Mezen

About this board game

Mezen is a tile-manipulation board game for 1–5 players, played in about 30 minutes. Inspired by the famous Mezen painting style of Russia’s far north, it invites players to become northern craftsmen creating intricate ornamental paintings to order.

Each player works with a personal “painting” made from tiles showing symbols. On a turn, choose a group of adjacent identical symbols and remove those tiles. The tiles above slide down to fill the empty spaces, changing the arrangement of the painting.

The removed tiles are then flipped to their opposite side—from white to black—and placed in the newly empty spots. This combination of selecting matching symbols, sliding tiles, and changing tile sides creates new patterns and opportunities for completing goals.

• Choose adjacent groups of identical symbols.
• Slide tiles downward to fill empty spaces.
• Flip removed tiles from white to black.
• Arrange symbols to accomplish goals and earn points.

Mezen draws its visual identity from the northern landscape around the Mezen River, where dark days, white nights, forests, meadows, horses, birds, foxes, and people inspired a distinctive ornamental art form. The game’s central puzzle reflects the act of changing and arranging symbols to create a desired design.

Players continue this process for ten rounds, pursuing goals and gathering points through their evolving paintings. When the final round ends, the player with the most points wins. Released in 2023, Mezen combines a striking artistic theme with a compact tile puzzle for solo play or groups of up to five.