Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
12 Rivers (2025, Good Games Publishing) had a look to it that screamed “fun-looking production, probably not a great game.” A couple of friends who tried the game at Gen Con 2025 thought 12 Rivers was OK, but even I had to admit that I was shocked to learn that the game sold out well before the end of the show. The game’s table presence was handsome, but I was not exactly rushing to grab myself a copy.
Reading the game’s overlong rulebook didn’t help sell 12 Rivers either. I thought it would be interesting, but after doing my standard two-player walkthrough to ensure I had the rules down, I got the game in front of my review crew with expectations managed appropriately.
Then, I discovered a game that was MUCH more interesting than I initially credited. 12 Rivers is great, but it’s great because you can poke your neighbor by stealing their marbles and laugh your behind off about it later. If you are looking for a fun, accessible way to steal stuff from everyone around you, get yourself a copy of 12 Rivers right now!
“And, I’ll Take That One, Too!”
12 Rivers is a set collection game for 2-4 players. It plays in about an hour, even with four players. It also asks players to use a small hand of cards to create minor advantages with your turns from time to time, or to use those cards to place small gate tokens on a tilted map that looks like a map of the forest with river spaces—a map that becomes a Plinko board where players will try to catch marbles flowing down the river.
A note about those marbles: they are supposed to represent spirits of the forest or some such nonsense. These spirits come in five different colors that become important when trying to place these spirits on Villager tiles that are used to store and then score each marble. Just know that to me and the players in my groups, those spirits were just marbles. And getting the marbles that are worth the most points are all you will care about when trying to catch them with your tokens later.
Each of the game’s five rounds play out the same way. In turn order, players put their little gate tokens in different positions on the forest map. You could spend three of your precious hand cards to gate a spot that will guarantee that you get the marble you want. But you won’t do that very often, because there are still juicy spots downriver that might also get you the marbles you want. There’s even a lake space at the bottom of the board that will net you every marble in that space…as long as marbles get that far. (Often, they will not.)
Other spaces grant players the chance to grab more villager tiles, a necessity because marbles taken during the round can only be placed in the six spaces on the back of your goat. If you get more than that during a round, or keep marbles from previous rounds on the goat before the current round, you’ll lose out on scoring opportunities coming later. So, in most rounds, I found myself going for two marbles and a villager. Small “fairy” tokens are placed in certain spots on the forest map each round, which become powerful ways to tilt the game’s rules in your favor.
In fact, it is these fairy tokens that almost single-handedly became the reason why I recommend 12 Rivers so highly. Having a pool of those tokens is huge. Some of the powers don’t feel broken, but the hearts of other players were broken often by their game-changing effects. Each round’s planning phase, when new fairy tokens are placed onto the map, becomes so interesting because everyone wants to find ways to use their cards for anything except guaranteeing them the best spots on the board.
And the stabbery that resulted in each round, as players snatched up marbles that were more valuable before others could catch the best ones, was fantastic. And it just keeps happening all game long. Why would I want to guarantee a result when I could gamble instead?
A Certain Game for a Certain Player
If you are the kind of player who likes to get stuff, and then keep that stuff, I’m not sure 12 Rivers is for you. But if you are like me, a man who enjoys varying forms of chaos and figuring out ways to navigate that chaos, I think 12 Rivers is absolutely worth a look.
The marble gimmick is fun. There’s a cardboard barrier used to keep the 6, 9, or 12 marbles (based on player count) in their starting positions, lifted when a round begins. Watching the marbles flow down the track towards each player’s gate tokens hasn’t gotten old yet. Waiting for players to play some of their hand cards (in pairs, triggering one of five different abilities) is often tense, especially when a mix of cards and fairy tokens leaves players far downriver with almost no choice of the best marbles.
And 12 Rivers is a very easy game to set up, teach, score, and tear down. Despite the large box, 12 Rivers has a somewhat small table presence when it is fully ready to go.
The game’s major flaw is its player count. I love it at four players, but fewer players means fewer rivers, fewer rivers means fewer marbles, and fewer marbles means less chaos. I’m here for the chaos. For some players, two players and much less chaos might be your jam. Just know that it’s not the same animal. Even my three-player game with my two kids (ages 11 and 9) was less interesting than four-player games, because there’s a little less going on.
12 Rivers was a very pleasant surprise. Even the way players can manipulate turn order is an interesting wrinkle, thanks to the way players return their gate tokens to the turn order track after completing an action. Give this one a look and don’t make the same mistakes I did!
12 Rivers details
- Designer: Romain Caterdjian
- Artists: N/A
- Publishers: Good Games Publishing
- Release Date: 2025
- Player count : 2 - 4
- Age range : 10+
- Time range : 45 - 75 minutes
- Mechanism(s): End Game Bonuses, Hand Management, Multi-Use Cards, Open Drafting, Physical Removal, Set Collection, Worker Placement
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.21189 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
- More articles about 12 Rivers.
