Renegade Games Lanterns: A Harvest Festival and Lanterns Dice: Lights In The Sky Game Review

I'll admit it.  I'm a complete sucker for a pretty game!  Anyone else?  Haha!  If a game is beautiful, I'm instantly intrigued!  But sometimes I'll find a game that "looks" beautiful, but is either too boring or too difficult to make playing it enjoyable.  Lanterns: The Harvest Festival and Lanterns Dice: Lights In The Sky are NOT those kind of games!  These games are beautiful, enjoyable, and easy to play!




First we played the original - Lanterns: The Harvest Festival.  It was a little intimidating at first because it does have a lot of parts.  But it's one of those games that appears at first glance to be complicated, but is actually very easy! And the instructions are very well written and easy to understand.



The first time I played, it was with my kids (ages 4-9).  They all loved it because of how beautiful it was and because they really enjoyed placing tiles and receiving cards.  Next I played with my husband.  This was SO MUCH FUN!  My husband understood the strategy aspect of the game more than the little ones did.

My thoughts:
1.) This game is BEAUTIFUL! - Seriously beautiful!  This is such a lovely game that it immediately when on my list of "best giftable games."
2.) Its a great family game! - I enjoyed playing both with my kids and with my husband.  It's always a huge plus for me when I find a game that the entire family enjoys!
3.) The game scales well. - Some games are listed as 2-4 players, but in reality they play much smoother as a 3 or 4 player game.  Lanterns is not like that!  It was just as much fun as a two player game as it was as a 4 player game!  (And the instructions were very clear on what to use and what to leave out when playing as a two player game.)
4.) Its a fun, relaxed game, and yet it really contains a lot of strategy! - Hubby and I played this game while we had a football game on the tv.  It was nice and leisurely. But at the same time, there's a lot of strategy to the game in terms of tile placement, card accumulation - and even how your tiles and cards affect other players - so it was a fun challenge, not at all a "mindless" type game.

We enjoyed Lanterns: The Harvest Festival so much, that my husband said, "we should play that dice game next!"

Sadly, we were both a little exhausted and the instructions seemed daunting, so I put it off.  But the next afternoon I pulled the dice game out again.  Without the mental exhaustion issue, I read the instructions and realized they were very straightforward and simple!  Just like with the tile placement game, there are a lot of steps (although there are less cards and things to deal with in the dice game) but the actual game has easy to follow mechanics.  The steps are easy and not hard to remember. They also include some cheat sheets with the steps you take in your turn just in case you forget.  I'm laughing now that I thought this game would be difficult.  Just like the original Lanterns, Lanterns Dice is simple, beautiful, and fun to play!  I highly recommend them both!

I received these games, free of charge from Renegade Games, in exchange for my honest review.