Colorblind Games Review | Wolves

Box art for Wolves board game, "a semi-cooperative game about community survival). Red and black stylized wolves on a white background.

Wolves, designed by Connor Alexander (Cherokee Nation) with art by Sa’dekaronhes Esquivel (Kanyen’kehà:ka/Mexican Indigenous) and Ovila Mailhot (Sto:lo / Nlaka’pamux Nation) is published by Coyote & Crow LLC, a Native owned company that focuses on raising the voices of marginalized creators and presenting Indigenous concepts in tabletop games. Wolves is the next board game in the Coyote & Crow universe.

Coyote & Crow is a science fiction and fantasy tabletop role playing game, created by a team of more than 3 dozen Indigenous writers, artists and creatives, that is set in a First Nations alternate future where colonization never happened. It’s a game where science meets spirituality, and where conflicts have options for resolutions beyond just violence.

Wolves game components on a blue table for a 3-player game.

Gameplay

In Wolves, 3 to 6 players act as community leaders managing limited food resources to help their people through each winter. To survive, players must share by gifting their excess food to other communities. If everyone survives through the entire game, a single player with the highest status will be elected chief of all.

Close up of player board, cards, and resource components

Knowledge cards provide permanent special abilities that are typically rule-bending bonuses: extra card draw, additional resources, ability to gift more, a larger reserve area, etc.

four Knowledge cards (black text on white background with a nature painting) on a dark wood table.

I’ve often struggle enjoying semi-coops, as some games of this type don’t provide a clear reason to both cooperate and compete. Wolves does a nice job making it very clear that all communities in the larger group must succeed every year to continue play. This reminded me of a book I read recently called Finite and Infinite Games.

“A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play… The infinite game includes any authentic interaction, from touching to culture, that changes rules, plays with boundaries and exists solely for the purpose of continuing the game.”
James P. Carse

Wolves encourages cooperation and continuation as core concepts (the infinite game), and also provides a finite structure of 8 total turns, with an opportunity for a winner. It’s a careful balance handled well.

Accessibility Review

Cards and Overall Colors. The color palette in Wolves was a challenge for me, but clear double-coding throughout made all components distinguishable. I had a pleasant game experience with no unintentional accessibility barriers. As shown on the individual player decks here, each of the communities has a separate color and symbol.

Back of six cards in six different colors. Each includes a unique icon.

Game Boards. The shared game board tracks player status/score and game turns. It features bright colors and high contrast in most spaces. The white-on-yellow spaces have lower contrast and might be difficult for some low-vision players, but it worked just fine for me. Individual players boards match the theme, providing unique color and icons for each community. I also liked the verticality used for the UNMET token (see image on the right). Players not able to meet their own resource needs seek help from others, so the vertical indicator makes it easy to look across the table to identify who needs fish, corn, or bison.

Scoring track - a red spiral with white number showing the scores. Meeples are placed on different numbers.

Close up of a player board, cards, and tokens.

Player Components. As shown below, the colors used for the six player colors are not great for colorblind players, and in some cases are not an exact color match to the cards and player boards. However, this is mitigated quite well through iconography. Each player’s deck of cards and individual board match this scheme, providing the double-coding needed to distinguish player meeples from one another on the scoring track.

6 meeples, one for each player, in 6 colors and an icon screen printed on each.

Depending on my location around the table, placement of the scoring track, and the angle of each meeple, this could sometimes still be an issue. At 3 players I identified colors that worked for me, but at 4-6 players I would need to rely on the icons, so I might be forced to either move from my seat or ask for help to know for sure.

Rulebook Fonts. While I personally found them thematic and readable, the stylized headers in the rulebook could be an issue for some low-vision players who need basic, bold fonts for reading. The smaller text and thinner stroke could be a limitation.

Resources. I saved the best for last. The resources are amazing! Wolves uses three food resources—fish, corn, and bison—with excellent coding on all components. Each card is quadruple-coded with beautiful art, a resource icon, color, and text; the Unmet tokens match this color and shape; and the components themselves are screen printed, wooden items of each resource. They look great on the table, are fun to fiddle with, and are so easy to identify from one another!

Resource cards showing full art as a painting, iconography. Unmet Tokens and wooden resources for Fish, Corn, and Bison.

Conclusion

If you’re interested in the Indigenous theme, semi-coop mechanisms, or want to dive deeper in the world of Coyote & Crow, Wolves will be a good fit for you. It will be available in Spring/Summer 2024 at your friendly local game store or online at the Coyote & Crow website. For additional information, visit the game’s web page here!