Northwest

About this board game

Northwest is a 2–4-player tableau-building game with a 45-minute play time, combining shared movement, accessible strategy, and distinctive point-salad scoring.

Each turn, draft a memento cube from the main exploration board by moving the shared exploration token onto that cube. Add the captured memento to your personal 4×4 tableau, where every type scores victory points in its own unique way.

The memento taken on your turn determines the next player’s available movement. This shared system creates a changing puzzle as players compete for valuable cubes and plan around the movement options they leave behind.

• Bees/Honey: move in an L-shape, like a chess knight.
• Mushrooms: move to any of the 8 surrounding spaces.
• Ferns: move to one of 4 orthogonal spaces.
• Maples: move to one of 4 diagonal spaces.
• Bigfoot: move to any space in the same row or column.

Northwest can be taught in 3 minutes or less, making it easy to introduce while preserving meaningful decisions. Its balance of luck and strategy welcomes a broad range of players, whether you are carefully shaping your tableau or adapting to the cubes available on the exploration board.

The game ends when a player cannot make a legal move on the exploration board or when all players have filled their personal tableaus. The player with the most victory points wins. Spot bees, mushrooms, foliage, or the elusive Bigfoot, and make every step of your journey count.