Through the Desert Components Overview and Impressions
I don’t think anyone will ever say that AllPlay doesn’t produce really nice games, and they generally do so at an amazing price. We have reviewed a number of their small box games before – check out our thoughts on Lure and Oddland – but this is the first medium sized game we’ve reviewed from them. There is a ton of stuff in this box, and while the gameplay is pretty simple and straightforward, the amount of components might be a bit daunting. And getting it all into the box – that isn’t the easiest task either!
Again, when you get Through the Desert to the table, you’ll be shocked by how much comes out of such a small box. The board game folds out beautifully and is double sided, one side featuring the desert during the day, and the other time featuring the desert at night. Each side is beautifully illustrated, and not only showcases a nice scenescape, but also is very user friendly as well. All of the various oasis locations are nicely highlighted, and certain sections of the board are shaded as well; these areas aren’t used in games with fewer players.
The game comes with a ton of cardboard tokens, from player pieces to scoring pieces to little buildings you will be scattering around the desert. There are a number of unique designs on these buildings as well, so it doesn’t just look like the same thing tile after tile. I think this is a nice touch, but also is another way to highlight differences between different point tiles.
What people might be most excited about are the little plastic pieces included in the game. There are a number of plastic palm trees that will be placed on the games various oasis spaces, and a ton of little plastic camels, some with riders in each players colour. While these camels are not super detailed, they are pretty nice and create a beautiful table presence when the game gets going. When I’ve thought about this game after the fact, I realized that the team could have easily used player pawns to represent player colours, and cardboard tokens for the camels if they wanted to. Having them all as little plastic pieces is pretty phenomenal.
For storage purposes, though, I think I would have preferred if the palm trees were actually just tiles instead of full blown plastic trees. While they look cool, it does make getting everything back in to the box a little more difficult. We have the expansion for Through the Desert as well, but I can’t get that into the box with everything else unless I put everything away like Tetris pieces. That is, however, a minor gripe in what is otherwise a glowing review of the components for Through the Desert. This one gets an A+ from us, AllPlay!
Article By Adam
