Arraial Board Game First Impressions

“Tetris” your Tetromino shaped people into an Arraial.

Luckily, if you make a line of people they don’t vanish.

“Arraial” is the name given to traditional Portuguese summer celebrations during which people take to the streets eating, drinking, and having fun in the old neighborhoods that are bedecked with arches, colorful balloons, popular music, and the aroma of sweet basil.

Arraial Game Play

The game starts with seating around the table… You’ll be drafting cards that allow you to place tiles in your play area. But, the orientation of the cards determines the orientation of the tile as you place it. Here’s the wheel with some cards on it…

On your turn, you have 3 action points to use on 2 available actions. You can take each as many times as you have points remaining.

The first is to rotate the wheel 90 degrees clockwise. This will, of course, rotate all the cards on it and therefore change the orientation of the tiles for you.

The second action is to take a card which allows you to take the matching tile that is added to your player board. As mentioned earlier, it must be in the same orientation as shown on the card as you select it.

Tiles are added to the board as if they are dropped down like Tetris, but they can’t be rotated. Once it has landed, you can then slide it across left or right if it fits. At the end of your turn, you refill the wheel for the next player, play continues clockwise.

Scoring

So why are you placing the tiles? For points of course.

If you create a connecting group of two adjacent tiles of the same colour you get to put a meeple of that colour on the tiles, worth 1 VP end game.

Should you have the largest connected area of a colour you get to put a special ‘Double Meeple’ on it worth 2 VP end game. If someone makes a LARGER area of that colour, they take it off you.

If you completely fill a row you move the Level Bar up one space and add a White Meeple to it. These are added onto your tiles at the end of a round and are worth 1 VP each. But if you ever have to place a tile and it overlaps the bar, you lose it and any White meeples on it. You also can’t gain white meeples for the rest of the game.

So why would you place a tile if it doesn’t fit? Well, each of the 3 rounds in the game has its own rules…

In rounds 1 and 2 you MUST play at least one tile onto your board. In round 3 you have to place two. Also, at the end of rounds 1 and 2, you move your Level Bar down two spaces. If it would overlap any tiles you lose it.

After 3 rounds you add up the points from the Meeples on your board and the player with the most points is the winner.

Theme

So an Arraial is a large tent where a ‘Festa Junina‘ is held. So if you’re trying to get as many people in a tent as possible then the theme makes sense.

But that’s not what’s happening here according to the blurb so it’s just Tetris with a pasted-on theme for me.

Setup

Shuffle the cards, lay a few out, and put some on the wheel. That’s it.

Components & Artwork

The tiles are nice and everything is bright and colourful. The base of the wheel spins on the table so you need to hold it while you turn the dial on top. Also, turn it too fast and the cards start to fly off!

The art is silly but fun.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

It’s easy to teach the game, especially if players understand how Tetris blocks move.

It’s light enough with open information so plenty of opportunities to help new players.

Arraial Summary

I like games with Polyominoes like Spring Meadow and Cottage Garden but Tetrominoes are special due to their association with Tetris. I played it a lot 30 years ago on the Gameboy and I still play Tetris 99 on the Switch today.

So a game where you’re not just placing them but you’re dropping and sliding like the video game appeals to me.

Having to rotate the board is interesting and makes you think. Even at the end of your turn, you’ll want to rotate the board to be as unhelpful to the next player as possible.

You also choose which cards of those available refills the boards so you can be unhelpful there too.

One issue I have is that if rotating doesn’t help (or hinder) and you don’t want to take any tiles you can’t do anything. I wasted so many actions over a game, everyone did. Kinda felt boring to wait for your turn and then only take 1 or 2 actions…

But, overall I enjoyed it and would play it again but this time I’ll focus on actually scoring points rather than filling lines. I went a bit TOO Tetris! 🙂

Jesta ThaRogue