Keyper got dropped off at my house yesterday, so I promptly started sorting the insane number of pieces and started a game with two of my roommates! Since the hype for this game is still very much alive, I wanted to share a few of my initial impressions. This will be a review more than a rules summary.
Background: I missed the kickstarter but was able to get in contact with <PERSON> to order a copy of the character edition. It arrived in perfect condition, and I'm super pleased that I went in for the characters. They add a lot to the game, both in terms of adorableness and play-ability; the icons on the meeple can help differentiate between the sometimes very similar colors, even for a group of players who have no color distinction deficiencies.
I'll break this """review""" of sorts down into separate sections to talk about the really good and the weaker points of the game.
How Does It Compare to Keyflower?
Ah, the question everybody is asking: is this game better than Keyflower? The answer is a resounding, "it depends". Keyper is significantly less tactical than Keyflower. There doesn't seem to be as many opportunities to make a game-defining move, and nearly as many "take that" opportunities. It's also not very strategic; sure, you can have a long-term plan, such as "I'm going to specialize in gems and get the bracelet maker", but a plan is not a strategy.
So, if Keyper isn't really testing your tactic or your strategy, then what is it testing? Efficiency. The winner will be the player who has played the most efficient game. How many actions were you able to pull off in each season, and how many actions did you enable others to pull off in each season? The winner will be the player who keeps that ratio as high as possible; taking all the actions, while also not enabling the other players at the table.
The result is that Keyper is much more "friendly" than Keyflower. There is a very high degree of player interaction, but the players are not necessarily in direct competition for most of the game. In that regard, it has the diplomatic benefits of a multiplayer-soltaire game without the feeling of isolation. If I were going to play a game with some friends on a Friday evening, I would be more inclined to play Keyper. If I were at a convention or tournament and wanted to flex my competitive muscles, I would always pick Keyflower.
Components
Holy hell this game has a lot of components! There are 6 resources, 8 animals, 3 gems, and wheat. There's 36 meeples and a crap ton of tiles, and they are all very high quality. 366
A few of my octagonal prism pieces ("finished goods") were miscut. The gems are a nice hard, slightly translucent plastic forming irregular concave polyhedra, but it was sometimes obvious where they were cut off of the plastic. The painted meeples were gorgeous, although a few of them have the facial expression of an existential crisis. Almost all the animeeples except for the goat and deer can be balanced on their noses if you have a steady enough hand.
The folding boards are the MacGuffin of the game. Is it a gimmick? Yes. Does it hold up? Hell yes. They feel very sturdy and durable, the folding is natural and easy, and the layout of the actions on the board is nothing short of genius. For example, gems can not be displayed before fall, no matter how hard you try. There is a progression form "basic" resources to more complex actions as the seasons progress.
I would strongly recommend giving new players a good, long look at the boards at the end of their first season to let them wrap their minds around how to fold the boards. The options available are significantly more numerous than I originally imagined, and there is a large element of discovery in looking for the perfect combination of actions. I definitely think the boards add a meaningful decision in between the seasons and applaud <PERSON> for his creativity and ingenuity in designing them.
I'm a big fan of the "Meeple Like Us" accessibility reviews. Unfortunately, I don't see them rating this game highly in the color department. The grey is very light and easy to confuse with white, and the orange and brown are very similar. The colored boarders on the action spaces often times don't stand out strongly enough against the art on the board and cause a lot of "what specialty is that?" questions, and more than once we realized we had joined with the wrong color on the wrong space. None of the players at the table had any type of color deficiency, but we still sometimes had to rely on the picture of the tool being held by the meeple -- "oh this guy has a pickaxe, he's not a wild!", etc. 336