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.
Book or Box?
Once in a while, there are games whose production stops you in your tracks and makes you do a double-take. Sometimes it’s the table presence, sometimes it’s the box art, and the best looks are the ones that have both. The moment I saw the box of Wondrous Creatures in a sea of game boxes, I knew I had to find out more. The box immediately draws your attention with its whimsical font and art that looks more like a fantasy tome than a game. Beyond the box is a collection of brightly colored hexes topped with… wait a minute, are those meeples riding other meeples? Yes, yes, they are. The landscape of pops and colors is crowned with chunky wooden meeples featuring riders. The cherry on top is the added magnets that keep the rider from falling off their mount.
Wondrous Creatures comes to us from a small (but mighty) publisher, Bad Comet, based out of South Korea. Designed by Yeom C.W. and beautifully illustrated by Sophia Kang, Wondrous Creatures puts a fresh spin on worker placement and tableau building, treading in the footsteps of similar titles like Everdell, Wyrmspan, Raising Robots, and Explorers of Navoria.
Gameplay Mechanics
Wondrous Creatures unfolds over a series of turns until a set number of trophies have been claimed, with the winner being the player with the most victory points. Achievements are the main engine for scoring points, with trophies awarded for completing them in this fantastical adventure.
On a player’s turn, they perform one of four actions, which rotate until the end-game trigger occurs.
The first action is to place a crew member on the communal board. By placing one of their three crew members, the player claims a resource from the adjacent habitats or takes a creature with the matching habitat from the market. Landing on egg tokens lets you scoop them up, adding them to your board and possibly triggering other benefits.
Players each have an asymmetrical captain that can be magnetically mounted to a crew member, triggering additional bonuses when placed.
The second action is to play a card, adding a wondrous creature to your tableau. Resources are spent, and the played card can feature a number of benefits, including:
- Instant (activated immediately)
- Recharge (activated on a recharge action)
- End (activates at end of game, awarding points based on card criteria)
- Energy (activated by spending an energy token, a free action usable anytime during a turn)
- Continuous (activates anytime based on listed criteria)
Cards also score victory points during end-game scoring. The wondrous creatures feature tags that count toward specific achievements.
The third action is to claim one of the seven randomized achievements. These usually require collecting certain creature types or reaching a set number of parameters. Eggs can be “hatched” (spent) to count toward species numbers. Each achievement has multiple slots with diminishing points for those who complete them later.
The last action is to recharge—recalling all placed workers, triggering recharge benefits on played cards, and advancing the time track. Advancing the time track doesn’t progress the game, but rather refreshes the board along with other benefits.
Creature Comforts
In my various plays, the post-game reactions were delightful. Everyone walked away with smiles, and most hadn’t even heard of this game before. Readers will know that one of my favorite mechanisms is tableau building, and Wondrous Creatures goes above and beyond to satisfy. While the individual mechanics may feel familiar to seasoned gamers, their combination in Wondrous Creatures is refreshingly cohesive and satisfying. The gameplay loop sends you here to get this to pay for that, all while working to match your tableau with the sought-after achievements. Though the loop is simple, the gradual efficiency makes each turn satisfying, leaving you eager for the next. Because the game is a bit of a race, it’s important to pick a few achievements and stick to that path.
Though it may be hard to get the species you need, the game is generous with market cycling, offering multiple ways to cull the deck. Since every card in the game is unique, there’s always excitement in seeing which new mysterious creatures will show up next in the market.
The creatures themselves are fun to collect. As one player said, “I feel like it’s Pokémon—gotta catch them all.” Though some cards grant powerful abilities, the game always felt balanced, never allowing engines to become broken. In one game, a player had upwards of twenty creatures in his tableau, yet his final score wasn’t far ahead of the pack. His turns did take longer, though, as the card chaining went many layers deep.
Oh Captain, My Captain
The worker placement was just as important as the tableau building. Even in a four-player game, there was enough space for everyone, but the real tension came from which benefits got blocked rather than the actions themselves. You might hunt for a specific habitat only to see others have already parked there, forcing you to wait until they recall. Or maybe you’re eyeing a juicy combination of resources but have to decide whether it’s worth that spot versus another bonus action elsewhere.
Add in the extra powers of your captain piece, and there can be some powerful chaining just from the placement action alone.
The tactical free actions of butterfly nets and energy tokens add mitigation to make placements a bit more fruitful.
Some Variety Needed
That said, there are some minor setbacks. While the achievement grinding is a fun experience, the goal variety can start to feel repetitive after just a few playthroughs. There are always three achievements that focus solely on species collection (two of them multi-species), and the other four are variations on “have X of Y.” In the back half of the game, players often find themselves meeting the criteria naturally, and the game speeds up quickly as achievements are claimed nearly every turn.
Though some would call this a “cozy” game, I wish there were more powers that slowed down opponents or disrupted engines. It’s tough to watch someone build a powerful tableau with no way to slow their progress. It might be against the grain for this type of game, but some added interaction could bring more checks and balances.
Wunderbar
Overall, Wondrous Creatures is a great game that, for me, feels like a stronger version of Everdell and Wyrmspan (at least compared to their base versions). While simple on the surface, the depth of decision-making matters, and I always walk away feeling satisfied with my creature collection.
The game scales well at all player counts and even includes a solo mode that offers a fun puzzle challenge.
Tack on the absolutely beautiful production—from the card quality to the magnetic wooden meeples—and this game more than earns a spot in a collection. It wasn’t necessarily on my radar, but it turned out to be a wonderful surprise, especially coming from an uncommon region in board game publishing. Whether you’re a seasoned collector or a first-time explorer, Wondrous Creatures invites you into a world where strategy meets wonder—and it’s a journey worth taking.
Wondrous Creatures details
- Designer: Yeom.C.W
- Artists: Sophia Kang
- Publishers: Bad Comet, DSV Games, GaGa Games, Gém Klub Kft., MTS Games, REXhry, Samaruc Games, Strohmann Games, Super Meeple
- Release Date: 2024
- Player count : 1 - 4
- Age range : 14+
- Time range : 40 - 80 minutes
- Mechanism(s): End Game Bonuses, Hexagon Grid, Open Drafting, Set Collection, Tags, Variable Player Powers, Worker Placement, Worker Placement, Different Worker Types
- BGG Geek Rating: 8.07276 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.0.
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