Keystone North America Review

So cute, so angry.

If you've been following along for a while now you'll know that I like nature themed games and puzzles that make my head hurt. Keystone North America accomplishes both of these things, but is it good? Players are drafting cards in order to fill their player boards, a 4x4 grid. With many drafting games, the end card is free; anything else needs to be paid for with synergy tokens, placing one on each card before it. You can place cards anywhere on your player board but be careful because you need to be cognizant of what's around it. Every row and column scores at the end of the game but they only score for one set so if you play cards that aren't in sequential order or have mismatched ecosystem types, they'll essentially be worthless to you. The other option you have on your turn is to flip a skill card for it's ability or use all flipped cards and advance the time token. Skills can allow you to add tokens to cards to score more points or discard some cards in the market to refill. The game will end when the time token hits zero or if a player has completely filled their board. Rows/columns score 1 point per card in the ecosystem and additional points for each research token. If there is keystone species in the scored group, they'll score again for each one. Players also will have secret objectives and earn points for synergy tokens. Whoever has the most will be the winner.

It's also worth mentioning that the solo mode is really well thought out. The game comes with a field journal that has 20 challenges that get progressively harder and change some mechanisms of the basic game, including adding more cards. The second challenge for example wants you to have 6 keystone species, complete an objective, and score 70 points. Easier said than done but an excellent challenge.

The Good: This is an excellent puzzle. Especially later in the game where you need to be careful about what you want to place. By then, the time token is almost at zero and you need to try and get as much of the market cleared out before it hits zero to make sure you get cards you want. It's really nice. The artwork is also amazing. Every different card is unique. There were some points I took a card just for the art.

The Okay: There's a fair bit of luck involved with Keystone. Some of the skills will allow you to try and cycle through cards faster but it's a large deck and they only remove a couple at most. This is part of the challenge but for some it may be a turnoff. You can play wild cards as well if you need a card that won't show up but these will cost you 10 synergy tokens and they're limited.

The Not So Good: The waiting for the perfect card can absolutely get frustrating. That's a common theme throughout this review. I enjoy that tensity when the end is near and you're still hoping for the card you want but most will probably get annoyed more than anything with the waiting. There were points where I got a little confused when placing cards as to how many synergy tokens they'd receive for matching ecosystems.

Final Thoughts: Nature, check. Puzzle, check. Good? Check. Keystone North America is a game that I had been following along with for a while and I'm ecstatic that I got the opportunity to play it. There are some quirks and you may get sick of waiting but there is a lot of game in the box, even playing solo means you've got 20 games to play. Ultimately, I highly recommend this if you're looking for a unique puzzle that gets more challenging as you go.

Thanks to Rose Gauntlet for providing me with a review copy.