Uxmal
Designer: Eloi Pujadas | Artist: Medhi Merrouche
Building future UNESCO world heritage sites on your tabletop is usually good fun. After all, Carcassone is a gateway game of choice for many, and there’s nothing quite like imagining what the ruins once looked like. In this case we’re putting together Uxmal, the ancient Mayan city with the famous stepped pyramids, on which popular culture likes to at least imagine the ancient Mayans did a bit of sacrificing.
In this game we’re going to build the pyramid and score points. We’re literally building it too. Once you get the package open you realise that this is an integrated box-and-board game. The box works as your foundations and, once you start the game, you begin placing raised plastic tiles with little feet into various corresponding holes to slowly begin the construction of the pyramid. It is, sadly, a little underwhelming when it comes to the scale on offer. You’re not so much creating a huge and towering pyramid as you are building a kind of double curb – the kind you might accidently scratch your car door on. This isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with the art; it’s beautifully put together, clear and readable, but it’s asking quite a lot to only give us three steps for a pyramid that has one for every day of the year and hope that we’ll be satisfied with its scale.