Everybody say tweet! These birds love to pose for selfies and it's up to you to help them get into the best positions to capture those perfect shots. The game has players maneouvering birds around on the telephone wire into groups to match their selfie cards and shouting 'SELFIE' to collect the points.
We first came across Featherweight Fiesta on one of our suppliers social media pages and thought it looked really fun! From the video of the game, we immediately thought of several people we could play this with and were really excited to give it a try.
First Impressions
When the game arrived, we were not disappointed! It was really nice and bright and as soon as we opened it, the quality of the components stood out. With wooden telephone poles, plasticard birds and a stretchy elastic. An element of self assembly then pursued as I worked out which order the poles went in to ensure I threaded the elastic through them in the right order. Thankfully the instructions were quite clear for this so it didnt' take too long. We loved the fact that the box became the base for the game and the birds all sit around the sides before you place them onto the wires.
Game Play Overview
Featherweight Fiesta is played over 2 main phases with each phase having multiple rounds until a certain condition is met for each. The first phase is called Perch and Pose and has players taking it in turns to either move a bird on the wire (either from the edge of the box or from another position on the wire) or taking eggs (which can be spent during this phase to take an additional move bird action or are worth victory points at the end of the game). At any point during this phase a player can shout 'SELFIE' to score one of their selfie cards that has been met by the birds on the wire being in the appropriate places. Once a selfie card is scored, the player then gets to draw a new selfie card. This phase ends when either there are no more birds on the edge of the box or there are no more selfie cards to take. The second phase is called Flying the Nest. During this phase, all solo birds are removed from the wires and then players take it in turns to pull the tail of 1 bird remaining on the wire in an attempt to fling all but 1 bird off the wire. If they are successful, they can score an incomplete selfie card. If not, play continues until no birds remain on the wire. Final scoring then takes place and the player with the highest score wins.
Pros and Cons
This game is well designed with easy to understand rules and simple mechanics. It's great fun trying to get all the birds into the best positions to score your selfie cards, however we did find ourselves double checking the rules a few times just to check which bird was which. Once we'd played it a few times we were starting to get the hang of it but I can see us having to double check in future if we haven't played it for a while. Other than that, it was really good fun and the actions and gameplay didn't require us to reread the rules at all.
Final Verdict
Overall, we really enjoyed Featherweight Fiesta. It's quick to play, easy to set up and suitable for adults and kids to play together without having to scale back your playstyle to make it fair on the kids. We can definitely see ourselves playing it both with groups of adults as well as for family games.
Update: We've had great fun playing this game, however, it does lack replayability for adults. I can see kids and teens playing this over and over until they break it, but for us as a couple, it's just not one that will make it to the table frequently.
In conclusion, we would rate this game a 7.5/10
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