‘Project L’ Board Game Review
With more and more games to choose from each year, you can be forgiven for letting a few fly under the radar – but missing out on Project L in the three years since it was released seems like a real shame. Occupying a position just outside the BoardGameGeek Top 10 abstract games, Project L is a beautifully made, incredibly simple and very satisfying polyomino placement and engine-building game that plays in about half an hour and offers both accessibility and tough decisions.
Teaching Project L is an absolute pleasure, and I kid you not – I first played it with my three-year-old to try and learn the game. There’s nothing about Project L that grates, grinds or otherwise prevents the players from simply getting stuck in. To set up, everyone takes a board and two basic tiles (a level one and a level two) and then two rows of four puzzle cards are drawn from a white and black deck respectively. Finally, the remaining tile sets are placed off to the side – broadly arranged by levels one, two, three and four, with each level representing how many spaces a tile will cover.
On their turn, a player may take three actions – including choosing a puzzle card from either the black or white rows, upgrading a tile they already have to the next level up, drawing a new level one tile, or taking a powerful placement action (once per turn) where they place a tile into each of the puzzle cards they have. Each puzzle tile is a lovely little thing with a high-quality, dual-layer design that features an indented shape – some pf which are small and simple, whilst others are larger and more complex. Each puzzle card has either a point value or a new tile printed on it as a reward, and some tiles actually have both.
What this results in is a fast and straightforward turn structure that basically involves the players spending actions almost instantly to grab a puzzle card, perhaps placing one tile in it, drawing a new tile and then passing. Later on in the game, with two or three puzzle cards in play, a player might have ten or so tile pieces and will now be working towards endgame – which is triggered when the stack of black puzzle tiles is exhausted. The exact number of cards used is dependent on the player count, but at all player counts, you can expect Project L to be a relatively fast and very punchy experience.
Project L is just such a well-made experience all around. It must have been tempting for the producers to use thin card stock for the puzzle tiles and perhaps even cardboard tile pieces rather than plastic – but they didn’t. They also chose to present the game in a smallish box that fits everything perfectly within it and gives it a much better chance of finding a permanent home somewhere on my creaking shelves. Project L under-promises and over-delivers in almost every respect, and I absolutely love it for that alone.
If you enjoy tile placement, and you want something fast-paced that you can play with almost anyone, then Project L is probably the game you should look to pick up in the near future. If it has one flaw, it is perhaps that it is slightly too straightforward for its own good, but I really don’t feel like that’s a major problem when it fits with so many potential audiences. Project L is probably my most pleasant gaming surprise of 2023, and it’s definitely a keeper. I would say it’s well worth checking this one out if you have the chance!
