Tangled Yarns by Kadena Entertainment is a 1-6 player co-operative game where you play a flock of sheep on a mission to save the world from – dun dun duuuun – the Shepherd!

You’ll move your sheep around the modular board, closing cosmic gates to prevent the Shepherd from entering, collecting power ups, fending off attacks from wolves and blocking cultists from reaching the sacrificial altar and summoning the Shepherd directly.

If the Shepherd enters a gate, or a cultist reaches the altar, you lose immediately. Close all of the gates and you then face off against the Angel to win the game for once and for all.

NOTE: This is an early prototype of the game provided to me to preview and so rules, components and artwork etc. may vary in final production copies.

While up to 6 can play co-op, I played solo and think this might be the best way to experience Tangled Yarns. To close a gate (which you’ll need to do a lot!), multiple sheep need to be on relic icons and collectively use their single action for that round, so there’s limited opportunity for sheep to branch off on individual missions – you’re not just working as a team, but almost as a single player.

At solo though, I think this works well with the puzzle of how to move and position your flock all sitting with one player.

The bits I liked

The theme and artwork is just the perfect amount of psychotic and I’m absolutely here for it!

The Shepherd activates new abilities as he travels around the board, like blocking sheep powers or increasing wolf attack strength, requiring constant micro-adaptations to your strategy, and careful planning keeping an eye on what he’ll activate next

Each tile has has a ‘wall’ face and players can rotate the tile their sheep is on once a turn to help block the path of wolves or cultists which makes the modular board really dynamic and I enjoyed this puzzle element. That said this was a bit of a pain in set up as you have to make sure the orientation of every tile keeps a clear path to the altar.

All sheep have asymmetric powers which I really liked – with multiple plays it would be interesting to work out the most powerful combinations

If a sheep dies – either through sacrifice or wolf attack – they become corrupted and you’ll flip their board over, modifying their ability in a way that makes the game a bit harder. I didn’t get to corrupt any of my sheep, but I imagine this is just because of how my game played out – I think more thanks to luck than skill! If a sheep dies a second time, they’re gone for good. I like how this would increase tension of the game, though making it even harder to win!

The bits I didn’t like so much

Combat and other decisions in the game are determined by shaking marbles in the Fate Box – a fun change from regular old dice rolls, but a little faffy when you need to change the marbles in the box (which I did a lot!) and a bad fate box result somehow felt a bit more unfair to me than a bad dice roll would.

Some will love the tension shaking the Fate Box adds, but for me it’s a bit too reliant on luck. You can mitigate your marbles (that’s not something I thought I’d ever say!) pre-attack by using power ups, but with no ability to mitigate after the shake of the box, things are left a bit too much to chance for my liking.

The game set up was a bit of a faff. In particular, having to assemble the board even though the main board itself doesn’t change from game to game felt like an unecessary shape. That said, this is a prototype copy of the game and so I won’t focus on current components as these are subject to change. (But I would love to see a standard, foldable board in the final copy!!)

Disclaimer: this is a prototype copy of the game provided to me for review purposes, but all opinions are my own.