Umbrella Components Overview

When Asmodee Canada asked if I wanted to look at Umbrella I quickly said yes without doing any research about the game and whether it would be a good fit for our audience. Truthfully, I generally like to research games to see if at the least it’s even a good fit for my gaming group. Once the game arrived I was actually slightly unimpressed with the cover and background, and the game seemed like a giant puzzle I wouldn’t enjoy. But this is a situation where fantastic production makes me want to try the game, and that doesn’t happen often.

In Umbrella, players will be moving and pushing tiles on their board to create patterns and score points. New umbrella tiles are chosen from a central board or a board to the left or right, and then placed into your board pushing another tile out. Think of the game Labyrinth if that’s helpful. All of the board spread around the table are of nice thick cardboard, and I have no concerns about the quality at all.

The shining feature of this game are the coloured umbrella pieces. In games where players handle pieces a ton, cardboard just doesn’t cut it. It’s why there are so many complaints about the production of Quacks of Quedlinburg and Life of the Amazonia – cardboard just doesn’t work and quickly deteriorates from constant handling. Although this isn’t a bag building game like those other two, this one does have a lot of handling of game pieces, so the inclusion of wooden pieces is a huge bonus here.

I’d say I’m still not a huge fan of how the game looks, but the production is very nice and makes me more likely to give Umbrella a try. I’m not sure it’s going to be a game for me – again, feels to much like a puzzle as opposed to a game – but this is a situation were a solid production is pushing me to play a game I otherwise likely wouldn’t have!