Waterfall park in about 3 minutes

Waterfall park in about 3 minutes

Designer,Karsten Hartwig,
Artist,Umeshu Lovers,
Publisher,Repos Production ,

3 minute board games theme Music by Vic Granell

"Adding the sun" Kevin Macleod
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

"Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act
1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."

3 minute board games are J Carmichael and S Rodgers

[MBG]

This is a big missed opportunity. A new version of chinatown could have been almost anything, new areas opening up in an asteroid as it's mined out would have been my choice for a theme. That's a theme that makes sense to the games mechanics of randomly assigning regions. Gold mining, city building, you name it. Just about any theme would have been better than this nonsense.

PS. I'm not hugely interested in debating the merits of the original theme, all I'll say is I have 2 different groups i play with who both contain people of Chinese descent and they found it "Cringey" or "awkward", not all out "this game is an abomination and must be burned at the stake". And as a rule, when something is about a specific culture, i tend to defer to the people from that cultures opinions. I'm not about to tell my friends that have to shut up and play the game if they feel that way. But thats why i've wanted a retheme into something slightly different.

[IlanMuskat]

Here with a blistering hot take six months later. My family and I (including my two young kids, aged 5 and 7) have played Original Chinatown a bunch of times and all enjoyed it -- except that we found it takes too long to play all six rounds, and the spaces often get a bit constricted. We LOVE the tangible theme and aesthetics of immigrant families trying to build retail businesses in Robert Moses-era Manhattan. The question of ethnicity portrayal is tricky, and maybe not the most delicate, but again, amazing theme.

All that said.

Waterfall Park is *actually* a refinement of the gameplay to fit family needs. I played three games of it TODAY and each felt like, with four rounds, they finished right on time before it became a slog. More businesses got finished; more sense of accomplishment. Simpler money management with the tokens. Very clever component design (though needed a bag for attraction tiles, in my opinion). Trading: just as heated!

And theme wise, the family had just come back from a vacation at a water park hotel. All the businesses were places we'd just seen. We could imagine building a carousel, a bowling alley, a movie theatre by the big pool.

I think this game AND its theme have enormous merit! But I am also very glad we have both of these options available to play -- Chinatown when my wife and I want to lecture our kids about urban planning, and Waterfall Park when we want a quicker game full of candy stores, circus tents and bright colours.

[andrejsasd]

What I don't like: The "map" is so colorful that it is not easy to see your locations. When the businesses are put on top of your placement "frames", the picture becomes even less readable. Plus, it is not super easy to change the owner of the plot when the business is already built.

What I do not care about: The theme. I play games for their mechanics. I don't care if it is Chinatown, theme park, space colony, or building new cities in the middle of a rainforest.

What I like: the chaos of trading, swapping and deal-making, basically- the core mechanic. The game length- four rounds are enough to get the taste of the game without it becoming too tedious. Plus, you can easily play two games in a row.

[RatchetSly]

Would you recommend this to someone who can't find a local copy of Chinatown, or is it a notable enough downgrade that i should spend the additional markup to order the original in? The only negotiation-related game I own is Wise Guys, which while great has a very specific player count requirement, so Chinatown/Waterfall Park has been on my radar for a while.

[terryH]

Chinese here. Appreciate the effort to take out stereotyped images, but Zman should also try not to dumb it down on earnest gamers...😢 Just take out the Chinese man image off the box and the back of the game cards, then keep the original game play. The product cards are ok.

[Nychuus]

Was at 100 when I heard Waterfall park was a remake of Chinatown

Went straight back to "now where can I get a copy of Chinatown"

140 percent with you that this theme is garbage.

[simondupuis]

Oh no you didn't recommend Rival Restaurants as an alternative

[timofkings]

I hate this remake. I would have preferred a reprint of Chinatown.

[tinstargames]

All these years I've been pronouncing it with the first syllable rhyming with lid...:0 Also, this looks like hot roasted garbage.