Base price: $10.
1 players.
Play time: ~10 minutes.
BGG Link
Check it out on Kickstarter!
Logged plays: 2

Full disclosure: A preview copy of The Daily Weather was provided by Button Shy Games. Some art, gameplay, or other aspects of the game may change between this preview and the fulfillment of the Kickstarter, should it fund, as this is a preview of a currently unreleased game. 

This one is my bad, y’all. I got my dates mixed up with five Kickstarter games launching this month and I thought I had everything sorted before I went to New York. The cold must have gotten to my brain, but better late than never. I apologize. Same thing happened with Logic & Lore: Variance this week, so, not a great start to February. We’re iterating. Thankfully, Button Shy games are a routine part of my life at this point, so it’s always fun to see if they’re doing something novel or weird. This time might be both, so let’s see what’s waiting for us in The Daily Weather!

In the Daily Weather, players are given a task: keep the current date uncovered and match the week and day pattern to form a puzzle that’s unique to this specific day (or at least likely won’t repeat for a few years). For all y’all who are doing a set of daily puzzles anyways (how about that Connections?), here’s an analog option so you don’t wake up and look directly at your screen but can still wake your brain up. There’s also special challenges for some holidays and your birthday. How will your forecast shape up?

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

It’s day-specific! Determine the current day, and set out the Week and Day cards:

They’ll tell you how to organize the Month and Date cards:

You can set the other ones aside. Shuffle the remaining six Weather Cards, and draw two to form your hand.

You’re good to start!

Gameplay

This one’s pretty fast! Each turn, your goal is simple: you want to make the pictured pattern and cover all the month and date icons except for today’s month and date. That’s harder than it sounds!

Each turn, you can place a card, but at least one cell on that card must be placed on a matching cell (same icon and background).

Once the game ends, you have to also have the Seasonal Weather Pattern! It’s indicated on the Month and Day card, as mentioned, but has to have the indicated icon or background. If you’ve done all the tasks, you can also gain bonus points! See how you did!

Player Count Differences

None! Solo game.

Strategy

• You really want to lock down the requirements first! Not having that pattern can mess you up! Lock that down pretty quickly, if you can.
• Watch out for where you can legally place. That requirement that you can only place if one of the icons match can be nasty; that should affect which cards you place.
• Scoring additional points is good, too. I’m not really sure what it’s good for, but it’s good! More points are points. I don’t have much more than that.
• Don’t necessarily rely on what might come up in the deck; do what you can with what you have. Unless you have eyes on it, you might get a bad icon / background combo, which is not ideal. A bird in the hand is worth two in the deck, I suppose.
• There’s only six cards! You really don’t have many options to play with on your turn. You can rotate some things, yes, but you can’t flip or tuck things, and you need to cover several icons at the bare minimum if you want to have even a shot at passing.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• The art style is very pleasant. It reminds me of a weather report, yes, but it’s also very pleasant. Soothing, even, which I think is smart for a puzzle game intended to be played daily. It’s nice to look at.
• Game plays fast. I mean, it’s only six cards, so, there’s not a whole lot you can do, but the game is very quick.
• Setup is also a breeze! You just need to place a few cards and shuffle a few more. It’s very fast.
• I like a weather theme! It’s also pleasant. I haven’t played many weather-themed games, so it’s always nice to have one! Plus it’s more “reporting the weather” than it is “controlling the weather” or something more sci-fi, so it’s still pretty pleasant.
• I like the idea of a daily puzzle from Button Shy, and I think the configurability of the game really works in its favor. There’s always a new way to play! I think it’s really neat and I love the concept. The execution is good too!
• I do think this works well for the Button Shy ethos of being able to take a game anywhere. You wanna bring it on vacation? Great; it’ll fit in your pocket. You could play it on an airplane tray table. You could likely play it on your lap on the bus if you were committed enough.

Mehs

• Some of the text is tiny. The indicators on the Month and Date cards are itty-bitty, and that can be hard to read sometimes. I actually didn’t notice which cards were which at the beginning, but I figured it out once I noticed that they also have little faces. The little faces are always helpful.

Cons

• I do wish the game presented me with more of a concept of what constitutes a “good” score. I assume there will be more information to that effect once the game is more publicly available, but when I finish a game I have no idea if I did well or not; I just know if I won or lost and then maybe scored some extra on top of that.

Overall: 8 / 10

Overall, I like The Daily Weather! I think it’s a logical evolution point for Button Shy as a brand, being able to eventually make a puzzle game that’ll inspire you to play it daily and share scores with friends, rivals, and otherwise. There’s plenty of -dle games in that space already, like Wordle and Murdle and Pimantle and things like that. People love a daily game, and given how people already love some of the Button Shy spatial titles like Skulls of Sedlec or Sprawlopolis, it seems natural for that evolution to occur. The theme is pleasant enough, especially as it somewhat adapts to the seasons and the weather, and there are enough special features (certain holidays, variable setups) that it looks to have a pretty good amount of longevity. I will say that if you’re looking for a deep game that’s going to be played for hours and hours each day (like any of the Sprawlopolis family of games, for instance, or some of the Simply Solo titles), well, that’s not The Daily Weather. That’s also not its intention. It’s designed to be a quick play every day that you don’t have to think about that hard, and also a game that if you lose you can quickly pick up and replay to try and get a better score. I’d love to know what a good score is, granted, but I’m sure one of y’all will tell me eventually or I can find out in the Button Shy Discord. One of those. I think for the Button Shy fans and the daily puzzlers, The Daily Weather is going to be a beloved addition to your collection. If that’s you or you’re interested in seeing where that goes, I’d recommend it! Kind of hoping we see an expansion towards a series of some kind like the Sprawlopolis games or the Simply Solo line.

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