Wispwood: don't file it under Tetris too quickly

Wispwood caught my eye at Essen. In the middle of that ocean of boxes, it was the Halloween colours that grabbed me: glowing wisps, a forest that smells of October, that little visual shiver that makes you reach out. The publisher (CGE) kindly gave me a copy in its original edition, and I went home a happy man. Then I opened the box, saw the tiles waiting to be slotted into a grid and thought: "oh great, another Tetris." Big mistake. The game is far cleverer, far more of a brain-teaser, and far more mischievous than it looks.

Play time: 45 min · Age: 10+ · Players: 1-4 · Publisher (original): Czech Games Edition · Distributor (FR): Iello · Designer: Reed Ambrose · Artist: Štěpán Drašťák

A forest of wisps

The pitch is a treat: you guide colourful wisps to make your forest shine as brightly as possible. The setting is gently eerie in just the right way, in a Halloween style that makes a nice change from the umpteenth pastel, bucolic tile-layer. Štěpán Drašťák (CGE's in-house artist) does the job, and the components are polished.

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The box's little gimmick is the UV-reactive tiles: shine an ultraviolet lamp on them and the wisps light up. It looks lovely in an Instagram photo, but let's be honest, who keeps a UV lamp at home, within arm's reach, on a game night with friends? (Not me either.) So let me tell you straight away: it's a fun bonus, not a reason to buy. The game stands perfectly well under your living-room lights.

How you play

On your turn, you draft a "wisp" tile from the central board, choose one of its two possible shapes, and place it on your personal grid, completing it with "tree" tiles. So far, yes, we're on familiar ground, somewhere between Calico and Cascadia for the objectives to fulfil and the solitaire optimisation in front of your own board.

Except Wispwood adds its own pinch of mischief. The game runs over three rounds, and your grid grows each time: 4×4, then 5×5, then 6×6. Crucially, the wisps you placed stay put from one round to the next (you remove the trees and keep the wisps) and they keep scoring. In other words, you never start from a blank page: you build on your own past choices, which turn out to be sometimes a springboard, sometimes a pebble in your shoe. Add objective cards that change from one game to the next, and the puzzle renews itself without you having to relearn the rules.

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It's that little "score-and-reset" mechanism that makes all the difference from the Tetris I was dreading: every round forces you to anticipate the next one. You're not slotting shapes, you're planting decisions.

What lands, what grates

What lands is exactly that persistence of the wisps. It turns a mild optimisation game into a genuine, teasing little brain-teaser, where today's good move can wreck your next round. It flows, it plays fast, the interaction stays indirect (you snatch coveted tiles from each other on the central board) but very real. And at 45 minutes, watch in hand, you never get bored.

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What grates, let's be honest: Wispwood doesn't reinvent the genre. On paper, the sensations feel similar from one game to the next, and you can fairly wonder whether three full rounds were really needed (two might have been enough to hit home). The heavyweights of the category, Calico and Cascadia again, keep the edge on depth and replayability. This isn't the game that will shake up your shelf, it's the one you happily bring out.

Verdict

Wispwood is a good game that never found its audience, and that's a real shame. Not a thunderclap, no, but a genuinely pleasant tile-layer, clever in its stacking-rounds mechanism, easy on the eye and accessible from age 10. The kind of title that deserves better than the obscurity it's quietly sliding into.

Bring it out with family or with friends who enjoy relaxed optimisation, when you want a puzzle that pricks just enough without eating up your whole evening. Put your "just another Tetris" prejudice back in the drawer: under its sensible-puzzle looks, Wispwood is more mischievous than it seems. And if you ever come across a UV lamp, you'll even get the little light show as a bonus.