Tenpenny Parks Review

January 20, 2025

Review copy kindly provided by Thunderworks Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

A lightweight game needs to do two things well to be a hit with new players and people who only enjoy these lighter games. They need to be fun, and they need to have a theme which appeals to a wide demographic. Tenpenny Parks nails it on both counts. Entry-level worker-placement combined with polyomino placement covers things mechanically, while the theme of building an amusement park isn’t likely to find too many detractors. It manages to do both things really well, resulting in a game I think I could teach to just about anybody and be confident that they’d have a good time.

Parks and Rec

The idea of the game is simple. Each player has their own board which represents the land they’re going to develop into a top-notch amusement park. They also each have three oversized wooden worker meeples. The main part of the game has the players take turns placing a worker at a time on the various spaces on the board. Anyone who’s been here before knows what to expect. There are four shared spaces which anyone can go to as many times as they like: the Bank (get $2), the Arborist (remove two trees), the Contractor (get little concession tiles for your park) and the Realtor (get expansion boards to make your park bigger).

a close-up of the tenpenny parks carousel — The carousel rotates and has action spaces for your chunky wooden workers.

The other spaces surround the biggest piece of eye candy – the gorgeous carousel in the middle of the board. Each of the six spaces around it relates to one of six decks of cards, each of which features attractions for your park. Those spaces are first-come, first-served, and can offer discounts as well as penalties to some of the prices. There can be real competition for these, which makes being the first player really important. More on that later. If you buy a card you get the associated polyomino tile to add to your park.

Building your park is similar to games like Patchwork, Barenpark and even heavier games like A Feast for Odin. You can build anywhere there isn’t a tree in the way, but it almost feels like a shame to hire the arborist and shift some trees, because they’re gorgeous little wooden pieces and I want more on my board, not fewer dammit! The biggest divergence from games like Barenpark and Isle of Cats is that no two tiles can have touching edges. No exceptions. Touching diagonal corners is fine, just keep all that orthogonal nonsense out of here. Once you realise how this works you suddenly understand the puzzle of trying to make things fit, and the importance of clearing trees and adding extra boards. It’s tricky.

Making tracks

There’s a cool mechanism added at the bottom of the main board in the form of three shared tracks. Building attractions and concession stands give you bumps along these tracks, each of which is evaluated once in each of the five rounds of the game. If you’re ahead on the Thrill track you can take a step back for a bonus worker for the following round. In a game with only 15 turns, every extra turn can be huge. The player furthest ahead on the Awe track can opt to lose a step to take the first player shovel, which not only lets you take the first turn, but also choose which way you want to like the carousel to point for the next round. Finally, the leader on the Joy track can also choose to lose a step and claim $3. It might not sound like much, but money is tight in Tenpenny Parks.

an overhead view of a game of tenpenny parks being played with two players — A two-player game in progress. You can see the tracks at the bottom of the board.

I love these tracks for the choices they make players make. As I mentioned at the outset, this is a light game, so forcing choices like these is a glimpse into what more complicated games offer. You don’t have to take the bonuses after all. You can opt not to and claim a VP and stay ahead on the track, which might prove valuable if you have a private goal card which wants you to be furthest ahead on a certain track for bonus points at the end of the game.

There’s another really interesting phase of each round. Each completed attraction (except the Souvenir shops, which boost income) gives players an option to spend their hard-earned cash on advertising, bringing in more VPs per round. It sounds like a no-brainer to do it, but sometimes you might have your eye on a really lucrative, but expensive attraction in the next round. No money means a trip to the banker, which means one less worker to use. Maybe not Lacerda-level brain melting, but certainly enough agency to get players invested in their park.

Friendly and inviting

I need to take a few lines to explain how impressed I am with the production of Tenpenny Parks for the most part. The carousel was a pain to put together for me, not least because some of the panels had delaminated, but because it’s a tight fit. However, once it’s done it feels incredibly solid, and it’s not coming apart anytime soon. Having a huge hole in the main board is unusual, but having the carousel slot in so nicely is great.

a close-up view of a player board with wooden trees and attraction tiles — A player board. Those little trees are so gorgeous.

The big, chunky workers are a nice touch, as are the thick, sturdy tokens throughout. The whole thing is blocked out with bold, poster paint colours that lend to its newbie-friendly table presence. Nothing about the game is intimidating or overbearing. It looks, feels, and indeed is perfect for lightweight gamers.

The only downside from a development and production point of view is the choice of colours for two of the attraction types. Given the stark colours used throughout, it seems odd that the souvenirs and Old West attractions are yellow and yellowy-brown respectively. It’s not the end of the world, but it stuck in my brain each time I played it that I mistook the colours of the cards more than once, and that’s the sort of thing I’m duty-bound to moan about in a review. See what you think in the picture below. It might just be a ‘me’ problem.

a photo of some cards and tiles from the game tenpenny parks

Final thoughts

Tenpenny Parks makes me smile. My chosen board game world is one of muted beige and dry themes, so Tenpenny Parks stands out like a neon helter-skelter in the middle of it. I love it for that. The bright colours, streamlined gameplay, and open, friendly approach to the game are lovely. As a self-confessed heavy game nerd, I’m also appreciative of the fact that there’s still enough game in there to sink my teeth into while the rest of my family are content to make nice-looking parks, and enjoy the game for what it is – a fun time. Importantly, the game doesn’t take hours to play. Five rounds and you’re done, all within 90 minutes. There’s a lot to be said for that brevity in a modern game.

Despite my grumble about the colours above, Vincent Dutrait’s artwork again stands head-and-shoulders above many. I love the wooden pieces, they’re chunky, tactile and fun to use. There’s a bit of a disconnect between me buying a crazy rollercoaster and then putting a small cardboard tile on my park mat, but equally I’d be complaining about a big plastic mini obscuring my view if it was the other way around. I’m an ornery monkey at times.

There’s not enough here to satisfy you if your regular group usually contends with fare from Messrs Lacerda and Turczi, but if you’ve got a group you want to edge towards medium-weight games, or a family that rolls their eyes when you lovingly stroke your copy of Civolution (read my review of that here, right after you finish this one), Tenpenny Parks will be a hit. Polyomino placement is fun, worker placement is fun, the game is beautiful, and thematically it outperforms so many other games in the same space. A lightweight heavy-hitter.