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Kiwetin is a brand new game from Flyos Games, the first game from the Montreal based independent game studio. The co-founder Gary Paitre & Thomas Filippi launched the game on Kickstarter back in January 2017.
It funded in less than 24-hours and ended up raising over five times its original goal of CA$15,000 (roughly £9,000) thanks to 1,357 backers. The game itself is a roll and move game with a few twists and turns to keep things interesting. It plays up to six, takes approximately 15 minutes and is for ages seven and up.
KiWeTin – A beautiful flowing game
The components and artwork is what sets Kiwetin apart from other filler games. The game looks stunning! From the box itself, which is exactly the right size, with no filler space to make it look more than it is, to the Spirits, they all look magical and mystical. If you have children, they will love this game before they even play it.
The figures themselves are a little delicate, a bit too much rough handling and I can see the leaves the spirits hold to ‘fly’ breaking, not a problem for us adults but one to keep in mind when playing with our younger counterparts.
The board folds out and contains even more of the beautiful artwork, the dice are also very aesthetically pleasing, although the two normal dice are slightly on the smaller side. The component quality is mostly top notch but a few areas do let it down.
In addition to the dice and frailty of the Spirits, the Rune cards are slightly thinner than you’d like with a mediocre finish to them but this is easily forgiven and quickly forgotten.
The figures themselves are a little delicate, a bit too much rough handling and I can see the leaves the spirits hold to ‘fly’ breaking, not a problem for us adults but one to keep in mind when playing with our younger counterparts.
The board folds out and contains even more of the beautiful artwork, the dice are also very aesthetically pleasing, although the two normal dice are slightly on the smaller side. The component quality is mostly top notch but a few areas do let it down.
In addition to the dice and frailty of the Spirits, the Rune cards are slightly thinner than you’d like with a mediocre finish to them but this is easily forgiven and quickly forgotten.
Kiwetin Gameplay
In Kiwetin you take control of one of three forest spirits, Ki We or Tin, who glide effortlessly across the forest towards the sacred flower. The three spirits differ in size, from Ki the largest of the three to Tin, the smallest. Each one has a base movement of one, two or three, with the smaller spirits being able to glide further between the tree’s, however they have to grab a branch to avoid slipping back in the race to the sacred flower. This is represented by rolling a move dice which enables the player to move one, two or three places. This is then added to their base movement with the player moving their spirit the total amount.
Enter the grabbing phase. Two dice are rolled, normal D6 with the exception of the one being replaced by a X, to ensure you successfully grab a branch you must roll at least one of the two dice equal or above the amount you move, so if you’re playing as Tin with a base movement of three and roll a two. you will need to roll at least one five or six. If you fail, or if you roll an X on either die then you move back an amount of spaces equal to your base movement.
The fun comes from the action tiles and rune cards. The action tiles are randomly placed upside down at the start of each game and are only revealed when a player lands on them. These range from simple actions like moving two spaces forwards or backwards or picking up an extra Rune card, to more exciting ones such as repeating the movement you’ve made or the favourite Whirlwind tile, which triggers a change of control of your spirits! Yes you heard me, you pass your character onto the player to your right. This keeps things interesting right to the end, a Whirlwind tile on one of the last few spaces of the board is game changing!
Lastly the Rune cards, every player starts with three and as mentioned above can pick up more during the game.
These can be played at any time, even if it’s not your go and once again can have major effects on the game.
From mundane moving any spirit forwards/backwards a space to forcing an opponent to miss a go, and the ever so fun Hooking and Atrakting, which allow you to move your spirit to another space or bring another players spirit to yours, respectively.
Final Thoughts
This is without doubt a beautiful game. A lot of love has gone into it and even if it doesn’t get played that much it will always look beautiful sitting on your shelf. And that is my biggest fear with Kiwetin. It is a great filler game and awesome to play with kids but it doesn’t have the depth most gamers are used to due to it being almost completely luck based.
But that doesn’t stop it being from being one of my favourite small filler games and sometimes it’s nice to have something which requires a bit less thinking so you can spend more time enjoying the game, laughing with friends and staring at the beautiful artwork. Yes it is overproduced and yes it over priced but if I could go back I would still buy it all over again.
Lastly the Rune cards, every player starts with three and as mentioned above can pick up more during the game.
These can be played at any time, even if it’s not your go and once again can have major effects on the game.
From mundane moving any spirit forwards/backwards a space to forcing an opponent to miss a go, and the ever so fun Hooking and Atrakting, which allow you to move your spirit to another space or bring another players spirit to yours, respectively.
Final Thoughts
This is without doubt a beautiful game. A lot of love has gone into it and even if it doesn’t get played that much it will always look beautiful sitting on your shelf. And that is my biggest fear with Kiwetin. It is a great filler game and awesome to play with kids but it doesn’t have the depth most gamers are used to due to it being almost completely luck based.
But that doesn’t stop it being from being one of my favourite small filler games and sometimes it’s nice to have something which requires a bit less thinking so you can spend more time enjoying the game, laughing with friends and staring at the beautiful artwork. Yes it is overproduced and yes it over priced but if I could go back I would still buy it all over again.
