Mythwind Board Game Review

Mythwind

WBG Score: 8

Player Count: 1-4

You’ll like this if you like: Stardew Valley, a hot cup of Coco with a blanket by the fire.

Published by: Open Owl Studios

Designed by: Nathan Lige, Brendan McCaskell

This is the reviewer's copy after I backed the Kickstarter but the publisher sent me a play mat and Sprite miniatures upgrade for free. See our review policy here. I have played the game with all four available characters, but there is a fifth expansion character I don't have. I have played in solo mostly, but also two-player.

Mythwind is a fascinating game. You cannot win this game, and you can't really ever finish it, although it can run out of new content. It is set in the mystical fantasy realm of Mythwind, a lush, peaceful valley inhabited by mysterious Sprites. Your job is to take control of one of four characters and, well... do a few odd jobs. General town improvements and minor goal completion are the aim, along with some narrative-driven storytelling. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays.

How to Set Up Mythwind

The main board is comprised of three parts that slot together nicely, left to right. Place these down on the main table along with the main town tray. In this, you need to sort the dice, event card 1, weather cards (do not shuffle), goal cards 1-7, Adventure cards 1-10, goal tokens, and money tokens. Then onto the top left of the main board at the spring tile, place the starting resource tokens into the one slot on the bottom left. Then add in the forest cards into their matching number, leaving space 7 free for the Longhouse building, drawn from the building deck. Place the town action tiles onto the designated spaces on the board. Then finally roll one blue sprite die and one orange villager die and place them onto the horizontal space below the Longhouse. If you roll a blank, roll again until you get a different result.

Each player now needs to choose a character. You can change characters each season, which takes around 30-45 minutes, so don't worry too much now. You won't be locked in. There is no real benefit to choosing one over the other, although I would say the Farmer is the easiest to learn for your first game.

Take your character's miniature, tray, and all designated components. I won't go into full details for that here; it's best just to follow the instructions in each character's mini-manual.

How to Play Mythwind

Games of Mythwind take place over various seasons. Each season will cycle through the weather deck one time. There are ten starting weather cards. After these ten cards have been drawn, a new season will begin. Players can rotate characters in and out between each season, and you can easily change player count during this point too. All players will be working together on the development of the same town board, but characters can be worked on however, whenever, by whomever you like.

Each day starts with the flip of the top weather card. You are now in the DAWN phase. During this period, you will check any weather effects as shown on the cards, which mainly allow you to draw the next Event card or allow you to advance any buildings that currently sit in the construction queue. Each new weather card is placed onto the top of the next one, showing the top part of the previous card so you can see the weather patterns over the days. Once you get to day three, you will now need to check that current season tile to see if you match any of the three different weather patterns there with the last three days of weather you have experienced. If so, carry out the action shown, generally giving you resources, sometimes taking them away.

Some characters will now have their own unique action to carry out in the Dawn phase. For example, the Farmer will be able to Plant, Tend, Harvest, or Clear, depending on the day's weather matched to the current Season—essentially, a bonus action in their fields. The Ranger will decide if they plan to spend the current day in Town or go on an Adventure. If they are already out on an adventure, this part is obviously skipped. The Crafter has no effect, but the Merchant carries out a few steps. Depending on the season and current weather, a specific good will either increase or decrease its market value by 1. Unless it's cloudy, where there is no shift. The Merchant's customer or their rival will then perform an action depending on the weather card's effect. This effect will be for a customer to buy, sell, or manufacture goods.

Players then enter the DAY phase. Here, all characters will move their miniature onto a space on the main board and carry out one Town action, unless they are playing as the Ranger and are currently out on an adventure. Players take turns to do this and can discuss between them the best course of action. In solo, simply do your own single town action. Town actions allow you to gain coins, clear land for a cost, buy resources for a cost, construct or demolish buildings for a cost, hire workers for a cost, go on a short single-day adventure, or use any other previously constructed buildings. Place your worker, carry out the action, and then all players move to the simultaneous character actions.

When going on an adventure this way, simply draw the top card from the adventure deck, read it out loud, then choose an option of how to proceed. On the reverse of the card will be your reward/result based on your choice.

Each action you take in Town will relate to either the Sprite or Workers alignment. Whichever action you do here will affect your choices in the character action phase. Each character has their character action phase, and I won't go into it in full here. But here is a brief summary.

The Farmer will grow, tend, and harvest crops for money. Crops change in their cost each day, and there will always be one crop available for free. You can also acquire Cows and machinery for additional efficiencies and profits.

The Ranger will go out on missions. You can choose the difficulty and decide which items to take with you to help. Each day you will flip a card showing you a choice from various encounters on that day. Each encounter will require a different tool to help you achieve it. If you have that required tool, you will be rewarded with various bonuses. When in town, you can gain new items and workers to help with later quests, upgrade your Rangers' skills, and prepare for bigger, longer, but more rewarding adventures.

The Crafter will Gather and Refine materials, to then fulfil requests for new items from the other townsfolk. Selling them for large profits and enhancing their own reputation as a maker of fine goods, the Crafter can quickly help your Town develop through their successful trade.

The Merchant is the most complex character. Their role is to buy and sell goods for profit. Rival merchants will come up against you as customers look at their various options to make their purchases.

Once all players have concluded their character actions, players can then use any workers they have hired which allow them to carry out bonus actions. Workers become slowly exhausted each time they carry out an action, and when they do, they are re-rolled and placed back onto the main board to be purchased for hire again.

Players then move to the DUSK phase where all workers used that turn are placed back into their characters' tray, players bring their miniature back from the town, unless it's the Ranger out in the wild, and then carry out their own unique character action. The Farmer replenishes any purchased crop in the market and The Crafter will fulfil any requests they have completed. The Ranger and Merchant have no extra actions.

If there are more weather cards left in the Town tray, flip the next one over and carry out the following day. If there are none left, your season is over. Players carry out the end of season effects and then move to the next season. End of season effects are simple. You will resolve any end of season actions on any buildings you may have built, check to see if you met your current season goal, and if so, gain the shown reward. Then set the next goal for the following season. Change the season tile to the next one, gather all the weather cards and shuffle them up ready for the next season, and finally, decide if you want to carry on with the same character or change to a new one. Packing up characters is straightforward thanks to the trays they come with. I have been changing every three seasons or so with ease.

Setting up the game mid-season is also a breeze. Simply gather the three town boards, pile them into one, and then gather on top of the town board with the tray lids on top. Place them back in the box and you are all set. It takes a minute, tops. Setting back up for your next play is also straightforward.

Players can carry on this way until they want to stop, feel they have done all they can with the current character, or simply want a break. The game will develop in each character's progression as they gain new skills, become more efficient in their actions, and discover new things. The Town will develop new buildings, and mysteries will be revealed. Inside the box are a few secret envelopes that you will open when certain events tell you to do so. This introduces all sorts of new things I won't spoil here. There are 80 adventure cards, and I would imagine you would see 1-6 each season, depending on player count. There are 154 event cards, and you will generally see four each season. There are 28 goals, one used each season, and 42 building cards. And of course the four secret envelopes to open. There is a lot of game to explore here. But is this fun?

Mythwind Board Game Review: Is It Fun?

I want to love this. And I think I do. The game feels unique compared to most other games I have played; it is hard to compare it to other experiences. It shares elements of other games with the choose-your-own-adventure missions, character development, and town building. But to me, it feels more like a video game such as Animal Crossing than any board game I have played.

The vibe is very chill. There is no real sense of urgency in the game, and the choices in the Events and Adventures, although they of course, affect your town stats and character development, won't ever feel imperative to the game's success. This is because there is no real judge of that. No real endpoint. No real win/lose condition.

Each season you will develop your town a little and move your character on in terms of their skills and current income. But other than that, it won't ever feel like you are making huge strides. You will develop the story with the Event cards and Adventures but at a very relaxed pace and never with game-changing consequences it seems.

It will depend on your own tastes if this is enough for you. I think most people would enjoy this game for a season or two for each character, learning how they all work and implementing a strategy to get the most efficiencies from each one is highly rewarding. I would say that takes a good three to five seasons per character to do. The game's longevity beyond this period though will be dependent on your feelings around the overall vibe.

Personally, I think I love it. I wanted to love it, and I think it all looks gorgeous. So this must be having an effect on my opinion. I also adore the people behind this. Following them on social media and meeting Brendan at Spiel in 2023, I have to say I am a fan-boy of the entire team and project. Trying to put this bias aside, how do I feel when I play this?

Well, other than the obvious words that come up a lot with this game... Relaxed. Chill. Calm. I also feel satisfied and intrigued. I am enjoying the progression and pace of the overall narrative of the game. There are enough twists and turns for the story to interest me, and I am keen to see where it goes next. I find each character to be interesting enough so that I am equally happy to play with them all. But I like the variety they bring. Changing them in and out is very simple, as I said, and I like the mixed feeling this brings to the game as I change my characters. Generally, for each play, I will bring a new character in. And I play for one to three seasons each play, time permitting.

The Farmer initially felt a little simplistic to me, but as I started to bring in the Equipment, I started to really enjoy this little tile-laying puzzle. The Crafter was at first a chore. But I then started to really enjoy the process of Gathering, Refining, then selling items. It has a lovely simple linear progression to it, with a lot of little achievements. The Merchant took me the longest to get my head round, but I was still easily up and running within one season. The Ranger is my favourite to use. I like the sense of adventure and the planning nature of this character strangely reminds me of Raiders of the North Sea (Take that with a pinch of salt).

I will 'finish' this game. My completist personality has risen to the forefront, and I am eager to see every card and develop every character to their fullest. I will back the next Kickstarter to get the next expansion, and I am keen to upgrade my components with the metal coins and extra characters.

I love the ambition of this game and think it executes it brilliantly. There is a 'but' though.

I am giving this game an 8/10, and I presume reading up to now you would think this sounds like a 9 or 10? So, why an 8? Well, it feels like a 1.0 version of this type of game. There is a lot of ambition in this project. But not as much as I feel there could be. If you have played The 7th Continent, it feels like the progression from that game to The 7th Citadel. Both are great games, but the second game developed the ideas and mechanics into a much richer game with bigger budgets and broader ambitions. Mythwind feels a little like this to me. They had an idea for a game and how it could work but were restricted, as any business would be, by time and budget to make it profitable, enjoyable, accessible, and out before the Kickstarter Trolls attacked.

Now they have done this and seen some success, I do wonder how this game could develop. It is billed as a persistent-world over open-world, but my mind races at the thought of this being opened up to a bigger stage, and maybe more open-world. Now we have the basis of the game and the mechanics are down, could the developers bring in hundreds, no thousands of new Event and Adventure cards along with a few more characters and buildings to really take this game to the next level?

Playing the game is fun. But I never feel like I am making decisions that massively impact anything. It doesn't scratch that usual board game itch of strategy and decision making. There is a lot of other things here instead. I just feel this is the beginning of a new style of game. Rather than the finished product. I certainly hope that is the case anyway.

I much prefer this experience in solo play. At two players, it works fine, and you do feel like you are making more progress in your town and with your character development. However, each character has very different tasks during their own character actions, so this part feels much like multiplayer solo, and I felt a little like I was missing out as a character I was not controlling was developing without me. Each character takes a very different amount of time to carry out their actions, and waiting between phases of the Day and Dusk phase in multiplayer is frustrating when you just want to get on with the next day.

I enjoy every minute with Mythwind, but I think I want more. Other reviewers have said it feels a bit "rinse and repeat," which is true to an extent. But overlaid with the mainly repetitive nature of each character's core mechanics is the overarching story, sense of adventure, and town-building aspect of the game that really interests me. I want more of this. After multiple games with each character, I am nowhere near finished with this game and eager to play more. I think expectations for a project of this ambition and scale are often higher than more regular releases. We should not judge this game on what it doesn't do but on what it brings and could do in the future, and for that, I am all in.