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.
Games like Tulikko are challenging to review because they are generic. Games like this embody much of what a particular genre of game attempts to do; and it’s very similar to a lot of other games of that genre. It’s another personal board tile placement puzzle. I don’t know if that’s bad or good anymore.
Tiles, but make them slide
Tulikko is a game of acquiring tiles and placing them on a grid on your player board. The tiles come in four colors, and you’re trying to place them on your player grid in specific configurations that are governed by the randomly determined objectives for each game. There are three cards that change each game. One type has you trying to make specific patterns of colors on your board, another has you making specific shapes, and a third has you making patterns using special wooden river pieces—I’ll cover those in a moment. The other scoring options are part of each game and reward you for covering one of four symbol types on your player board and/or placing enough tiles (3, 4 if you’re slow) of one of the four colors.
How do you get the tiles? Well, you put a tile that you draw from your personal pile of 12 tiles (3 of each color) into one end of this cardboard plus-sign-looking-thing, and push out a tile either vertically or horizontally. The tile that gets ejected from the plus sign is the one you place on your board, and the symbol that it slides over is where you must place it. When you place a tile next to other tile(s) of the same type, you optionally place your colored animal disc(s) on it; if the tiles do not match types, you put a river between them (also optional).
The game is a race to place all of your river/animal tokens on your board and on objective cards (when you accomplish various objectives, you add animal tokens to the objectives). First person to do this wins. If you go twelve rounds and players still have tokens, remaining animal tokens are two points and river tokens are one point. The player with the lower point total wins. Ties are always broken in favor of the player with the largest connected group of one color.
It is, in fact, a puzzle
Tulikko fits right in with a long lineage of games about arranging tiles on a player board; a genre I admittedly enjoy. If you’ve played Cascadia, Azul, Kingdomino, Harmonies, Fountains, Patchwork, or any one of a zillion other games about taking tiles and arranging them in point-scoring configurations, you’ve played Tulikko. It’s an economical tile-laying puzzle, and the race-structure of the competition encourages players to be thoughtful about how quickly they complete their puzzles relative to one another. That said, the game is pretty low on interaction. The plus-sign drafting system injects some novelty and a bit of chaos into multiplayer games, where players often accidentally interfere with the plans of other players rather than intentionally.
But, if you’re the type of person who likes the look of forest creature myth and culturally-agnostic “spirit” animals, the aesthetic of the game might be enticing. You’ll be sure to get a few fun bits of juice squeezed from this puzzle. As a cozy 2-player game, I’ve had some fun, albeit forgettable experiences with it, and I think that’s enough to cautiously recommend it.
Tulikko details
- Designer: Jérôme Soleil, Nicolas Melet
- Artists: Maud Chalmel
- Publishers: Dino Toys s. r. o., Pandasaurus Games, Studio H
- Release Date: 2025
- Player count : 2 - 4
- Age range : 8+
- Time range : 10 - 20 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Race, Tile Placement
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.21429 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
- More articles about Tulikko.
