Pátzcuaro
I’ve worked hard to expose my kids to books from different viewpoints and different cultures, so when I saw the chance to continue that cultural exposure through a board game, I jumped at it! We recently purchased Pátzcuaro in time for the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead
🕯️Overview:🕯️
Your goal is to decorate an altar in honor of loved ones who have passed away. Players take turns traveling around the shops and collecting items to use in their altars. Shop spaces and the Pátzcuaro tile let you trade cards, draw cards and build to your altar (a pyramid of cards you are constructing). There are set scoring objectives for every game and there are goal cards that can change from game to game. The trick is trying maximize both sets of scoring objectives and completing your altar before someone else does and ends the game.
🍭Thoughts:🍭
First of all, the production quality is fantastic. The artwork is colorful and festive. It drew me in immediately. The Pátzcuaro tile and shop tiles are sturdy and double sided, adding replayability. I also love the little meeples carrying their offerings!
I enjoyed playing quite a bit. It’s a little bit set collection and a little bit tableau building, but there’s enough variety in the action spaces and scoring to keep it engaging. It also felt like a good pace/length, although my husband finished his altar much faster than my son and I did, so I didn’t get to finish mine! My oldest son enjoyed it, but thought it might be a little simple for his tastes (he also came in last by a decent margin, so it can't be THAT simple). While I agree, it was a nice quick game, I did not find it prohibitively light. I don’t think my 6 year old could play it yet, even though he’s had some decent gaming experience.
Overall, I liked it a lot and it feels different enough from our other games that I can see playing it more than just for the Day of the Dead! I’m so glad we added it to our collection.