Shadows in the Forest Review - with Tom Vasel 

My kid loves this game. I LOATHE it with a passion. Honestly, it just doesn't work. The die sucks and the "glow" is gone in about 20 seconds. We had to constantly "charge" it by palming it and hitting it with our iPhone flashlight between rounds. And you have to be careful rolling it so you don't upset the board or move the trees even slightly (we wound up using the box lid). The light "beams" are nebulous and ill-defined. There are a lot of debates on if something can be seen or not. And really, the best way to tell is top down, but you can't let the lantern player look top down or they'd see all the other hidden pieces. You can't move pieces easily in the dark so we found ourselves making the lantern player close their eyes so we could constantly turn the lights back on or use a flashlight to move the pieces withing knocking trees over (but then you have to double-check the path so you didn't move through the light beams if the lights were off. And you can often hear the pieces moving on the board, too, at least enough to know if they were moved to the far side of the board or the near, the left or the right. And once a piece is "frozen" you know the other pieces are going to go try to touch it to unfreeze it, so you can just move away and double back to get extra hits really easily since you know where they are going. We've played about two dozen times and I don't know that the forest creatures have ever won. Lantern win seems inevitable, and thus boring. This may be a fun game for 2 or 3 8-year olds to play together at a slumber party, but as an adult, I can't stand playing it. And it cost me forty bucks, as well, which makes me seethe all the more. I agree that it sounded like a REALLY cool idea with a lot of potential, but it just doesn't work as is in practical reality.

If anyone is unsatisfied with the ambient light making things visible, try sunglasses on the seeker. It helped my experience with the game

We just got this for christmas. On first play through, it's got so much potential, even just some QOL things would help with this game. We didn't have any trouble with the darkenss and the seeker (me) couldn't see where things were hidden. It worked really well. It was so much fun I'm compelled to want to "fix it". One issue is finding a way to secure the hiding spots. Fumbling around in the dark they can get bumped or tipped over and reveal the shadowling on accident. Just some tabs/slots or velcro for the hiding spots would solve this. Also in the dark you can't see the arrow on the lantern. That should have been a cutout of the plastic so you can see the light shining through the shape of the arrow. The game issue we ran into is a stalemate. You get down to the last shadowling and you can end up playing ring around the rosie or guarding the frozen characters and the game will never end. A rule that may help is to limit the seeker to find everyone in 20 turns or something, giving them an incentive to move away from the frozen shadowlings to win. Something else that might work is to give the seeker a bonus roll if they pass a red stone, being that the red stones put the seeker at the most disadvantage in the game.

If you have an ultraviolet flashlight (which is also useful for finding scorpions), it might make glow in the dark components film better.

It's a shame that a lack of stringency in the rules and execution on more accurate gameplay is keeping this idea from being a great one. Wish they had play tested more and refined it a bit more. I was pretty excited about this up until the half way point - then everything you said made perfect sense with respect to it falling short. Thanks for the review Tom!

I will be trying: Shadowlings roll the dice and may move up to this many spaces and may hide in any place adjacent to the board space they occupy.

The more videos I watch to help me clarify the rules, the more I'm finding it's not just me. So do the shadowlings just slide one section over at a time? Can you move as many shadowlings as you want in one turn? How do they get "unfrozen" if they're only frozen in the light...like how does the second shadowling not also get frozen? Etc.

Someone needs to make good version of this mechanic. Maybe some dungeon crawl with a game master.

So, no mention of waldschattenspiel???? which in my opinion is better 'cause you could actually start a fire with it!

I own the game and have played several times with my daughter and friends, the game itself is definitely much easier played than it's made to sound here. The directions are very clear, assuming you read them all the way through instead of being lazy and skimming them. Getting a pitch dark room is no challenge assuming you play after sunset, which is pretty typical for a "game night".9/10 I recommend the game.

Réal funny review without compromise!

This kind of mechanism works best in digital board games. Designers should recognize the limitation of physical components.

I have a question, what happens if the lantern just camps around a Frozen shadowling? Is It a draw, lantern wins?

So great in theory

We have a copy and found it does play really well but does need as close to full dark as you can get. Also works with 2 players the best we found. What we did was put a light on and me as the watcher covered my eyes, while the shadows moved, then light goes off, and i open them again, the brightness of the lamp seemed to help keep my eyes from fully adjusting. The biggest issue was as you say the terribly written rules, far too vague, needed more detail and clarification to them. Just reading the rules, it makes no sense, but in practice it does make more, but still can lead to some head scratching moments.

We made some house rules with it to clarify everything and it works well... my only glaring issue is that it works best with kids. Competitive grown ups makes the game last for over an hour

awesome review. I agree...the idea is heaps good but in execution, it kinda falls apart it seems. But i encourage the company (and others) to refine this idea into something more tangible and structured. When the rules are too loose then it's no fun for the players to 'fill in the gaps' for the rules on the fly. At that point you feel like the product hasn't been tested thoroughly enough to keep an audience engaged. But my hat goes off to the designers for being innovative and trying something different. Who know's what further boardgames will stem from this release. I'm bloody excited that's for sure! Cheers again mate

When will I learn to never to just buy games off the shelf until I've checked reviews (especially from Tom) beforehand? 😔

You're good at this! I TOTALLY appreciate your honesty because I would have ended up buying this game an been so disappointed that I would've returned it before even trying it once. (I just bought "One to T-Rex" and I'm now returning it because I didn't check out the instructions before buying and found out that it's SO GOD DAMN SILLY and a little bit FOOLISH for grown older folks to be pretending their a T-Rex! (AND lava flowing underneath us. I wonder if it's even possible to buy a TRULY FANTASTIC new game that is simple to follow and has well thought out/locgical steps and instructions...? I've come across a bunch of

Thank you!!!

Thanks for saying "waldschattenspiel' I was trying to remember the name of that German game and this is definitely looks like a remake of that game

This idea might work well with a Jack the Ripper theme.

Ah, too bad. I really wanted this game to be excellent!

Hah!! if you put waldschattenspiel in the BGG search window It says AKA shadows in the forest

varient tribe assamble

"let's see if we can darken the room a BIT here" room is suddenly in pitch black and the lantern is the only thing visible yeah darken a bit. anyways, i like this game where the outer environment is controlled and especially games that can be played in halloween night but agree about the game sounds nebulous. great concept but sounds meh

It’s more of a two person game

I could see from the go that this would be a pile of crap. Yes I agree the idea sounds good but it’s just never gonna be practical.