Oddland Components Overview and Impressions
There isn’t a lot to talk about when it comes to Allplay small box games, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. That said, just because a game comes in a small box doesn’t mean the production quality should be anything short of outstanding. As we noted in our components overview and impressions of Lure, Allplay has the tough task of keeping games affordable while also putting out a wonderful product. They did that with Lure, and I believe they do that as well in Oddland.
Oddland doesn’t have dice like Lure, but instead is a mixture of square cards and cardboard. The cardboard cards are colourful and denote the various animals you want to play out on the growing “board” of cards. These cardboard tiles not only show you how to score the various animals, but have great art as well to make them attractive to look at. Included in the base game are cardboard images of all the animals as well, and these are the markers you will lay out on the cards to score points.
The cards are pretty standard in terms of quality. You could look for unique sleeves to fit these, but I don’t think that’s necessary. The cards need to be thinner than your average cards because you’ll be placing them overtop each other as the game progresses, which is another reason I would contemplate NOT finding sleeves for these. The card artwork is fine, although a bit more variation between similar biomes could have been nice.
In our review box, Allplay sent over the Oddland expansion – more cardboard animals cards, animal tokens, and biome cards – and the deluxe upgrade pack. This pack replaces the cardboard animal tiles with little wooden pieces with coloured bases for each player. I really do prefer these over the cardboard tokens as they are less intrusive in my opinion; if you really enjoy Oddland after a few plays, I think this is actually a very worthwhile upgrade.
Again, Allplay has blanaced the need to create affordable games with a solid production. There is nothing crazy in this game that will get you excited when you unbox it, but it’s a strong production that will stand up long term.
Article By Adam
