Sweet Lands is an action selection, resource management game.

Title: Sweet Lands

Year Published: 2025

Designer: Totsuca Chuo

Publisher: uchibacoya

Players: 1-4

Game Time: ~200 minutes

Set-up Time: ~15 minutes

Ages: 14+

Theme: Building in a world of candy.

Mechanisms: Action Selection, Tile Placement, Route Building, Resource Management and more.

How to win: Have the most points at the end of the game.

Game Description

Welcome to “Sweet Lands”, the kingdom of delightful confections! The former king has succumbed to his gluttonous love for sweets, leaving behind a final decree. Summoned by this royal edict, you and your fellow players are challenged to build the most magnificent city and if you succeed, you will ascend as the new ruler of Sweet Lands.

How to play Sweet Lands

Learn how to play Sweet Lands. Note: I made a little error around Industry points. You gain them during your ‘pass’ phase and gain points for them at the end of the game.

Main mechanisms

Action selection is the main one and runs the game. You have tile placement, route building, resource management, set collection. There is a lot going on.

USP

The USP for me, the reason I got the game, it’s that it’s a heavy Euro with a fun and cute theme.

Theme

Building up a candy kingdom to be the next king, what’s not to like?

Setup & Rulebook

Setup takes ages. The awkward thing is that players can’t setup their player board until they select a character. Playing correctly, players need to draft these in reverse order based on their ability. That slows down an already pretty involved setup process.

The rulebook does a decent job of explaining things but it’s light on specifics and examples.

Components & Artwork

The components are really nice. The cake themed buildings, cookie rabbits and ice cream clock towers are look lovely.

The art is a really fun anime style directly from a Japanese anime artist. It’s really nice.

Ease of Teaching

Once you know the game, it’s not too bad. There are a few bits here and there that are forgettable so you might need a little teaching crib sheet.

Similar Games

Ostia is from the same designer but is not the same game play-wise.

It does have a Terra Mystica adjacent feel.

Sweet Lands Review

Positives

A really nice fun theme.

The game looks really good on the table, especially the wooden pieces.

You can chain several actions in a turn which is satisfying.

The asynchronous characters give you a different way to play each game.

Negatives

Setup is long and clunky.

Teaching is a pain and the rulebook, with all it’s symbology, only helps to a point.

The game length is far to long, over an hour per player pretty much. The full 4 players is out of the question.

If you mess up early, and don’t get income, even in one resource, those later rounds are painful.

Sweet Lands Round-Up

Long but good. I’ve added it to my small rotation of long and heavy euro games.

Rating

I give it 6/10