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.
Wholly Knizia
Dr. Reiner Knizia is a name synonymous with board games. Even if you haven’t heard of him, you’ve likely played one of his designs; according to Gemini, he has created more than 800 games. Whether it’s Ra, The Quest for El Dorado, Samurai, or Huang, he’s everywhere. We even had a lovely sit-down with him recently to discuss his highly successful career.
Whale Riders excited me because it comes from a power duo: Knizia on design and Vincent Dutrait on art. Dutrait’s work has become increasingly easy to spot as I’ve gone deeper into the hobby, and here his contribution is excellent. The thematic art is rich, depicting Indigenous Arctic tribes using handsome whales and other massive sea creatures as mounts. But despite that pedigree, this is not one for the Knizia hall of fame.
Ice Race
In Whale Riders, players take two of five possible actions each turn, moving between ports, buying goods, and completing contracts for money and pearls. Play continues until all the pearls have been purchased from the home area, giving the game a race-like structure from start to finish.
Goods in the market are replenished as they are bought, but new tiles can introduce storms that block market spaces and reduce options over time. Pearls serve as points, and players can earn them either by buying them directly from the market or by completing contracts.
Oh Whale
My issue with Whale Riders is not that it’s a bad design by any means. Conceptually, it’s a breezy, light resource-gathering game built around a satisfying loop of collecting goods and cashing them in for contracts. With support for up to six players, it seems well-positioned to be a solid family game.
The problem is what happens when you get the short end of the stick.
Whale Riders can have a poverty spiral. Money buys goods, goods fulfill contracts, and contracts provide the money and pearls you need to stay competitive. If you’re lacking in any one of those areas—money, goods, or usable contracts—it can be miserable trying to recover. Because you only get two actions per turn, spending one to gain a single coin or cycling contracts in hopes of finding something workable feels painfully inefficient.
I felt like I was treading water. I didn’t have the money to buy what I needed, and the contracts in hand were too demanding to complete. Because the game is a race, every turn spent scrambling just pushed me further behind. Watching the rich get richer felt bad, and the game didn’t seem to offer much of a catch-up mechanism.
Some variants add variety, including asymmetric player powers and public goals. But in our plays, the powers felt wildly uneven. Some seemed only marginally useful, while others bordered on game-breaking—like the ability to buy as many goods as you can afford in one go. They add spice, but can be unbalanced.
Of course, this won’t happen in every session. There’s enough here to keep families entertained on game night. The short playtime, simple actions, and dynamic jockeying make it appealing to hobby gamers and non-gamers alike. There’s a real satisfaction in landing the right combination of goods at exactly the right moment, then resetting to chase the next opportunity. It’s also fun when another player buys a good and pushes the one you’ve been eyeing into a cheaper slot. Those moments of timing and opportunism give the game its shine. They also keep players moving instead of sitting in place and buying all day long; after all, there’s a big storm coming.
Still, one game spent literally and figuratively fishing through the contract deck and struggling to keep my head above water was enough to make me retire from riding whales for the time being. Even so, that feels like a minor detractor from an otherwise solid game.
