Frenzy Falls: A Cascade of Chaos

Fill the pools with waterfalls and watch the rising water spill over points to you and water to the other pools.

Published by The Op, Frenzy Falls is a 2-6 player card game with a 30-minute play time.

Gameplay

A number of score cards are used to create a score card deck, based on player count. One for each player is then revealed and placed in a column. Each score card forms a row for a pool. Each score card shows how many points it is worth, as well as how much water it contributes to the pool. Each player also takes their own personal deck of waterfall cards according to their player colors.

Each round, players draw a hand of five cards. They then take turns playing a waterfall card face-down to any of the pools. After each player has played two cards, they move on to the resolving phase. Starting at the pool at the top of the column, the cards that were played there are revealed from left to right. Each card shows how much water it adds to the pool, and how many influence points it counts towards the person who played it. Some cards have abilities that are triggered as soon as they are revealed, such as bumping another card down to the lower pool, or allowing the player to pull a card from any other pool and move it up to the current one.

After all the cards have been revealed, if the water in that pool equals 10 or more, it overflows. The player with the most influence in that pool takes the score card and moves all his cards in that pool to his discard pile. Each other player with a card there may move one card to another pool and move the others to their discard piles. A new score card is immediately drawn to create a new pool. If the pool does not overflow, all cards remain there for that round. The next pool in the column is then resolved.

Players work their way down the column, resolving all the pools. Because there are abilities and cards moving between rows, it is possible that a pool higher up the column will overflow later in the resolution phase, and players will loop back to the top of the column to resolve pools that have had new cards added to them during the resolution phase. Once all the pools have been completely resolved, the round ends. Players may discard any cards from their hands that they wish and then draw back up to five cards. A new round then begins. The game continues until the round in which a new score card must be drawn, but there are no more in the deck. At the end of this round, the player with the most points from their won score cards wins the game.

Photo courtesy of The Op Games

Review

Frenzy Falls keeps things simple in the rules department. It's easy to get the hang of and to understand. The spice of the game comes in trying to figure out what your opponents are going to do, and trying to outwit them with where you play your cards and which score cards you go after.

If a player goes too strong on a high-scoring pool too early, other players don't have a lot of incentive to play there, so you can end up having to waste too many cards on one pool while the other players clean up elsewhere. However, the card abilities offer the chance to steal score cards unexpectedly, moving high influence cards between pools, for example.

There's a lot of player interaction in this game, opportunities for fun, satisfying plays, and a shifting game state. It keeps things unexpected and provides a lot of back and forth. Consequently, it's better with three or more players. The more people elbowing each other from pool to pool, the more exciting the game becomes.

The card quality is a bit thin and flimsy, but the information on them is easy to read, and we did like the aesthetics and colors.

There is certainly some luck of the draw involved, but the ability to discard as many cards as you wish between rounds, and the different ways cards can be useful from influence to water to abilities, ensures you usually have something to work with in your hand each round. This is a fun one, with a nice look and simple but engaging mechanics. A recommend from us!

Pros: Lots of player interaction, colorful

Cons: Cards are a bit thin, not recommended with two players

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.