It is fair to say that Recall was one of the big hits of Essen Speil in 2025 - units were flying off the shelves of sellers faster than you could say “Auf Wiedersehen”. Brought to you by the same development team that delivered the popular “Revive” boardgame. Personally, I haven’t played Revive so, this is a review based purely on playing Recall only. So here is my uncluttered review free from any bias that might be inherent from having played Revive.
First impressions are that this is a very high quality and well thought through board game. Currently trending at over 8 on BGG where it has sat fairly solidly since it became more widely available, is it deserving of its ranking and will we still be pulling it from the shelf in 6 to 12 month’s time?
Out of the box, like so many board games these days the quality of the punch card components and ease of gathering all the various bits together is a joy. I often remark to non gamers that might baulk at paying £60/£80 for a boardgame, but then I explain about the quality and replayablility and fun of table top gaming and how that what might seem like a steep initial outlay repays itself many times over.
There is still a glorious wonder in opening the cellophane on the box and the cards - it reminds me of opening packs of football stickers as a youngster, revelling in the excitement of the newness and anticipation. Opening a big box game is no different - even though I’m now 52!
The player board requires a little bit of construction so that the Keys that play an integral part of the gameplay can slot in to the assigned spaces but apart from that pretty much straight out of the box and you’re ready to go. Set up is a little bit time consuming - as there are multiple sets of coloured upgrade keys that need to be placed on the board and multi hex face down map pieces but aside from that set up is relatively straightforward, think SETI set up time and you’re about there.
The main player board is divided into different areas, the main map, and then tracks for knowledge progression to open up new abilities and storage space for those upgrade keys. It’s a big board so with the board and four players it’s a bit of a beast, the player boards aren’t small and you need space for spare keys, so I expect it would be a squeeze on most tables.
The instructions are clear and well written, but expect a few referrals in early games as there are a few nuances particularly with the different tribal abilities that you either start with or can access as you grow your knowledge.
One of the first things that emerges as you start to approach playing Recall is that there is a lot going on. Your choices are based on actions you can take limited by available key slots and available keys. As with your typical heavy weight Euro gamer, lots of choices, limited resources and not quite enough resources to do everything you want to do. Played over 13 rounds, with breaks for committing to end game scoring cards.
You start the game with a “tribe” member to assist you in either extending your turn actions, fording rivers, farming pigs (I’m not kidding) or simply doubling your income at various points in the game. It is worker placement, engine building, action choices and enhancements. You have to farm abilities and resources to use those abilities to be able to use those abilities at the right time. The sense from the start is that every decision matters and that tension carries throughout the game.
Your choice to give up a crystal to gain an ability stone might mean you can’t place a building somewhere but then you can activate one of your gadgets - but maybe only once before you take your “recall” action.
As in the game title, your timing of your recall is critical. Too early and you use up your key slots, too late and you’re left with unused keys and key slots. We’ve been there on both counts. Two recalls feels about right unless the board is really challenging in terms of blocking hexes like water or volcanoes which limit movement.
This is all in an effort to gain knowledge on three separate tracks to unlock more ability stones (hence allowing you more ability actions - gadgets or tribal companions), or opening up the pool of other tribes and their abilities. Like I said, a lot going on. By the way, I forgot about scoring.
Scoring is also pretty complicated - there is your standard victory points track, progressing along which allows you to upgrade you key slot abilities, 6 end game cards (double sided) which at certain times you have to commit to one of a pair of scoring cards that drive extra bonuses for collecting cubes, building different types of building or ability stones. Add to this, your main end game scoring bonus card - worth 15 points and it gets challenging. This brings me to one of my main gripes of this game is that there is sometimes “too much” going on, its not chaos but it feels like the weighting of the end game bonus is too high, like if you don’t achieve it you have no chance of winning, 15 points is too much from other scoring areas to make up the difference for me. It over dominates your strategy. If you need to get say, 4 different colour cubes and the random draw on a new map hex puts that cube over the other side of the board, you HAVE to focus on getting that at the behest of other goals.
Workers are not easily put onto the board - only on places where you have a building unless a particular gadget allows you to do otherwise, so you might bypass squares with stones or development opportunities to focus on getting that final scoring cube. If the end game scoring card was say, 10 points it would present a viable alternative choice to go for or not to go for those 15 points. This also drives my other main issue with this game in that this end game scoring card weighting means it drives my main gameplay and I feel as though I am playing against the game rather than against my opponent. Opponent actions don’t prevent you from doing things for the most part, yes they might make things a bit more difficult - extra resource development costs etc but unless your opponent blocks you especially with a map placement or literally takes the final stone from a hex, you can still do lots of other actions. There is no king maker undercurrent here.
The board, despite its size can get very busy even with two players, and circa 15 games in, we haven’t flipped every map hex yet and so the furthest away from the start point Monument space hasn’t been built on yet - unless you are committed to revealing tiles, parts of the board will remain unexplored. Equally, we have found we rarely use the abilities of the revealed tribes during gameplay, I don’t think this is a fault in the game and there is a certain amount of chance as to which ones will be revealed but we just often don’t bother with them, its like it is yet another thing to think about.
The board and hexes are colourful and its easy to see why the colour schemes for the in game resources (stones and cubes) were used but this means the player colours pieces and tokens sometimes get a bit lost for me in the busy-ness of the board. We often forget to take stones from knowledge tracks or apply the progress token on new tribe abilities - its one of those things that feels like you have to be forced to remember rather than it being obvious and progressional. Colour schemes on busy boards are so important and these colours sometimes feel a bit lost in the mix.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to like in this heavyweight euro game, the mechanics, the recall action and the resource management and choices all feel super intuitive, take an action open another action or get another reward but because of that end game scoring card weighting it feels like a bit of a solo experience with someone else playing solo with you at the same time. That won’t be for everyone as it’s a real brain basher at times, soooo many choices and options In the early stages, and then so few towards the end of the game is how it should be and its not like the game bites back, you are in control of your moves and decisions, whether you leave yourself short at the end (too few ability stones, too few crystals), is largely up to you and your prior decisions and resource management and whether you over develop in the mid game or go all for the knowledge track and scoring bonus at the behest of placing buildings - these are all valid choices and yours to make.
In summary, following reading reviews from Essen I really wanted to love this game, and I do love it but I don’t “like” it. It is very hard work at times, and as much as I love a heavy weight game, this is at times too much. The combination of managing keys, crystals, workers, tribes, cubes, gadgets and key slots can become the thing in itself rather than planning for say a final round “coup de grace”. With, say Ark Nova, you can manage your hand to deliver your final turn masterpiece, large animal, determination, sponsor project etc but here I feel as though, as I said previously, I’m playing against the game and I can’t decide to go for a cube strategy or stones strategy due to the end game scoring card weighting. I’m forced to adopt a strategy based on one card - which isn’t unlike many games and end scoring cards but with Recall, there is no other obvious choice I f you decide against that end game single point haul.
Verdict
It’s a brilliant gaming experience - after a game you are kind of happily drained or weirdly exhausted with little to no idea how you won or lost. So nearly perfect, but flawed due to being overly busy and color clashes, end game scoring card weighting and feeling of playing against the game rather than against your opponent.
