options to boost your fame received from quests and give you an edge over your opponents.
The most important thing about Sanctuaries though is at the end of your journey you do not turn them face down. This is a really key feature, they remain face up and contribute to every quest revealed. In every game I have played the Sanctuary cards have made the difference and unlocking a number of these is vital to a successful journey.
When you find a Sanctuary, you draw the top card of the deck and put it face up in front of you. If you find regions with maps or clues on them, you get to draw an additional card for every symbol you control and choose one. This gives you a greater chance of finding the most useful cards for your needs.
Final Thoughts
It won't surprise you that I like this game—I don’t tend to review games if I don’t! On this occasion, the buzz about this small game is spot on! Faraway is a solid, light game with enough to make your head hurt just a little bit and want to play it again and again.
The cards are colourful and pretty with really simple iconography. It is very easy to see what they represent. There are also symbols alongside the colours, making it fairly accessible if that could be a barrier.
It is essentially 2 decks of cards, so it fits into the small game category that you could take and play pretty much anywhere! You do need a bit of space on the table to lay out the cards,although the recommendation is to lay them in a line you could put them in rows to save space.
It is a game that can be taught in 5-10 minutes—in fact, you could probably play it after reading my review! You’re welcome. It is one of those games that is easy to learn, but the more you play, the better you understand the strategies: when to play quests when to play for a better draft or discover a sanctuary, and even just how to get the most fame in a weird reverse scoring mechanic. There is a great game here in a small package.
It has a lovely drafting mechanic leaving you with difficult choices on which regions to play, potentially trading off a stronger, more useful region to enable you to draft first for better cards.
This is definitely a game where you place regions confidently in front of you and regret your life choices later. Realising too late that you played them in the wrong order, but smile, and want to play again.
It also scales really well because of the simultaneous exploration round. A larger player count does not really increase the playtime at all. Well, unless you have that one indecisive person who sits looking at their hand of just 3 cards for what seems like an eternity, but that’s probably not player count-related. We all know that player!
I would highly recommend this game. It is great for when you have 20-30 minutes to fill or if you want something small to play in the pub. It works great as a filler game which you can play before or after something larger and still have a great game experience from it. This is not a brainless filler, and don’t be surprised when you end up playing 2 or 3 games of Faraway instead!
Score Rating
7 out of 10
| Pros | Cons |
| Small, quick, easy game to teach and learn | There is a degree of luck in which cards are available for draft |
| Beautiful, colourful cards | Limited player interaction - except for in drafting cards and limiting choice for others |
| Challenging reverse scoring mechanic | Can leave you confused and frustrated as you realise you played your cards in the wrong order and that large fame quest is reduced to zero gaining you nothing but smiles on your opponents faces, the smug scumbags. |
Shop Faraway today or check out our full collection of board games right here at Gathering Games.
If you're looking for more board game recommendations, check out our reviews of Wyrmspan and The Search For Lost Species.
Faraway
£16.99
£20.00
Description Welcome to Alula, a mysterious continent with ever-changing geography, shaped after the rhythm of the seasons. Beyond the Sea of Mists lies the mysterious continent of Alula. Roam across the land in search of its secrets, meet its inhabitants… read more
