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Quick Look: Fest Season

Consulta la reseña en español de Pablo Naop AQUÍ.

Designer: Luis Villegas
Artist: Asa Recinos
Publisher: Green Astra Games
Year Published: 2025 (Kickstarter funded in late 2024)

No. of Players: 1-5

Ages: 14+

Playing Time: 40 – 100 minutes.

Find more info HERE.

From the Publisher:

Review:

This is one of the first Mexican euro-style board games to gain any notoriety or commercial success, as is often noted by the experienced players who seek to try it out at conventions and events. I first encountered it at MEGA XP 2024 (the biggest tabletop convention in the country), and I was quite impressed by its scope. Fest Season was successfully funded on Kickstarter, is fully translated into English, and the premium edition (which includes many additional challenges and customizations) is still available to purchase online.

To the casual observer, this is a game that might seem overwhelming at first. However, if you are into music production, the well-crafted components will win you over, and you might even start to make sense of things without reading the manual. The main board simulates a sound console,  as noted by the publisher. So all the knobs and dials will immediately make it clear that the theme is intrinsically linked to the mechanics, and many actions are easy to grasp and remember. For example, if you have to turn up the volume for one of the genre knobs, the price for bands of that genre will go up.

But just what kind of game is this? As the title implies, it’s a game about organizing your ideal music festival. You have a personal board where your festival’s stages and amenities will need to be organized and built on a grid, using tiles that vary in size. This makes for a nice and simple spatial puzzle that will net you several rewards, depending on how well you plan ahead.

Every stage you build comes with a separate card that represents the stage’s schedule. You need to fill it out with band tiles, and the victory points you get will depend on the size of the stage, the genre of the band and the time slot you put them in. For example, if you put two bands of the same genre in the same time slot across multiple stages, those bands won’t net you any points since thematically they’d be competing with each other for the audience’s attention. Yet another little spatial puzzle that when solved properly is extremely satisfactory.

You will also have a hand of “project cards” that serve as missions you need to complete in order to gain a multitude of benefits and combo opportunities, and a public pool of cards with long and short-term objectives that can reward players with extra victory points.

There are three tracks in the main board that indicate each player’s progress with “amenities”, “ticket price” and “attendance”, which you will increase naturally by performing actions. At the end of the game, the lowest score you get in these tracks will be added to your victory points. Additionally, there is a “money” track and a “hype” track in your personal board that will be in constant flow as you pay to perform some of the actions, and gain hype in return, or get your money back by completing more complex setups.

While all of this might sound like too much to keep track of, it’s important to note that all of the progress in the game is achieved by choosing one of only 3 actions available to you. There are 3 tracks: one for bands, one for projects, and one for stages and amenities. You declare an action by increasing the dial on the selected track by one, and your next choice is to perform the “mono” or “stereo” version of the action. “Mono” actions will only benefit yourself, while “stereo” actions will always entail benefits for all players. Still, if we multiply the available choices, there are a total of 6 possible actions you can take. Not too complex for an euro-style game, don’t you think?

Performing actions and increasing the dial on the tracks will sometimes net you extra benefits, depending on where the dial ends up. When an action makes a dial reach the top of the track, the main track gets pushed up as well and the specific track you chose gets pushed back down to the starting point. And once the actions of a player make the main track reach the top, the game ends with one last round of turns for every remaining player. This method of advancing “rounds” is actually quite clever, since it removes the frustration found in similar games where actions limit the times they can be performed each round. No action is ever blocked by another player, the dials just keep going up and the main track keeps advancing. This removes one of the main sources of direct conflict and will surely please players who enjoy the “multiplayer solitaire” type of games.

In fact, the only time you’ll be frustrated by other players’ actions is when they hire a band you were hoping to snag, or when the stages of a specific size run out (they are a limited resource). But most resource pools can be easily replenished and it’s easy to course-correct your strategy.

What are the downsides?

• It might look daunting for beginners or people outside the niche.

• It lacks any premium components (no plastic or metal), and cube markers are run-of-the-mill.

• The lack of conflict or deep complexity might be offputting for some.

Why should you play it?

• The game is fun and compelling, it presents a decent challenge.

• Not too long or complicated for an euro-style, a match lasts between 1 and 2 hours (depending on how familiar you are with the game) and there’s a total of 6 different actions to choose from.

• The theme is tightly integrated with the mechanics. A delight for music production geeks!

• The art is good and the components (tiles, boards, cards) are high quality.

• It represents some of the best the Mexican industry has to offer.

Closing Thoughts:

In general, combos of chained actions are easy to perform and they will often make you feel like you found a glitch in the system. But this is all intended, and in my experience, an essential part of euro-style games. Fest Season is a game that might seem daunting at first, but you will feel like a genius by your second match or even by the end of the first one.

Green Astra labels itself as a company committed to the environment. As such, some of the components might seem simple or underproduced to some of the most demanding players. But overall, the art and materials are more than enough to be immersed in the theme and enjoy role-playing as a music producer.

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