This is a game where you hunt for “the good stuff” (for all my Goonies fans out there). You and your crew are in search of treasure. You unroll the cloth map and adventure in the direction your captain points you. But they can only give you one-word clues to direct you to the treasure. Maybe along the way, you find water, a magical amulet, and then hopefully find your way off the island. If you make a wrong turn, you may find yourself in a trap or worse, end up cursed.

Landmarks is a word game that can be played in 20-40 minutes and can be played cooperatively with 2-6 players or competitively if you have 4 or more players.

Gameplay Overview:

Examples of map keys for the leader of the expedition

You unfold the beautiful cloth map in the center of the table. There are two roles. As an explorer, the map just looks like open terrain with a bunch of hex spaces ready to be explored with the direction of your leader. As the leader/cluegiver, you have a map card of which hex spaces are:

1. Helpful: that you want to guide your team towards the treasure for glory, amulet to reverse a curse, water to refill your stack of tiles to reach the next spot, or the exit to leave the island.
2. Harmful: that you want to avoid with traps that take away your water, or curses that must be reversed; otherwise, you are doomed to be on the island.
3. Neutral: a blank space that gives no prize or penalty.

The game gives you 3 starting words already in play on the board, such as “Grape, Travel and Elf.” Then, as the clue giver, you start the adventure by writing a one-word clue on a new hex tile and passing it to your team for them to discuss where they think you are guiding them to explore next. You may give the clue “Soda”, trying to get your team to place and explore the hex between Grape and Elf, but they forget that soda scene in the movie Elf, and just put it near Grape instead. Whoops! They just landed in a trap, and a blank tile gets removed from your canteen. Now you only have 5 hex tiles left to give clues unless you can direct your team to find more water. The goal is to find as much treasure as you can. Then you need to find the exit to get off the island or get trapped there forever.

Here’s the end of a cooperative game using the simple side of the map.

Game Experience:

This is a word game that is similar to Codenames or So Clover! Like Codenames, one person plays the leader and gives out one-word clues for their team to debate what connections could be possible to that word. Like most word games, there are many moments of “Yes! That’s exactly what I was thinking! (solid high five).” Or “Noooooo, how could you miss the association with that word- it was so obvious (face palm).” Or “You’re right, that is a better association than I was thinking (shrug).”

For the positives, I love the cloth map in this game. It’s my favorite part, unrolling it as it really feels like you are headed on an island treasure hunt. The map also has two sides, one that is more thematic and another that is simpler and easier to read. It doesn’t change gameplay, but it’s cool to have different options. Fits the theme super well. I do like the concept that you explore, and there are ways to come back and win if you walk into a trap or a curse early on. The game is also flexible in that you can play cooperatively or competitively. You can play it with just 2 players as well as more (which is harder to do for So Clover, and you can’t do with the standard Codenames or Decrypto).

Beautiful, thematic side of the cloth map

However, shortly after rolling out the map and starting to explore, the game walked into its own trap. I just wanted to like this more than I did. I was so full of wonder pulling out the treasure map, that when the actual gameplay let me down, it felt like a roller coaster where you put your hands up excited at the start, then your head bangs around enough you’re not sure if you would ride it again.

I really like word games. Finding connections between words is a really fun way to get people talking and thinking about things differently. It feels really gratifying when you are in sync and can make challenging associations fit together. In Landmarks, however, there are times you are in sync, but with so many different areas to place a tile with the correct associations, that many times you place it wrong. It’s very frustrating. There is no good way to indicate which direction on the map you want the player to place the hex if there’s an option to put the tile between the words “Elf” and “Grape” on the left or the right side of the map (see photo for reference).

Example of placing a clue when you have multiple spaces that match the clue equally

In Codenames, you get to choose how many words you want to associate. In So Clover, you know there are certain options of words to associate. In Decrypto, you get the full creativity to pick not just a single word, but a phrase or a song lyric as a clue for your team to guess a word. However, in Landmarks, you need to guess not only what word association they are going for, but also sometimes randomly guess on the map which of the 2 to 3 spaces that all share the same association. Even done as a calculated risk, the element of guessing is not as satisfying to me as other word games. My spouse and I trialed several homebrew variants to help the other player guess the right direction when you are randomly guessing, but while functional, none of them proved to be that fun.

This is a game I am not keeping in my collection (where, on my keeper shelf, for word games are So Clover and Decrypto). But if someone loved this game and asked me to play, I would say yes (but then probably probe more why they like this game more than other word games).

Final Thoughts:

“Argh!” sums it up nicely. Landmarks is a word game with a treasure-hunting theme. I was more and more excited about the concept and had less and less fun the more I played it. With the open map and no way to indicate direction, it’s too easy for you to give a perfect clue between words and for the guessers to put it on the other 1/3 options available that perfectly meet it. In my love for word games, I thought this would be a keeper, but alas, I will be reselling this game instead. However, in a time when folks are admirably seeking alternatives to Codenames in support of our trans and gender diverse community, this game is a reasonable option.

Final Score: 3 Stars – I thought I would like this a lot more than I did. While it’s a cool theme and concept, it doesn’t quite deliver. I had fun, but I think there are better word games out there.

Hits:
• Plays cooperatively or competitively
• More rules and substance than Codenames or So Clover
• Cool treasure hunting theme
• Awesome cloth map with 2 unique sides and nice dry-erase components
• Plays well at 2 players or more players

Misses:
• I liked the concept more than the gameplay
• It can be frustrating giving a great clue, but having the map be too open so that someone selects one of the wrong options