Matthew BaileyGame 8 of our “Halloween Spooktacular 2024” is a little bit different as we are going to be looking at “Candy Hunters” a Halloween-themed game from “Smart Flamingo”, which I reviewed about 6 months ago and stated at the end of the review that if you order it on Gamefound now it should arrive just before Halloween. Well they were true to their word (just) and my retail copy showed up yesterday so I thought I would have a look at the finished package.
The short version is this is still an excellent little game I’d recommend picking up if you like abstract strategy games.
The retail release is essentially the same as the prototype I looked at with slightly darker tile colours (that I am not keen on), a pretty poor insert that isn’t fit for purpose (Not Barenpark levels of bad but still) and an amazing set of solo puzzles that are really cool.
“Candy Hunters” is an abstract strategy game themed around the idea of trick-or-treating children going from house to house in order to gain sweets.
You start by setting up the board in a kind of windmill shape, ensuring that two of each of the coloured tiles are in their correct locations, with the ghost markers placed on the outer spaces.
Each player takes 5 tokens of their own and 2 pattern cards each that represent the patterns they are trying to make on their quest for candy.
Essentially, you are trying to arrange your player tokens into the right spaces for the building tiles so that when you score those specific patterns, you have player tokens on those tiles and not ghosts.
On your turn, you perform four specific actions. First, you pick up and place a building tile of any colour you choose, normally with the intention of trying to complete a pattern or get halfway to completing a pattern based on what is already on the board, but equally being aware that other players might be trying to use the same patterns as you.
Next, you move a ghost up to two times. You can either move one ghost two spaces or you can move two ghosts one space each. The key thing with the ghost mechanic is you are trying to ensure that the ghosts do not end up on the tiles you want to score and potentially end up on the tiles that your opponents will score. You can also use the ghosts to move your player tokens as player tokens themselves cannot move but can be moved by a ghost, as you can only have one thing on each tile, and these can create chain reactions by moving a ghost onto a ghost, onto a player, onto a space that you actually wanted to. This, is when played with a larger player count especially (more on that in a bit).
Next, and this is really key, is that you score your pattern
before you place your player token that round. By doing so, you check to see if any of your pattern cards match any of the patterns on the board, and if so, you must score those patterns. For every tile of that pattern you are on, you get to keep that tile in your reserve and earn a point. But equally, if another player has their token on a tile in your pattern, then they also get to score. Finally, any ghosts that are on your pattern force you to take a scare token, which basically acts as a minus towards the end.
The last thing you do in your round is to place a player token onto any of the empty spaces, obviously trying to plan for the next time. But one thing that is really key after you’ve played a few games of this is you start trying to guess what the player is actually doing and equally you start placing your tile not on the tile you actually want to score but a tile you think you can potentially force your token to end up on by the time your next turn rolls around.
Once you have finished all of your player tokens, which is essentially five rounds, you play one last round and then you score. Scoring is done in the following way:
- 2 points for each Pattern Card in the collection
- 2 points for each first Candy of a given colour
- 1 point for each additional Candy in a given colour
- -1 point for each Scare Token in the collection
I like the way that the candies work and that it encourages you to get different colours, which also adds to the strategy as you play.
Firstly, let me say that Toby and I really enjoyed playing a couple of two-player games of “Candy Hunters,” and I later enjoyed playing a better game with Toby and Jack that isn’t shown here. The next day, I took this to work and tried it out with a group of students, and as I suspected, it worked even better when playing with four players.
It is a deceptively simple abstract game that’s really easy for young kids to understand, and Toby completely understood what he was intending to do. Slowly, after a couple of games, he started to get an idea of the strategy. If you are both playing pretty straight, it can be pretty simplistic. But if you are both going to try and outdo each other as you go through your turns, then it can get very strategic, almost with an element of social deduction as you try to work out what your opponent is going to do to try and move their pieces into the correct place at the last moment, as well as potentially trying to screw you over. I witnessed an amazing move where a student of mine had moved a piece into a seemingly useless space with the aid of a ghost, only to find out that the other student had preempted that’s what they were going to do, and the actual pattern he was trying to build did, in fact, require that piece to be on that space in the first place.
The box is really nicely designed, all of the cards are good quality, and I really like the wooden pumpkin tokens. From a production point of view this is a good value proposition.
This definitely took me a few games to get my head around and realize that actually, this is a really good game that I really enjoyed playing, as after the first game, I was a little bit unsure. The abstract strategy works best when you have two players of similar skill levels and equally works better when those two players have played the game a few times and get an idea of what’s going on and where the strategies lie. This is not a game that you are going to love on your first play, but through a few repeated plays, ideally with a full complement of four players, this is a really strong, lovely little game that I would recommend.
