Yeti

On the 4th day of Christmas, my children played with me… Four Sad Snowmen, Three Magnetic Mazes, Two “Unmatched: Witcher” sets, and a reaction game I played with all three!

We continue our Christmas special with “Yeti,” a push-your-luck, Yahtzee-style game themed around trying to capture a photo of the elusive Yeti.

You start the game by setting up the rather cool 3D board, which features a mountain with footprints leading to the top. You also set up the photo track, complete with some all-important bonuses.

On your turn, you roll your dice and set aside any showing snow. If you don’t roll any snow, you must set aside all dice of one specific type. If you do roll snow, you set it aside first and then pick all dice of one other specific type. You repeat these steps until all your dice are set aside. After this, you evaluate what your dice achieve. This dice-rolling mechanic reminds me of “Martian Dice,” another fun push-your-luck dice game I reviewed about three years ago.

The general evaluation for the dice is as follows:

• Snow: If you roll fewer than three snow, nothing happens. If you roll more than three, a blizzard occurs, advancing the Yeti on the victory track. Rolling exactly three snow allows you to change one die to a face of your choice.
• Coins: You can use coins to purchase items that award points on the track, plus additional points equal to the value shown in the bottom left corner of the tile.
• Sherpas: These allow you to ascend to higher levels of the mountain, which increases your rewards.
• Footprints: These give you straight victory points.
• Tents: These allow you to start your next turn on a higher level of the mountain, enabling you to earn more victory points.

The main goal is to catch the Yeti, who moves around the edge of the board based on the amount of snow you roll. This, however, is where the first major issue lies.

Problem #1: Since you must set aside snow when you roll it, you inevitably accumulate quite a bit of snow. Rolling more than three triggers a blizzard, advancing the Yeti. This means the Yeti is constantly moving forward. During our game, we found that every time we got close, the Yeti moved further away. Conversely, with a few lucky rolls, it’s possible to reach the Yeti in just a couple of turns. While this unpredictability might be intentional, none of us enjoyed it. We felt it would have been better if the game simply required players to progress along a track to reach the Yeti.

Problem #2: The power imbalance between different mountain levels is glaring. Sherpas and tents both allow you to ascend, but tents are significantly easier to obtain and more powerful than sherpas. This makes Sherpas feel almost redundant. Players who reach the top of the mountain can earn three or four times the victory points of those lower down, creating a significant imbalance. Worse, your starting position on the mountain often depends on sheer luck.

Generally, I love push-your-luck games, but only when they feel fair. In “Yeti,” bad luck can be utterly crippling, leaving you feeling hopeless as the game runs away from you. Conversely, a single lucky turn can yield far too many points. While this might sound exciting, it feels frustrating and unfair. A good push-your-luck game should balance luck with a sense of fairness, but “Yeti” fails in this regard.

Finally, the constant movement of the Yeti prolongs the game unnecessarily. Both games we played dragged on far longer than we wanted, and by the end, we were desperate to play something else. None of us enjoyed “Yeti” much at all.

This is particularly disappointing, as push-your-luck games are one of my favourite mechanics, and I usually recommend them wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for “Yeti.” The unbalanced mechanics and frustrating gameplay left me thoroughly unimpressed.

This is a strong negative from me as there are so many better examples of the genre out there.