Memorinth (2020)

Overview

It's a beautiful spring day — the perfect weather for a walk in the forest! You put on your jacket, lace up your boots and set out.

The leaves rustle on the trees, and the sunlight shines through the branches. A gentle breeze blows as you take a deep breath of forest air. Lost in your thoughts, you turn once here and then again there, sometimes going left and sometimes turning right... Suddenly you hear something rustling behind you in the bushes. You take a few cautious steps towards the noise and discover...a goose?! And it's talking to a goblin? Then all of a sudden, your friends are standing next to you in the forest...

Umm. You decide it might best to head home quickly. There seems to be something wrong with this forest...

Which is the shortest way back? You're in luck as the fairy tale characters decide to show you, but your friends are constantly changing the path in Memorinth in their own attempts to get home the quickest. However, with a bit of luck and memory, you'll be the first to get out of the labyrinth!

To set up, place the clearing tile on the table, then place all of the player pieces on this card, then lay out the other tile to form a 5x5 grid with the clearing tile at the center; alternate the light and dark sides of the tiles, with the clearing tile starting on the light side. Place two of the eight fairy tale characters on each side of the grid.

On a turn, a player flips over an unoccupied tile that matches the light/dark status of the clearing tile. If the revealed side of the tile has one of the eight fairy tail characters on it, you must move your player piece one space toward the side of the grid where this character is located — but only if a path connects the tile you current occupy and the tile to which you must move. If no path exists, you don't move. Starting with the second round, the clearing tile will flip from light to dark and back again, challenging you to remember which characters are where so that you can move in the direction that helps you best.

Memorinth also has a "master mode" in which you place four of the fairy tail characters around a special double-sided action tile. On one side of this tile, when you reveal one of the characters next to it, you'll remove a tile from the grid, then add it back on the opposite side of the grid, sliding everything in that row or column. On the other side of the action tile, when you reveal one of the characters next to it, you'll swap two tiles, swap two fairy tail characters, look at the bottom of a tile, or receive a lucky clover token, which you'll need in order to walk on a path with goblins.

—description from the publisher