A review copy of Last Week of Summer was kindly provided by Zatu Trade. Thoughts & opinions are my own.

I have rose-tinted spectacles with inch-thick lenses when it comes to 1980s nostalgia, so when I had the opportunity to cover Last Week of Summer, I jumped at it. For me, it’s probably a little too light and disjointed, and I’ll get into that, but if you’ve got a group who like lighter games, I think you’ll have a killer time, dudes & dudettes.

VERDICT

players 1-4 | playing time 45-90 mins

Last Week of Summer is an 80s-soaked dayglo mix of mini-games, which don’t quite do it for me.

action programming

mini-games

80s

lightweight

Bodacious

Last Week of Summer is set in 1986 during the summer holidays. You’ve got one last week before it’s back to the reality of school or a first job, so what are you going to do? You’re going to have the most bodacious, gnarly last week. It’s a game of hand management, action programming, and a little bit of luck thrown in for good measure.

In each of the days (rounds) of this final week, you get to take three actions. One in the morning, one at noon, and one in the evening. You take the actions at the various locations in the town, which are drawn at random at the start of the game.

Each location is its own little mini-game, and at each you can either work or hang out. What you get from each type of action depends on whether you’re the only person there, or if someone else is there at the same time, whether that’s another person or one of the randomly assigned Cool Kids. Working earns you money, which you can spend to carry out some of the other hanging-out actions, or to boost other actions.

last week of summer player board — Each slot holds a card which dictates where you’ll hang out or work at that time.

Whether there are other people there or not isn’t guaranteed. Each player selects three cards and places them below the AM, Noon, and PM slots on their player board. For each phase, the cards are revealed simultaneously, and then come the groans and cheers from the people whose plans were thwarted or succeeded, based on what they were hoping for. I really enjoy these mechanisms, and I was happy to see it in Last Week of Summer.

Each action, regardless of the location, is pretty easy. The arcade, for instance, is just a case of rolling dice to place cubes next to matching Space Invader rows. At the Skate Park, you collect tiles with different tricks on them and try to match up three of a kind in a polyomino shape. At the video store, you pick up VHS tiles, dropping them off at adjacent spots, Mancala-style. If you want to know how Mancala works, check out my awesome guide.

Each mini-game has a variety of goals to accomplish, and each time you complete one, you get to place a cassette token on the board. Cassette tokens are essentially VPs.

Bogus

If you’ve read all of that and find yourself thinking, “That sounds fun!”, then you’re not wrong. I love a game that feels like a variety pack of other games. From the heaviness of Sankore (read my review here) through to lighter games like Fromage, it can work really well. What sets games like those apart from the games in Last Week of Summer, however, is connection.

In other games, there’s usually something linking the mini games. It could be a token earned in one game that can be used in another, or maybe an action somewhere boosts you up a track in a different location. Last Week of Summer doesn’t do this. Each game is played entirely in isolation. Shooting Space Invaders at the arcade doesn’t do anything you can use at the music store. Adding your tag on the wall of graffiti at the minimart doesn’t help you at the burger joint.

last week of summer in play — Last Week of Summer is a feast for the eyes, and no mistake!

When you couple this with the luck involved in each game, it can make some feel like a safer option than others. I’ve already talked about the gamble of rolling dice at the arcade, and the burger bar does something similar. It’s basically a game of flipping card after card, pushing your luck to keep drawing Yum cards and stopping before you draw a Yuck. Contrast this with the tile market you can draw from at the skate park, or the videos on offer at the rental store, and it makes some of them feel like weaker offerings. Sure, your plans might get interfered with by another player, but at least you have full agency.

My other gripe is the lack of theme in the mini-games. There seems to be no connection between the actions you take and what’s happening. At the burger bar, are you eating until you’re served something bad? At the skate park, how do the polyominoes joining up match skateboard tricks? It’s not the biggest gripe in the world – I’m a dry Euro-loving nerd for Heaven’s sake – but in a game which is trying to evoke a feeling of balmy nights in small-town America, it’s a little lacking.

Final thoughts

It might be a bit unusual to hear me bemoan a game. I’m a cheerleader type at heart, and I like to sing the praises of games. And yes, I’ve taken Last Week of Summer to task here, but with good reason. But you shouldn’t read this as ‘this game is bad’, because it isn’t. I really appreciate what Shawn Hoult has gone for here. A love letter to Goonies everywhere. I just wanted to bask in the cyan and magenta light that 80s nostalgia promises, and I felt a little let-down.

That said, there are places where Last Week of Summer will go down an absolute storm. I’m especially thinking of board game cafes where folk want something easy to learn and to just have fun, and that’s where this game would shine. Likewise, if you’ve got a group that loves light games, or you want lighter games to beckon new people into the hallowed gaggle of nerds you choose to spend your free time with, it’s great.

There’s a solo option that’s easy to run in the box, but I think it’s at its best with three or four players. It’s much harder to get a spot to hang out or work alone with three or four than it is with two, and the game feels more empty with just two of you. One of the things I really like is the end-of-game reveal. The rulebook suggests a player gathers all of the cassettes from the boards, mixes them up, then reveals them one at a time until you see who won. I mean, you could just count the leftover cassettes each player has, but the suggested way is actually really good fun.

Last Week of Summer, then. Not my particular can of Tab, but with the right group I think you could have a lot of fun with it.