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.
Back for Another Ride
A few years ago, Justin covered the base Tenpenny Parks, praising its simplicity while offering gamers of all experience levels a thinky, Tetris-like puzzle akin to A Feast for Odin, only significantly shorter.
I’m largely in agreement with his assessment. The base Tenpenny Parks is a smooth, quick, and charming ride, which feels appropriate given the theme park setting.
As the leaves change color and the nights grow cooler, it only feels right to inject some holiday-themed fun with the Winter Lights & Spooky Nights expansion. Aside from its wonderfully rhyming name, either or both halves of the expansion can be integrated into the base game alongside any other modular expansions you may have (Innovation, Fast-Pass, etc.).
Bonus points for fitting all the expansion components into the base box. Space is a precious commodity in my small Chicago condo!
What’s New?
Both expansions introduce exciting new rides and additional components rooted in their respective holiday themes. From the spooky Pirate Ghost Ship and Ghoulish Grimoires to the holly-jolly Sleigh Ride and North Pole Plunge, these attractions come in unique new shapes for your spatial puzzling enjoyment.
Each seasonal expansion replaces one ride from each attraction type, with the new additions simply shuffled into their respective decks.
Winter Lights
Cue the jingle bells with this festive addition full of holiday cheer. This modular expansion replaces players’ starting trees with decorated Christmas trees, which cannot be cut down. However, building an attraction adjacent to one bumps players up the new Cheer track.
The Cheer track is a new emotion track added to the top of the game board, offering players money, bumps on other emotion tracks, points, and even gifts for opponents. These gifts allow another player to advance on an emotion track. It’s the season of giving, after all!
As a bonus action when visiting the Realtor, players can also swap a normal tree for a Christmas tree, setting themselves up for another juicy placement bonus down the road.
Spooky Nights
It’s spooky season, and Halloween theming in amusement parks goes together like witches and bubbling cauldrons.
This expansion introduces adorable ghost meeples (gheeples?) that players can obtain by building Spooky Nights attractions or attractions featuring ghosts.
These ghosts can “haunt” an attraction during the advertising phase, offering additional money, points, or other juicy rewards.
The expansion also introduces dark concession tiles, which are mixed in with the regular concessions and offer additional ghosts, emotion track bumps, and other frightful treats.
A Frightfully Good Addition
Both expansions are incredibly easy to mix in and don’t add much additional overhead to the base game.
While the Cheer track adds another element to monitor, including the ability for the player in first place to move backward for a reward, it provides a helpful trickle of bonuses to propel future attraction building. I especially enjoyed the friendly gift-giving space, as we could all use a little extra kindness around the holidays!
The Christmas tree adjacency bonus is another welcome addition, encouraging players to carefully plan their attraction placements around permanent obstacles. While losing the ability to chop down those trees sounds restrictive, I never found it particularly detrimental. If anything, it encouraged a bit more strategic planning.
The ghost markers are probably my favorite addition of the bunch. Since most provide extra money or points, they reward players who take advantage of the additional advertising bonus early in the game. They almost act as a permanent cash discount, as players can reassign their haunted attractions from round to round, saving a little money here and there. In a game where cash and points can be tight, it’s a nice little lever to pull when trying to squeeze out another attraction advertisement.
I’m always a fan of expansions that simply “add more stuff” rather than reinventing the entire structure of a game. The seasonal rides offer unique new shapes that are fun to puzzle around, and I’ll likely leave them mixed into the base game year-round.
If you’re looking to add more variety to your Tenpenny Parks game nights, Winter Lights & Spooky Nights is an easy recommendation, especially during the fall and winter months. Neither expansion dramatically changes the experience, but both add just enough new wrinkles to keep things interesting without overstaying their welcome.
It’s more of what already makes Tenpenny Parks such a charming little game, now with a healthy dose of holiday cheer and a few friendly ghosts along for the ride.
Tenpenny Parks: Winter Lights & Spooky Nights Expansion details
- Designer: Nate Linhart
- Artists: Vincent Dutrait
- Publishers: Thunderworks Games
- Release Date: 2026
- Player count : 1 - 4
- Age range : 10+
- Time range : 45 - 75 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Income, Set Collection, Tile Placement, Worker Placement
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.8 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.0.
- More articles about Tenpenny Parks: Winter Lights & Spooky Nights Expansion.
