Age: 8+
Players: 1-4
Playing Time: 20 Minutes
Category: Card
Gameschool Area: Geography, Art
Price: $22
Publisher: Pencil First Games
Games are inspiration. I use them to help inspire my kids to develop new interests, learn new things, ask questions, be curious, think, collaborate, strategize, and reason.
Games are also a source of beauty and art, and I highly value games like this one with an energy that is pure beauty, goodness, and light. What a game LOOKS like matters to me – there are plenty of games out there that have a Twaddle-y feel about them, and that’s just not the kind of thing I want to be putting in front of my kids and in my home.
I appreciate the effort put into creating something beautiful AND fun, and Sunset Over Water is both of those things.
Players are painters traveling through The Wilderness (the grid of cards). Each round begins with a player picking a Planning Card that tells them what time they will leave on their hike (the earliest time gets to go first), in what direction they will go (how they can move across the board), the distance of their hike (how many spaces they can move), and how many paintings they can create that day. The painters sell as many paintings at the end of the day as they can to earn Renown (points) and can also complete daily goals to earn more points.
The theme of the game is fun and very unique, the artwork is beautiful, and play is more complicated that you might think! An 8 year old can totally handle it, but it takes some trial and error and repeated play to develop a good strategy. Luck is always a factor, but it’s a game of beautiful complexity and serenity, a must have for any art loving homeschool families!
{Thanks to Pencil First Games for sending us this game to facilitate our review. We love it!}
