Northwest (2025)

Northwest a 2-to-4-player tableau-building game with unique point salad scoring and shared movement mechanics. It can be taught in 3 minutes or less and has the right balance of luck and strategy to make it accessible to anyone. Each turn, the player drafts a memento cube from the main exploration board by moving the shared exploration token onto the cube and adding it to their tableau. The previously captured memento cube sets the next player's available move: Bees/Honey: next player must move in the L-Shape similar to the Knights from the Chess. Mushrooms: next player must move into a space in any of the 8 surrounding spaces. Ferns: next player must move into 1 of 4 orthogonal spaces. Maples: next player must move into 1 of 4 diagonal spaces. Bigfoot: next player may move into any space in the same column or row. In Northwest, your journey is represented by a 4x4 tableau in which you will track memento cubes drafted from the exploration board. Each memento cube scores victory points (VPs) in a unique way. The game ends when a player cannot make a legal move in the exploration board or all players have their personal tableau filled. The player with the most VP wins! Can you spot bees, mushrooms, foliage, or the ever-elusive Bigfoot? Your next adventure in the Northwest awaits. —description from the designer.