Summer Camp
2-4 players | Ages 10+ | 30-45 minutes
Publisher: Buffalo Games, 2021
Art: Adam Grason
Find your cabin assignment, wring out your swimsuit, and relive the days of canoeing, friendship bracelets, and s'mores with Summer Camp, a competitive deck-building game in which players race to earn merit badges and collect the most experience points to win. Each player has their own deck of cards to play, and as the game progresses you add new cards to your deck to make it even stronger. To win, players must earn the most camp experience points by claiming merit badges, advancing pawns along the merit paths, and buying cards.
I am a big fan of deck-building, especially the first game in that genre, Donald X. Vaccarino’s Dominion. Summer Camp is my attempt to bring that mechanism to a really wide audience. I tried to make each card ability feel simple and immediate so players can quickly learn how to build a good deck. While I never attended an American summer camp growing up, I feel it is almost like a shared experience for everyone who consumed American pop culture in the 70s, 80s, and 90s! It was lots of fun to work in a setting that has so much nostalgia for the outdoors, for friendship, and for learning new things.
Links
➚ Summer Camp at Buffalo Games
➚ Summer Camp at BoardGameGeek