YORKTON – Oh how good this one looks.
Paintscape from designer Michael Amundsen has sort of been around for a while since it was created back in 2022.
But it is garnering some new attention in 2025 with the production of a small box version of the game from Kanare_Abstracts (kanare-abstract.com). (Regular readers will know we’ve reviewed a bunch of games from this publisher – most of which feature a cloth board with nice wooden pieces all packed into a small, easy to take anywhere box).
Paintscape follows the same formula, but because the board – they are not very big – starts covered in wooden tiles, this one is a bit crowded. (Paintscape uses 60 tiles, 12 of each of five colours.)
It is a bigger issue as pieces need to be removed as a game progresses, so it can be big fingers struggling to gather pieces without causing a sort of chain reaction of bumped and jarred pieces.
Players extend their groups of pieces, and the first player to place a piece on six tiles of the same colour wins all tiles of that colour – so are removed. The first player to collect three colours wins.
Designer Amundsen explained, “the idea that sparked this game is very mundane and unassuming. It's inspired by how typical trick taking card games are played with 52 cards, but group them into 13 tricks. This makes it impossible to evenly distribute the tricks, even though there is an even number of cards.
“My interest in designing decisive games in particular is above average, so I wanted to use the same simple idea to make a tie-less game played on an even board. It so happens that 5×12=60, so one could make a game played on a chess board where two players start out with two discs each and compete to collect a majority of five sets of coloured tiles. The rest of the game fell naturally out of that.
“The result is a novel but simple game where both positioning and timing is important.”
Now as you move around claiming tiles you effectively create barriers which an opponent can cross.
That creates a trap in Paintscape.
We were only seven turns in and Trevor had created a wall isolating me from accessing needed tiles. The win was his.
Now as you remove pieces avenues will open, but by that time it is likely to be too late.
Of course I should have moved to block the wall, and therein lies some strategy to be sure, but this one felt more like an area control game than a set collection one, and sort of fell flat for us as a result.
Amundsen said that is a key feature in his mind.
“I think my favourite feature is the fact that you will lose pieces, and thereby weaken your influence on the board when you score a point.
“In addition to being strikingly colourful for a minimalistic abstract game, this negative feedback is probably the most unique feature of the game,” he related. “It is also key in that it makes reversals possible.”
Paintscape is one of sort of a set of four games released by Kanare at the same time – Residuel, Shape Chess and Flower Shop. We certainly liked some of the others better – although none look better – so Paintscape gets a positive nod – but in the end just barely.
