Wingspan

(Yes, I know the results. This week has been horrible. I believe America has made an enormous mistake. I am disgusted that of two options, THIS is what won. But we must all keep moving forwards. Become an activist, make your voice heard, find support groups. Most importantly, do not give up. That’s all I will say on the subject for now. Anyway, good thing today’s game is relaxing. I need that right now. We all need some levity. Do note that most of this article was written before Tuesday. P.S. No more Twitter for me, Bluesky is life. Join me there @hamelnico.bsky.social)

Sometimes you just want to do something chill. Like birdwatching. Or play a game with birds. Anything as long as it’s ornithology.

It's a lot of stuff, but it looks great.

I covered several genres on this blog, but one I’ve seldom discussed is video games based on board games. (We’ve seen it happen a lot the other way around, though – even Black Gate announced a Valheim board game this year.) And I do mean board games specifically, not card games. I think I may have a handful of games like this in my collection. I’ll also freely admit that I’m not super into board games personally – mainly because I tend to lack the social circle to make best use of them. Oh, I do have board games, even bought some over the past few years – and some sit still untouched. I did go to video gaming/board gaming events once or twice, and I got to try a few thanks to it – I recall trying out Marvel United and enjoying it, so there’s that.

Wingspan was the first board game designed by Elizabeth Hargrave to be commercialized, and her subsequent games all share the themes of animals and/or nature, with a focus on relaxing or peaceful topics. Birds, flowers, monarch butterflies, foxes, mushrooms, with one outlier involving pixies. The PC version of the game was developed by Monster Couch and published by them, Stonemaier Games and Indienova.

The "story" in Wingspan feels like it would make for an interesting management simulator, too: The player oversees a nature preserve and is tasked with bringing birds to its habitats. There are specific requirements for each bird, and most cards come with their own effects and abilities. The game is set over four turns, which themselves are divided into rounds, with each major action you can take being equal to a round. Players get one fewer round at every following turn.

The early bird…

The tutorial is very helpful! And the name of the wildlife
preserve guardian delivering the tutorial to you is...
Robin, of course.

There’s a ton of information on a bird’s card. One of the most interesting aspects of Wingspan is the attempt at displaying as many true details about each bird as could fit on the card. You’ll find: The name, of course, but also the habitat(s) it can live in, its diet, its nest type, the average span of its wings, how many eggs it can lay, its worth in feathers, and its effect. Even the effect is meant to replicate some realistic characteristic of that species, whenever possible.

Gonna pick the worm, that way I can summon the barn
swallow in my hand- Did I say "summon"? Sorry, I think
my brain is a bit too geared for Yu-Gi-Oh.

At the very beginning, you pick your starting birds and food, five split among both. To play a species, you need to have its required foods available in your bank. Some ask for a specific food item, others ask for one of a few, some go as far as to ask for three food items. Some birds have a color wheel symbol in the diet part; this means any food will do. If the dice aren’t kind to you and you don’t have what it takes to summon the bird you want, you can convert two other pieces of food into the one you need. You also choose a “bonus” card offering you an additional challenge to take on.

The game is divided into three habitats, each of which has its purpose, and on which you can “summon” up to five birds. Each habitat’s ability improves the more birds you have in it. However, using a habitat’s ability uses up a round. As an example, the forest is where the feeder is set up; at zero species in the forest, you can only pick one, but at four or more, you can pick three. You can reroll all dice when there’s only one or fewer left.

Eggs are almost like money here. Egg economy. Eggconomy.

The grassland is where birds lay eggs, from two to four. Eggs serve as both points to be counted at the end of a game, and as a cost to activate specific effects and for summons. As an example, the first bird played on every habitat only requires the food cost, but every subsequent bird requires a payment in eggs; therefore, it’s a good idea to stock up.

The wetland is where you draw cards. The more birds in this habitat, the more cards you can draw at once. You can pick among the three face-up cards at the bottom of the screen, or draw the top card of the deck. In Wingspan, there are many actions you can choose to undo, but some cannot be undone, like drawing a face-down card. On some occasions, you can also get new bonus cards with missions.

Some missions are easier than others!

I just drew cards, so now I use the effects of: The common
raven, the chimney swift and theforster's tern, in that order.

Birds have three types of effects in the base game: Some activate only once when the bird is played. Some activate depending on actions taken by other players. The more common one, however, is the brown “when activated” type of effect, which triggers when you use that habitat’s main function (taking food, laying eggs, drawing cards). The game will go through each brown effect on the habitat's birds in reverse order, warning you when some aren’t applicable and letting you skip most of them, with only specific ones being mandatory.

Each turn comes with a “goal” to accomplish. Missions generally involve counting a specific number of elements currently at play on each player’s board. Examples taken from the tutorial: How many birds you have in one habitat, how many eggs you have on birds with a specific type of nest, how many eggs you have in a specific habitat, or how many birds you have in play in total. When a turn ends, your numbers are compared to your opponent’s, and the one with the most points earns more feathers.

Winning every "turn" is also not a total guarantee of
victory at the end, it depends on how many birds the others
have played, and how many feathers they also collected
that way.

Oh right! I forgot! Each bird has a value in feathers, the points tallied at the end of a match. You count the feathers earned from goals, but you also count the worth in feathers of all the birds you played, one more feather for every egg unused, and one more for any cached foods and tucked cards (two more gameplay mechanics). The player with the most feathers at the end of a game wins. There is an option within the Steam version (and, I believe, alternate rules in the physical version as well) to decrease the difference in earned feathers for successful goals, so that they aren’t a be-all end-all towards victory.

Is the Word

Grab food: You get a free egg, then you get one more free
fruit from the supply. You now have two more items
useful to bring another bird!

I already mentioned the brown effects. Wingspan is described as an engine-building tabletop game. For those unaware: “Engine-building” means that a player accumulates effects on their board with increasing synergy. These combined effects interact with each other, giving the player a greater ability to reach their goal. Each “piece” has its function in the “engine”. Some trading card games encourage these interactions between cards in a player’s deck since working off the opponents’ actions is unreliable. In engine-building board games where all players draw from the same deck, cards tend to be designed so that they won’t clash with each other, design-wise, but can still have synergies that make them interesting to play in a sequence.

Four eggs at a time in the grassland, now that's strong.

You can play your brown cards to cater to the end-of-turn objectives and bonus mission card(s) in your hand. All you must keep in mind is that these effects only trigger for the birds in one habitat, when you use that habitat. Imagine that the latest bird you played in one habitat adds one piece of grain food to your bank, and the bird right after it lets you choose to cache one piece of grain food. Since cached foods count towards a point, you have one free point every time you activate that habitat. If you can get the combos going by drawing the right cards, you can ensure yourself a ton of extra points at the end.

But that’s the thing: You need to get lucky with card and food draws. If none of the birds in your hand or in the wetland helps you furthering the turn goal, or you can’t get the right foods from the supply, your only option is to wait some more. Examples I’ve run into include: Not getting any birds that can be played in the grassland, when I needed birds with eggs in there; not getting birds of a specific nest type; or never drawing avians with a big enough wingspan to trigger specific effects.

Play as you like

It's a five bird melee! It's a beakle royale!

I guess that’s why the option exists to play with a smaller impact caused by the end-of-turn goals; they won't define the outcome as drastically, and you can set your cards and eggs without having to tailor your strategy. Another good part of the Wingspan online game is that you can create custom games just the way you want them. Play against other humans locally or online. Add AI players, or play only against up to four CPUs (and set their difficulty setting). Change the order in which the players conduct their turns. Still not enough? A proper single-player mode known as Automa pits you against a smart AI that can prove quite challenging to beat.

Gould's Finch could pack a mean surprise.

You can also buy DLCs of the expansions already available for the physical game: The Europe and Oceania expansions, which both add new bird cards and improve on the formula in a few ways each. New effect types include activations at the end of each round, or at the very end of the game only, as well as new “sideways” cards that fill up two spots at once, letting you power up a habitat more quickly. Both expansions include new goals. Oceania shakes up the formula significantly by including a new food type, Nectar. It also rebalances the game to cause new strategies into existence; the Grassland habitat, where eggs are laid, was nerfed as it could provide tons of advantage at the detriment of the other two, which were buffed in response.

After all, since the remaining eggs are worth a point each at the very end, it would be a common strategy at the end to spam the grassland during the fourth and final round. Even I played several games against CPUs that ended that way, since it could help me secure a last-minute upper hand. Admittedly, I didn’t buy the DLCs, but reading up on them lets me imagine the difference they can make. The physical game would gain an Asia expansion in late 2022, though I’m not seeing it in the app yet.

Final thoughts

Oh, that's a raven in the hand. Those are DANGEROUS.
As in, overpowered within the game's rules.

This game’s enjoyable. I appreciate the cozy, relaxed atmosphere. The bird trivia is interesting (and it's also 100% accurate), the art on the cards is lovely, and the voiceover is nice. The game has a base that’s simple to understand in one game, but a lot of intricacies that give it more depth and which you might only figure out after playing more matches. It’s designed very well overall, barring some balancing issues as mentioned above. It also doesn’t feel like a game with a lot of interactions between players, which can be a downside if that’s what you prefer playing; some birds do have effects involving the actions of other players, but they’re not that common and make you reliant on what the others could choose to do.

A bird with no food cost? Who reacts to other predator
birds? And brings food back? (Yeah, I forgot to mention
predators are another gameplay mechanic here.)

I’ll admit I’m a bit disappointed at the lack of a campaign mode, but then again, I guess this one wouldn’t lend itself all that well to that. Thankfully, players have plenty of options for multiplayer and solo play, with CPU opponents on multiple difficulty settings and even the Automa mode. And a great aspect is that while there is an element of luck here, there’s workarounds to it (as an example, the ability to transform any two incorrect food items into the one you need, or picking from revealed cards instead of relying on blind draws – though those are also an option). And with two expansions as DLCs that can further shake up the formula, there’s plenty of options for people who fall into this game and end up loving it enough to try more.

At the very least, the online version did the best it could do: It made me want to try out the physical version. That’s a glowing endorsement, right?

Wingspan is available on Steam for 19.99$ USD.

…For once, maybe it’s the lack of inspiration, or the mood, but… I don’t even know if there’s more I can say, really. Let’s call it a day. Wingspan great. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go look for more calming, peaceful games to play. Worst-case scenario, if I don’t find them, I can always let out some steam on something that’s the complete opposite. I don't know yet.