Black Forest

In Black Forest, Uncle Uwe returns to what he knows best: resource wheels, forests, little animals, and the blessing of the eurogame saint. The family resemblance to Glass Road and, even more so, my beloved Ora et Labora is clear, without the game entirely losing its own identity.

Each player moves a wandering worker from village to village and chooses two of that area's available actions. These either provide raw materials or pave the way for constructing buildings. It is a clean, familiar core: travel, activate, gather, and turn production into development.

The place where Black Forest really demands my attention is the production of advanced goods. The way it works may be precisely the element you will love, or the one that melts your brain and sends the game to the discard pile. Interaction mainly comes through location choices and the shared action map, rather than any especially aggressive conflict.

Scoring is fairly compact, and it reminded me more of Agricola than Hallertau. Overall, I had a good time and consider it decidedly better than the bland Atiwa; it is simply not an “oh wow!” experience, especially if you already have five-plus Rosenbergs on the shelf. Its one serious thorn is classic Uwe: at the start, you need to study the building display very seriously, and it changes randomly from game to game. If you do not, you are going down the drain.