When Wondrous Creatures, designed by C W Yeom was released in 2024 it immediately caught my eye and I started doing some research. One comment I saw that struck me was that this game was an ‘Everdell killer’. I have owned Everdell, by James A. Wilson for several years and it has stood the test of time, still making it to the table on a frequent basis. Was Wondrous Creatures going to be similar to Everdell but better? Was it so similar that I wouldn’t want to own both? Would I be wiser to spend my money on a different game? Of course, I ended up buying it regardless, which was one way to find out the answer to those questions! Read on for my thoughts.
Both games are described as worker placement and tableau-building, both can accommodate 1 to 4 players and both have a playing time of 40 to 80 minutes. Wondrous Creatures suggests a minimum age of 14 and Everdell states 13. I can think of a few twelve-year-olds who could probably beat me at either game. There is no content unsuitable for younger players but they would need the maturity and persistence required to learn the rules.
Aesthetics
Both games feature beautiful artwork and high-quality components. In Everdell, Andrew Bosley has done a great job of making characters of real animals like badgers and stoats. In Wondrous Creatures, the animals are fantasy ones, with names like duplagon and floarazei. Again, the artist, Sophia Kang, has done an amazing job.
How it plays
This is not intended to be an instructional guide and the following section simply highlights some similarities and differences between the two games.
The cards you will be collecting for your city (Everdell) or reserve (Wondrous Creatures) look very similar to each other. Each has a type, a cost, a reward for playing it and a number of points you will score at the end of the game. In Wondrous Creatures, each animal also has a habitat type, which affects whether you can select it from the wilderness and also has a bearing on some of the achievements you can aim for.
One notable difference is that in Everdell there is more than one card of each type. For example, in the base game the 128 construction and critter cards include 3 inkeepers, 8 farms, 2 castles. There are no constructions in the base game of Wondrous Creatures, and each creature is unique. However, the powers are not. I Everdell, each of the three wanderers allows you to draw three cards and no other type of card has that ability. In Wondrous Creatures, both the night thief and the nightogue allow you to ‘sweep’ and draw a card from the wilderness. Don’t get the idea that there are fewer abilities on the cards in total though. To be honest, I don’t want to count them all up but believe me, there are plenty in both games. I’m not sure I’ll ever learn the abilities off by heart in Wondrous Creatures though.
In Everdell, you will mostly be using your workers to gather resources. Worker placement is straightforward – land on the space for three twigs and that’s what you get. Some spaces do offer other options, like cards or coins. Later in the game you might choose to use a worker to claim an event (similar to achievements in Wondrous Creatures) or trade cards for points.
In Wondrous Creatures, your workers are placed across two hexagonal spaces on the main board. You then collect a resource or a card matching every adjacent hex with a resource printed on it. Depending on which two hexes you place your worker on, you may need to pay a resource, have the opportunity to collect an egg, and/or use a net to gather extra items from adjacent spaces. Sounds a bit complicated but it’s really not. It just means that you can potentially do several things with one worker placement. One of your workers is designated the captain, and once you claim a trophy by claiming an achievement, your captain’s unique special abilities are triggered. This is a nice touch, as it encourages you to complete achievements early, whereas in Everdell there is not much to gain by claiming events early except that your opponents can’t get them.
Wondrous Creatures offers you six ways to score points:
Some points are awarded during the game. This is similar to gaining coins in Everdell, although in the former you move along a track and there are bonuses to be had for doing so.
End of game cards e.g. one point for each mammal in your reserve (similar to purple cards in Everdell).
Points value for cards i.e. how much each card itself is worth. Same as Everdell.
Completed achievements. This is like events in Everdell but worth a lot more points.
Trophies – you get these on completing achievements, making them even more valuable.
Points for left over resources and butterfly nets. This only amounts to a few points.
In Everdell you can use a worker in the last season to trade cards for points but leftover resources only count if you have specific cards in your city.
Conclusion
Bear in mind here, that I have played Wondrous Creatures about 10-15 times and Everdell probably one hundred.
Is Wondrous Creatures similar to Everdell but better? There are certainly a lot of similarities but I don’t find them too similar. Wondrous Creatures has an interesting worker placement mechanic that always offers more than one possibility for collecting cards and resources. I’d say it’s more complicated that the base game of Everdell (although my sister said she found it easier to learn, strangely) and perhaps that’s why the publishers suggest a slightly older age group. I do enjoy Wondrous Creatures, so am I now going to relegate Everdell to that out-of-reach top shelf in my games cupboard before eventually giving it away? Absolutely not. I still very much enjoy Everdell. I revel in playing a critter for free once you have the associated construction. I love that if you play the Inn you have a good chance of an innkeeper coming up at some point. There are some really satisfying card combos you can work towards.
Which do I prefer? I don’t feel it’s fair to decide that until I’ve played Wondrous Creatures a lot more. I prefer Everdell in terms of theme. Real animals appeal to me more than fantasy ones (though the real ones in Everdell wear clothes and run Universities, so they are not that real). At the moment I prefer the way the cards interact with each other in Everdell but that could be because I haven’t yet discovered combinations in Wondrous Creatures. Worker placement is a lot more interesting in Wondrous Creatures and I prefer the achievements to Everdell’s Events.
What I am sure of is that I am happy to own and play both. So that’s good – my money was wisely spent!
