Atiwa

Lookout, Uwe Rosenberg, and an “advanced” label ought to be a comforting little promise after a Tuesday at work: sit down, make sensible things happen, feel briefly competent. Atiwa only partly delivers on it. It feels as though it reached the table before every loose end had been tied; my copy had components missing from the box, and the negative scoring tiles mentioned in the manual were never printed. That is an unusually awkward omission from Lookout, rather like finding a good coat with one sleeve absent.

At its centre, Atiwa is a cheerful engine builder in recognisably Rosenberg territory. You gradually assemble your own productive arrangement, look for choices that make it yield more effectively, and enjoy the neat sense of a small personal system settling into place.

It also moves quickly, which is much to its credit: it does not hold everyone hostage to a supposedly advanced rules burden. Player interaction is not the evening’s headline act; the emphasis is on tending your own engine, while the theme of people eating bats remains odd enough that it does little to make the invitation warmer.

As released, I suspect players seeking a genuinely advanced game will pass it by, while everyone else may linger over its unfinished edges and grumble. Still, there is a sound idea underneath: Atiwa is quietly good for introducing someone to more involved euros, provided you do not promise it wants to be more than it is.