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.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. If you are going to release a game in the late summer of 2026 and want to ride a wave of free marketing, you can do a LOT worse than theming your new game around anything tied to The Odyssey, Homer, The Iliad, and all things Odysseus.
So, while it is possible that Gigamic’s new, light strategy title Odysseus was always intended to be a game about the lead character from the recent Christopher Nolan / Matt Damon blockbuster film The Odyssey, let’s just agree to give everyone involved in this game’s design a round of applause for timing the release and the theme to the Universal film’s massive global box office!
Odysseus, the game, is a very quick romp through the 15 trials Odysseus (the character, also known as Ulysses, depending on your preference between the Greek and the Latin version) survived on his quest to return to Ithaca. In fact, the game is so quick that we only get 11 turns to whisk through the entire affair, and turns are so fast you might break through a game of Odysseus in 15-20 minutes!
Turns are simple. The board is a replica of Ulysses’ vessel, with spaces for 12 cards. On a turn, the active player takes one Trial card, which earns 0-3 bonuses amounting to bumps on one of four tracks (strength, cunning, luck, and intelligence) or owl tokens that can be used for track bump flexibility or bonus tokens on later turns. That card features one of five “Epic” symbols (creature, Ithaca, encounters, navigation, or gods) in its upper right corner, providing an opportunity for a set collection bonus opportunity; it also represents a chance to score end game points if the track color associated with the Trial card is met or exceeded by the end of the game.
Even the Trial drafting is limited; players can only choose a card from an outer edge on either side of the board, meaning a max of four cards are ever truly available to the active player. After that choice is made, the next player is up, and after everyone has drafted 11 Trials, the game ends. Scoring is tied to any Trial cards that have become eligible (based on track bumps), as well as “Tale” tokens earned during play that boost scoring for specific card elements—the Trial color, or value, or the Epic symbols a player collected during the game.
A Better Fit for the Family
“Meh, it’s fine,” lamented one of the strategy game players in my review crew after a three-player game of Odysseus. “There’s a lot of other similar games I would try instead.”
My family had a different reaction; in fact, I think that’s why I recommend Odysseus as a play to get younger players involved in the action. Decisions here are straightforward, but just nuanced enough to push players to play into their Tale tokens to maximize scores, while focusing on other ways to ensure their Trial cards become eligible to score at the end of the game. And card-choice decisions are very narrow here: sometimes, you have a max of four different cards to choose from, but later in a round, you might have three or maybe even two cards to select, so figuring out which to take becomes an easier choice.
There are downsides to that, of course, highlighted by anyone sitting at the table wanting more out of this game than the ambition of the game’s designers, Johannes Goupy (Faraway) and Matthieu Verdier (Federation, In the Footsteps of Darwin). The fact is that Odysseus very much fits the Gigamic mold: family-weight, very fast turns, very reasonable price point. If that’s the imprint, Odysseus does great work in a tight space, even if the theme feels pasted on.
So, if you’ve got kids my age (12 and 9) and are looking for something that plays up to five people in about 30 minutes, Odysseus is recommended. It’s not a title that will end up on my best-of list for the year, but I was very happy with the end result when playing with my family. (Odysseus is currently in alpha on Board Game Arena.)
