WBG Score: 7.5
Player Count: 3 - 5
You’ll like this if you like: Chinatown, Sidereal Confluence, Cosmic Encounter
Published by: Repos Production
Designed by: Karsten Hartwig
This is a free review copy. See our review policy here
Waterfall Park is a game about building up a floating theme park that has, you guessed it, waterfalls gushing down all four sides! Let’s just hope they’ve got some amazing damp prevention! Regardless of that….Welcome, to Waterfall Park,
How to get your ducks in a row.
Set up by giving each player five money, a set of plot tiles in their colour and placing the round marker tile to the correct number of players. Deal out a number of cards to each player based on the round tracker for that round.
Each player then looks at their cards and discards two. The cards will all show a number corresponding to a plot on the board and a handy picture reference so you can easily find it. All of the discarded cards will get shuffled back into the deck. All players then reveal their cards and will place a plot tile in their colour on each of the spaces of the cards they’ve chosen. The used cards will then get removed from the game. Everyone will then get dealt out a number of attraction tiles (again depending on the round and the player count) which will then get revealed in front of them.
Then starts a round of negotiation. You can negotiate with anyone and you can even weigh in on someone else’s negotiation and anything is up for trade. Well, in game anyway. Remember that because I almost lost my house in a trade for some bowling alley tiles. It’s a good thing we checked the rules because my wife would have been mad…….Anyway, in this phase you can trade money, attractions and plots. The only thing you can’t do is trade with tiles that have already been placed and you can’t trade for anything to be removed off the board. Any immediate deals you accept you have to honour. But if you make any deals that resolve in the future, we’ll, then you can feel free to screw over your friends. Just don’t expect them to be friends for much longer if you do.
When everyone has finished negotiations each player then places their attractions on their plots. You can place as many of them onto the board as you want and any you don’t are simply kept for the next round.
You’ll then score points (money) for any complete and incomplete sets of attractions of your colour. Each attraction type will have a number on them. To complete an attraction you need to have that number in your plots adjacent to each other. Each attraction has enough tiles to make two complete sets. When you score, each incomplete attraction will be worth an amount of money depending how many you have in that set. A complete attraction scores the same way but will be worth more money. Play four rounds and the player with the most money at the end will win.
Duck Tiles a woo hoo
Negotiation was never a mechanism I thought I’d take too particularly well when I started gaming. However with a few games of Twilight Imperium, Sidereal Confluence and a couple of other games that featured negotiation I'm slowly starting to come around on it. Then Waterfall Park crossed my path and that was a real test of my tolerance for it because it’s pure negotiation. Sidereal Confluence comes close but it’s got other mechanisms that are just as prominent. So with that in mind I think the first thing I should say is, if you don’t like negotiation in any form, for whatever reason, then this is absolutely not the game for you as that’s literally the entire game. So if you want to leave the review now I’ll completely understand. Make sure you leave via the gift shop and check out all of our merch, we’ve got duvet covers….no, seriously!
“Let me guess, we’re about to go over a huge waterfall?” “Yep”
Still with me? Awesome. When you first read the rules you’ll be forgiven for thinking that the card phase and placing out your plot tiles are just procedural elements of the game. Oh no my friend, In fact this is where you’ll be starting to set up potential trades before the real negotiations have started. It’s not just about keeping which plots are beneficial to you. It’s just as useful to keep cards that you can see your opponents want in order to give you a bargaining tool for later rounds. It’s weird but I find myself hard pushed to keep a little devious smirk from my face as I lay a plot tile in a space that I know someone else is after. Maybe it's a good thing that I’m not in any form or property development, I’m not sure I’d like businessman Steve based on this.
Normally when it comes to reviews I try and talk about some of the clever mechanisms, some fun design ideas that have been thrown in to add some in twists and turns or even some great thematic elements. Waterfall Park doesn’t really have any of that. You literally get some cards to choose from, get some tiles and then the designers, much like a teacher who needs an in lesson time break, sits at their desk and hides behind the rule book for a cheeky nap and gets you to discuss amongst yourselves and, when you're done, score up. Now I’m aware that this all sounds really negative, but it’s really not, because this freeing, simple rule set IS the clever twist that makes the game fun, not having intricate and complex rules is what brings the game to life. In fact the rules and freedom it gives you is so much that if it were a shorter game you’d almost be calling it a party game. It doesn’t need to throw in anything fancy to mix things up because the players will be making their own twists and turns while they’re negotiating. The freedom it gives you makes for a more strategic and interactive game than a lot of games with full rule sets that I’ve played.
When the negotiation phase starts there’s one hurdle you need to get over though and that’s, who starts first? The first few seconds will no doubt feel like a Western style stand off as you’re all staring at each other wondering who’s going to kick off proceedings. When someone finally takes it upon themselves to start things will go thick and fast and you’ll probably hear someone say “aww I was gonna ask them for that.” which could well be the starting conversation for another trade. One thing is for certain, you need to be quick in this game. Making a deal could be something as simple as a straight swap or it could be something that will take a bit more persuasion and trying to find exactly what will tip other players into making that deal is the name of the game (not literally). The harder they are to break the more satisfying it becomes as you see them slowly start to wear down until finally they relent and the deal is done. Clever people will no doubt try to math out every little offer and hold the game up (luckily it’s not happened In any of my plays) but being as it’s all simultaneous the longer they take the more chance they have of missing out on other potential deals going on around the table.
“Sharp rocks at the bottom?” “Most likely”
Being a game that’s so reliant on the people around the table, Waterfall park runs the risk of falling flat with the wrong group or even if one player isn’t willing to play in the spirit of the game. It could really bring down a game session so definitely make sure people know what they’re getting into before they play the game. You never know though, this game could be one that brings them out of their negotiation shell and ignites some sort of ruthless trading streak that’s been lying dormant and before you know it they’ll be going on about the price of orange crops (I know a Wolf of Wall Street or Wall Street reference would have been perfect here but I’ve not seen either of them so Trading Places is the best I’ve got.)
As the player count goes up so does the chaos of the negotiation. Again this is something that some won’t be for everyone, personally I think it’s a lot of fun, it gives a real trading floor feel, but it’s definitely worth letting people know about.
One downside of the chaos is that you may find a few people reaching over each other as they try to move plot tiles and it could be easy for the board to get knocked. In a clever little bit of design the plot tiles have notches on the underside of them and the board has holes in to slot them into to keep the tiles in place. It’s such a great, and let’s face it, fun solution. It doesn’t stop things moving completely however. We’ve certainly dislodged plot tiles on the odd occasion as we’ve been trying to move them around, but It’s a heck of a lot better than having loose tiles on the board.
Theme wise it’s fine. I’ve not played the original Chinatown that this is a reprint of but I’ve seen it and I much prefer the look of this one. Quite honestly it could have been any theme but I personally like the fact that they’ve gone for something as fun as this. It’s a fun production, the coloured plot tiles make it really easy to determine what belongs to who and it’s certainly made it a more appealing looking game to try and entice more people to look into it. Plus the board looks great when it’s all filled up at the end of the game.
“Bring it on”
TLC once sang “don’t go chasing waterfalls” and while I agree that chasing a non moveable body of water is folly, I do think that if negotiation is your thing then you may want to go chasing after Waterfall Park.