Faraway Board / Card Game Review

Recently, a friend of mine purchased a copy of Faraway and brought it over to play, and I cannot believe I passed on such a charming, quick card game. Faraway is a title that has been offered to me to review for a while now, but I’ve always told the publisher, “No, thanks.” on account of our team being really busy. Should have taken them up on that offer, because I find Faraway such a great, small experience.

In Faraway, players will be drafting cards from a central common area and playing cards in front of them until they have a row of 8 cards. Each card has a number printed in the top left corner, and should you play consecutive, larger numbers, you can draw and place bonus cards that will help you fulfill some tasks and earn some points.

The cards in the game come in 4 different colours, and most cards either have a scoring objective, icons used to pay costs, or icons used for scoring objectives. It’s all very clever, with one little twist. You play your cards out left to right in a row, but you will score your cards right to left. At the end of the game, you will flip over all 8 cards in your row, and then beginning on the right, you will flip your cards one at a time and start scoring them. If there is a cost, you can only pay that cost using cards that you have flipped plus the bonus cards you have earned. That means you need to be VERY strategic about how you play out your cards, because if card # 8 played (card #1 when scoring) requires symbols to score points, and if you don’t have those symbols to pay the cost, you cannot earn the bonus.

This is such a clever little puzzle game that seems to have a lot of strategy. Do you play cards in sequence so you can draw more bonus cards? Or do you play cards that score you maximum points, risking losing some points if you don’t have those bonus cards to pay costs down the road? That decision space is very satisfying, and is one of the main reasons I love the game so much. But there is something else as well – ease of play.

Teaching Faraway is so simple that I was able to play my first game with a friend in under 20 minutes. That included the teach and the entire game. It will obviously take a lot longer with more players, but even at six this is a fairly quick experience. And it’s one you can play again and again in a single night, perfecting that strategy and making tweaks to your gameplay.

Faraway is fantastic, and if you are looking for an inexpensive small box game this holiday season, we highly recommend it!