Parks By Keymaster

Not all gaming is with video games. My focus now is Xenoblade Chronicles X:DE on Switch. But last year for Christmas, I was given a new tabletop board game — I love it! Made by Keymaster, it's called, Parks. The original base game was accompanied by two expansions, one of which I also was given for Christmas. In early January, before I expanded the base game, I learned that Keymaster opened pre-orders for a new and improved 2nd edition. Coming in two versions, the best one is the deluxe Summit Edition; it was delivered to my house this week — yeah!

The Summit Edition is the deluxe version of the 2nd edition of Parks.

Parks is a game that mimics hiking through the U.S. national parks. If you enjoy hiking in real life — "touch grass" — then you'll probably enjoy the board game. It has a camera and photos, canteens with water, animal tokens, and several hiking the-great-outdoors items.

My favorite thing about the first edition of the game is the superb artwork for each state park. The stylized art design comes via a collaboration with Fifty-Nine Parks. Unfortunately, this art collab is no longer the case with the 2nd edition, yet the new park cards all feature beautiful artwork nevertheless.

Learning the first edition of Parks the day after Christmas.

While the artwork is great, the gameplay itself is fantastic. There are four rounds, one for each season of the year, with each round growing in trail-length. On each turn, there are many actions you can take, often with multiple steps or tasks, so being efficient and maximizing your turn's moves is satisfying.

You start with a specific objective — like visit at least ten parks with mountains — but your strategy can change throughout the game. It feels flexible and, to me, is lots of fun. I plan my turn while watching how other players are stacking up their visited parks, photos, or resources (water, trees, sun...).

First edition Parks and the Nightfall expansion.

With my love of hiking in real-life, so much fun in the game, and a variety of gorgeous national parks, I'm a fan of Parks. So when I learned about the new version, I jumped on it in January and had to grab the Parks Summit Edition because the upgrades are so nice.

One of the best is the large and detailed playmat. That said, when I first started playing the original game right after Christmas, I quickly learned there was an add-on playmat for the game, which of course I ordered.

Original playmat, add-on (mouse-pad material).

Summit Edition playmat, included.

Other nice bonuses of the Summit Edition are a holo-foil promo park card plus 1–of–5 random holo-foil park cards. The one I happened to get is Grand Canyon National Park.

One of the five randomly included holo-foil park cards.

The promo holo-foil park card.

On top of that, there are only 10,000 Summit Editions made. Each one has a limited first-printing number stamped inside the box — mine is number 6,276.

I'm eager to hike into the enhanced edition of Parks because it not only includes fancier game pieces, it also packs additional gameplay mechanics. The 2nd edition includes extra pieces and play options from, I think, both of the previously available 1st edition expansions. But now I can basically play with the best parts of both combined with the core game.

Yes, the next few weekends are shaping up to be fun-filled family table-top game nights. Well, as long as I pause my Xenoblade video game.