9 min readAug 23, 2019

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Fuji from Feuerland — Review
Board Game Reviews

Fuji from Feuerland — Review

3 hours ago Steve Mayne

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There was a certain amount of satisfaction to working the puzzle.

Steve Mayne

MeepleGamers

 7.5/10

Publisher: Feuerland

Designer: Wolfgang Warsch

Artist: Weberson Santiago

Game Type: Cooperative, Action Points, Dice Rolling

Initial Year of Release: 2018

Age Range: 10+

Expected Playtime: 30–45 minutes

Number of Players: 2–4

Theme and What is it?

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*Note* Copy of Game provided by publisher for review purposes.

Being a troop of experienced mountaineers, hikers, and naturalists you been touring the world seeing all of the great sights. You walked, hiked, climbed, and viewed them all. The time has come to check out the amazing Mount Fuji. You’ve scaled the sides and approached the top. It’s been a great day for experiencing all that nature has to offer. At least you thought it was until the first eruption.

Now you and your team have to make a run for the safety of the village and escape from the lava flow. You’ll need to work together and plan your descent. With careful planning, good decisions, and a pinch of luck you’ll all get out of this okay.

Fuji is a cooperative game where you’ll play a team working to escape the constant approach of lava as the mountain erupts. You’ll use dice rolling, communication, skills, and gear cards to make it back to safety.

Gameplay Mechanics

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 7.5/10

Fuji is a dice rolling cooperative game. Every round players will roll their dice and try and use those dice to find a space on the mountain to move to. Each of the dice have different colored and numbered sides. After you roll your dice everyone tries to find a space on the mountain to move to. You’ll discuss this with the other players. While deciding what space you want to move to you can’t discuss your dice using specific terms.

Spaces are formed from a deck of cards that show different locations. Each location card has a set of symbols across the bottom. These symbols show the types of dice you’ll need to use to reach that space. Symbols will include a color of dice, a specific number, or whether the dice is odd or even.

Once everyone has picked what space they’ll move to you may get some rerolls. The number of rerolls you get is dependent on how many spaces you’re moving. The farther you move, the fewer rerolls you get.

After rerolls are finished, players can use any equipment cards they have to modify their dice rolls. Then everyone reveals their dice. You then take the dice you need for your space and add them together and compare those to the same numbers on your neighbors dice. So, if I need pink dice to move to my target space I’ll add the total of all of my pink dice and compare I to the totals of my neighbors pink dice. If my total is equal to or larger than their individual totals then I move to the space. If not I stay where I am. Either way I lose stamina.

After everyone takes a turn lave moves forward. If the lava reaches a player or anyone drops to zero stamina then the game ends. In order to win players need to all end their turns inside six village tiles found at the end of the map.

Initial Impressions

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 7/10

I wasn’t sure what to make of this game when I opened the box. I seriously misjudged the amount of table space required for it. It takes up some room.

The pieces didn’t jump out at me but they weren’t bad. I was just sort of indifferent to it. I found the custom dice striking and was interested to see who they would work.

There are a lot of cards and was curious to see how it would all come together.

Game Build Quality

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 8/10

I think the quality of everything is pretty good. It doesn’t stand out as phenomenal but is serviceable. Everything feels sturdy and should last.

I will say the custom dice are nice but I had some problem with the colors on the dice and the pips. I’m not sure if the colors are too dark or the pips too small but the dice just felt off when reading them. It was especially noticeable with the pink. The dice just looked dirty. I’m not sure if that was a purposeful decision for the theme of the game or because they were trying to avoid problems with colorblindness. They just felt wrong.

Artistic Direction

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 7/10

The game has a very stylized look to it that just didn’t work for me. Everything is washed in yellow and red. I get that it’s supposed to represent that everything is on fire. It just didn’t work for me. It was off putting.

Fun Factor

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 7.5/10

This is a challenging cooperative dice game. You’ll need to be ready for a bit of a brain burner here. Trying to figure out which spaces you can reach, what rerolls you’ll get, and how everything will work together is difficult. The game put’s itself in your way to give you enough challenges to move forward on while trying to help you out with the equipment and rerolls.

Age Range & Weight

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 8/10

The box says 10+ I think that’s a bit off. I feel like the planning you need to do is more complicated than children that young will have an easy time with. That and how you need to communicate with one another in order to plan will leave younger kids frustrated with the game. I’d shoot for late teens as an audience.

As for weight, I’d put this as a middle weight game. You need to balance a lot of things to play this game and trying to plan out your turn can be difficult.

Conclusions

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 7.5/10

How do I feel about this game? I don’t hate it, but I don’t like it either. There is just more to pay attention to in this game than I want to. In order to win this game you have to be able to plan your moves and rerolls. To plan your rerolls you need to pay attention to what can come up on the dice you’ve got.

For example you have six dice. Each dice has the three colors represented on two of the sides. Across all of the dice you have every color number combination twice. So on two dice you have blue 1s and 6s, then 2s and 5s on another pair, and finally 3s and 4s on the set pair. Which means that if you want to roll high red numbers the best you can get is 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, and 6. Now if I don’t have all of those I might be tempted to reroll everything. However, if the guy next to me is going for blue numbers I’ll need to make sure the dice I’m rerolling can’t accidently screw him by giving me those numbers he’s going after. I might not want to reroll the dice for the 4s because it might get the blue 2s that he’s going after.

I know it may not sound like a lot but in order to win I think you need to focus on that level of minutia. I just didn’t enjoy that. There was a certain amount of satisfaction to working the puzzle. The problem is the word work. We weren’t solving the puzzle, we worked it. This game didn’t feel like play. It felt like work. There was a level of satisfaction to having everyone move. It just wasn’t for me.

I will also say that the 2 player rules using the bot are awful. The bot murdered us so often. People never moved off of the starting tile and died on the third turn because of the bot player. If you have just two people I wouldn’t play this game. Though your mileage may vary.

I’m sure this level of detail you have to put into this game will appeal to some folks out there. There are people who will love how this game plays. I’m just not one of them.

As always, try before you buy. If possible go to your local game store or convention and see if it works for you.

Parting Words

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Finally, I want to thank you for stopping by and I hope you’re taking time for yourselves. Remember to take a couple of minutes every day for yourself. We get busy in this world and can forget to watch out for or own best interest. So if you get a chance today, pause and take a deep breath. You are important and the world is better off having you in it.