Base price: $19.
2 – 4 players.
Play time: ~20 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 4 

Full disclosure: A review copy of Festival was provided by Scorpion Masqué and Hachette Boardgames.

I occasionally manage to land some holiday consistency, and lo, a game about fireworks being reviewed close to July 4th is great, though I’m not really vibing on the whole “America rah rah” celebrations in this, the year 2025. That might get me in trouble at some point but I’m just a board game reviewer. Guess we will see. In the meantime, however, let’s check out Festival and see what’s (fire)working for it.

In Festival, the world over is celebrating! Each major city is contributing its own set of fireworks and vibes to this unnamed event, and the fireworks will be going off all around the world (not simultaneously, because that would be silly). Each turn, you can take a fireworks token from one of the two piles adjacent to you, or you can claim an Objective Card and work towards that. You can even stack fireworks tiles on top of each other, up to four high (any higher and, honestly, that would be a lot of focus on one part of the sky). The challenge here is that you share your two piles with your neighbors, who share theirs with their neighbors and so on. Balance your give and your take with your ambition if you want to light up the sky!

Overall: 8 / 10

Overall, I think Festival is great! The first thing that jumps out to me is the color scheme. Does it make it harder for me to do my photography? Yes. But is it particularly striking? Also yes. Sometimes things are actually two things. That’s life. But I think the game does a great job of giving you, the player, the impression that you’re actually setting fireworks against the night sky, which is a lovely aesthetic sentiment. The boards having two sides so you can pick your favorite city helps a lot with that. I know it adds to the cost, but you really can make a game better by demonstrating you care about the aesthetic value of the experience, and Scorpion Masqué is pretty consistently excellent on that front. The big chunky tiles are also great; they are easy to shuffle, fun to flip, and just tactilely nice. I have yet to play a game from Scorpion Masqué I haven’t enjoyed, and I’m hoping to try Dead Cells pretty soon. It looks amazing. Even smaller games like this shine when they’re handled by a good publisher.

I will say that here, the major point of challenge for the game and where it can get occasionally a little stopped up is in how you select tiles. You have two stacks, each shared with an opponent. That means your only way to get new tiles is to either take them yourself or hope an opponent takes one. If everyone is drawing Objective Cards, that’s not happening, so you might get stuck with useless tiles multiple turns in a row. That feels … bad. Similarly, the game ends once a stack is depleted, so if two players are both only pulling from one stack, you can end the game too quickly. Also bad. From a design standpoint I understand why that is, but from a gameplay standpoint it can lead to nonideal outcomes. Sometimes the game just … ends, especially if the player who draws the last tile is the last player in turn order. Then you’re just done.

That said, I am slowly collecting a good pile of fireworks-themed games for certain holidays, and I think Festival does a nice job fitting in while being a nice, strategic, competitive game. Hanabi is more strategic but cooperative, and Fireworks is heart-and-soul a silly party game. I think I have others, but they escape me right now. The challenges of writing when you want to be asleep. But soon. Festival is a worthy contender for an opener for game night. Quick to teach, easy to pick up and play, and satisfying from a gameplay, aesthetics, and tactile standpoint. Scorpion Masqué has another solid title on their hands, and if you’re looking for a fireworks game, you like nice and pleasant games without too much complexity, or you’re just trying to further drive me towards reviewing games that are hard to photograph in my usual style, I’d recommend checking Festival out!

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