Parks Europe is Henri Audobon’s latest standalone game in the Parks series. In Parks games, players trek along a trail over a number of seasons, gathering resources and ‘memories’ as they go, taking detours to gain further rewards.
A Brief History
Parks landed in 2019, followed by a couple of expansions, as well as a simplified variant, Trails in 2021. A second edition was released in 2025, with a redesigned board and incorporating many of the mechanics from the expansions, with a few additional tweaks to give a more streamlined experience. The artwork was also redone, with opinions differing on whether the new art is an improvement or not—for what it’s worth, I think both are pleasant. If you want to know more, this BoardGameGeek post contains a detailed description of all the differences between versions 1 and 2.
Parks and Trails feature US national parks, while Parks Europe, as the name might suggest, switches continent, as well as introducing a few rule changes.
Gameplay Summary
Parks Europe is a worker placement(ish) game for 1–5 people, taking an estimated 30–70 minutes to play.
The central board contains 7 locations on a trail across which players move their 2 hiker meeples. Each space contains a Trail Site tile (indicating the default action available on that space) and all but one a Via Ferrata tile (an optional ‘mountain climb’ action); the middle space is always a Park action (see later).
Above the trail are 3 Park cards and 4 Conservation Project cards, and a few other bits and bobs. Alongside it, there’s a Chalet board with Wonder cards (more on those shortly).
At the beginning of each season, a Season card is revealed and used to indicate what bonus resources should be placed on the trail locations. The game’s resources include: mountains, forests, sun, water, and wildlife (wildcards); there is also a separate snow penalty resource, used with the Chalet track.
A player can move as many spaces along the trail as they want but can never move backwards, so there’s a trade-off between rushing ahead to grab a specific reward vs taking it slowly to maximise the number of rewards. Player meeples can pass over others, but cannot occupy the same space (even if the meeples belong to the same player), unless they use a campfire (a limited resource, usable once per season, more or less).
When landing on a space, a player:
· takes the resource placed on that space, if they’re the first person to land there;
· performs the action on the Trail Site tile, which could be gaining resources, or visit/reserve a Park, among other things;
· optionally spends a carabiner to take the Via Ferrata action, which provides similar options to the Trail Site tile, with the addition of acquiring a Snow token, reducing the space available for useful resources.
As mentioned, one of the options is to visit a Park; this entails spending the resources indicated on the card to take it into your player area. Parks provide an end score, and can have immediate benefits too. Instead of visiting the Park, you can reserve it, which means placing it aside such that you’re the only person who can later visit it (just like reserving a card in Splendor). Parks have ‘suits’ (as indicated by an icon on the card), and you gain suit-dependent awards as you collect Parks.
Other actions include taking ‘photographs’ (gaining scoring points, with the person having most photos getting a further end scoring bonus). There’s a Shutterbug token which players can acquire to enable multiple photos in one turn. Players have a Mug and a corresponding track, such that you can ‘fill’ the Mug to move up the track, then ‘drink’ it to gain all benefits from the current position to the bottom (i.e., it pays to fill it as far as possible before emptying it). Conservation Projects provide ongoing bonuses, and can be acquired by spending the appropriate resources. Players can perform Chalet actions, removing Snow by moving around the Chalet track, which can gain a few scoring bonuses as they pass certain points. In addition, the person who’s farthest along the Chalet track starts the next season. Finally, players can draw a Wonder card, which can be played later for a range of benefits.
Players take turns moving their hikers until they reach the end of the trail, at which point they take an end of trail action.
Once all players have reached the end of the trail, the season ends and is reset for the next; the game ends after 3 seasons. Players’ final scores come from visited Parks, scoring Wonder cards, photos and the various awards accumulated during the game. The Chalet track is used to break ties.
One of the rules is that if all players but one have reached the trail end, that final player has to move all the way to the end on their next go, which does sound like it would put the kibosh on 2-player games. However, a very simple automated player known as Greta is available to take up the slack, moving her hikers along the trail and taking resources from spaces they land on. Greta is not a full-blown automa (e.g., she can’t win), but exists just to get in your way! Greta also provides a rather rudimentary solo mode.
Crowdfunding Confusion
My first inkling that Parks Europe was coming was an advance notice of a Kickstarter project. However, towards the end of July, an update was posted to say that wasn’t happening after all, mainly as a result of compressed timescales. Matt and Mattox of Keymaster Games (the publisher) explained that they had intended to start the crowdfunding project earlier in the year, but that various changes to their team meant that plan was thrown out. Instead, they’d be making limited numbers of the deluxe version of the game, the so-called Chalet Edition, available via BackerKit. The update included the sentence: ‘Kickstarter is for funding games that don’t exist yet… and Parks Europe already exists.’ A thoroughly laudable attitude, and one which I wish other publishers had.
The Kickstarter update also notes that the deluxe game will be available in October, with the retail version hitting stores in November.
The Chalet Edition is $30 more expensive than retail, but don’t forget that VAT and shipping will also apply to the BackerKit version, while that’s likely to be (partly) absorbed by retailers. Note also that, beside some rather nice wooden tokens and dual-layer player mats, the deluxe version includes a World Heritage Sites 5-card expansion, which would retail for $10. In this expansion, you receive a Heritage Token at the end of a trail, and can spend it later on to visit one of the new Sites instead of taking a Park action—they behave somewhat like Parks, but with more generous rewards.
Verdict
Both versions of Parks have been well received, and Parks Europe gives every indication of being an enjoyable and popular game too.
Parks Europe gameplay is very similar to that of Parks (Second Edition), and the changes are mainly cosmetic. However, besides the obvious location change and swapping a water flask for a mug, there are a few slightly more significant changes. Gear is gone, but the Wonder cards seem to work in a very similar way. Parks has Campsites on some trail spaces, where players can perform an additional action from a range of options; the Via Ferrata in Parks Europe seems to be more or less the same thing. Parks has an end of season score phase, not present in Europe, while Europe includes the Chalet track and bonuses. Park suits are also new to Parks Europe.
I would suggest that if you have Parks already, you don’t need Europe at all. If you don’t have either, it boils down to which pretty pictures (and the artwork is indeed nice) you prefer.
As for the deluxe Chalet Edition, will I be grabbing it from BackerKit? It’s a gorgeous game, but definitely not, despite the deluxification and mini expansion. It’s way too expensive for a game of this type (don’t forget VAT and shipping—have I mentioned that!?), and with retail following just a month later, there’s no long wait worth paying for to avoid.
The game’s definitely on my wishlist for retail, though.
About the author:
Current favourite boardgames are Ark Nova and Paleo, with a side of Terraforming Mars and Rebirth. When not playing games or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside over 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). In any time left over after all that, L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
