Cascadia: Alpine Lakes Kickstarter Preview

Cascadia: Alpine Lakes is a standalone sequel to the widely-lauded Cascadia. Up on Kickstarter now, Cascadia: Alpine Lakes looks to take the Spiel des Jares-winning formula that made Cascadia a mainstay at game nights and expand on it, adding additional scoring mechanisms as well as the ability to build your landscape not only outward but upward, raising wildlife and those titular lakes high into the mountains for even more points!  But has designer Randy Flynn managed another successful venture into the Pacific Northwest?  And in this game about habitat diversity, is the gameplay different enough to justify itself even to those who have the original?  Find out as we climb to new heights in this Kickstarter Preview of Cascadia: Alpine Lakes!

Andrew

PLEASE NOTE! All images in this preview are either from the Kickstarter campaign or of prototype components, provided by Flatout Games.  Aside from a final copy of the game at our request, we were not compensated for this preview.

Overview

In Cascadia: Alpine Lakes, you and your fellow players will be solving a spatial puzzle by laying down terrain tiles to create habitats and finding homes for animals you’re gathering in the tableau you’re building.  Each tile is a double-hexagon representing one of the terrain types, and each tile is randomly paired with an animal token.  As you draft tiles and tokens, you’ll be adding them into your habitat, looking to create groups of terrains and animals to score based on the scoring conditions chosen at the beginning of the game.

Jess

There are lots of different scoring options for each of the terrain types, as well as the animals you’re adding to your habitats.  Randomizing these during setup will result in tons of variety in scoring opportunities!

In the game’s biggest departure from the original Cascadia, Alpine Lakes not only has you expanding your tableau outward, but new tiles can also cover old ones, adding elevation to your terrain.  This serves multiple purposes, as height impacts the scoring mechanics of several goal cards, as well as the point values of any lakes you may add.

Perks, Quirks, & Pitfalls

Perks are things we like about a game, whereas Pitfalls are potentially problematic aspects.  Quirks sit somewhere in the middle, just things worth noting:

Perks

• For those familiar with Cascadia, there’s almost no learning curve at all – this new, more strategic puzzle builds organically off the previous game
• Gorgeous art from Beth Sobel continues to beautify the tablescape
• They have included Pikas, making this game perfect

Quirks

• The increased strategic considerations from the new gameplay elements make Alpine Lake a more ‘gamey’ game than Cascadia.  That’s going to be great news for some, but might bother others who preferred the simplicity of the original
• While Beth’s artwork is fantastic, it’s mostly just on the scoring cards.  The game itself is mostly an abstract pile of hexagons with some animal tokens scattered across them

Pitfalls

• Could be more Pika-centric

How It Plays

Cascadia: Alpine Lakes plays incredibly smoothly.  It’s a puzzle, where you’ll work to draft the best tiles and animals to meet the various scoring objectives, but the decision space isn’t so huge or deep that players are prone to get lost in it.  There is a certain brevity to the gameplay – you’ll be done with this one in 20-30 minutes even at max player count – and the pleasure of grabbing just the right tile at just the right time is hugely satisfying.

And given the variety of scoring, even when you don’t have exactly what you want, it rarely feels like a waste.  In fact, the addition of the ability to place tiles over older ones means that it’s possible to recover from mistakes or pivot strategies even more effectively than the original game allowed.

Table Presence & Presentation

Keeping in mind that we were playing a prototype, Cascadia: Alpine Lakes is set to be as beautiful as the original.  Beth Sobel’s artwork never fails to impress, and the scoring cards for the Habitats really showcase her talent.  Aside from those, the layout and presentation of the scoring cards is clean and effective, making it easy to track your various scoring efforts.

Final Thoughts

As huge fans of Cascadia, I think Alpine Lakes does feel a bit more like a ‘definitive’ version of the gameplay we got a taste of in the original.  Inevitably, though, we come to the question many people have – if I already have Cascadia, should I get Alpine Lakes?

Here’s how it shakes out for us:  We highly recommend Cascadia: Alpine Lakes for folks who either loved the original and want more, or for those who don’t already have the original but think they might enjoy this extremely well-designed gameplay experience.  For people who already have the original but don’t consider it a favorite, the only reason to take another shot at it via Alpine Lakes is if you felt like the original was too simplistic and you’d enjoy a slightly deeper puzzle to solve.  Otherwise, Cascadia: Alpine Lakes is mostly the same game, and it won’t convert people who weren’t interested in the original.

Jess

On the other hand, Alpine Lakes also comes with a mini expansion for Cascadia, which takes components from both games to create alternate placement/scoring options for the original!

Ultimately, Cascadia: Alpine Lakes takes the already-fantastic gameplay of the original and literally adds dimension to it while still retaining the intuitive engagement that made Cascadia a hit. The added complexity from the multiple scoring mechanisms are a boon to anyone who wants some extra depth to the gameplay, bringing even more replayability and strategy to an already-excellent title.

You should definitely head over to the Alpine Lakes Kickstarter campaign and check it out!