Fountains
Gameplay Overview
Fountains is a highly tactical, three-dimensional tile-drafting and pattern-building game where players compete as master fountaineers constructing magnificent water features. Each player builds a vertical, tiered fountain using physical, interlocking tiles. You must carefully connect internal water jets to ensure a continuous fluid flow throughout your structures. Leaving a layer disconnected cuts off lower sections, creating stagnant dead zones that fail to score.
The drafting economy relies on a central basin board holding three colored pawns (white, blue, and green). On your turn, you move a pawn one to three open spaces clockwise around a circular track and claim the corresponding tile or bonus feature next to it. Crucially, these pawns dictate mid-game scoring intervals. Volleying back and forth, if a pawn lands on its matching colored basin space, it instantly triggers a table-wide scoring evaluation for its specific criteria: lilypads, separate pools connected by water jets, or stocked koi fish. Points scale significantly based on vertical elevation, meaning elements on your second or third tiers yield much higher returns. This setup demands a delicate balance between drafting the exact tiles you need and trying not to gift your opponents an early, highly lucrative scoring trigger.
Published
2025
Status
owned
Players
1 - 5 Players
Review
We treated ourselves to this title on an intensely hot summer afternoon, and the crisp, refreshing water theme felt absolutely sublime to sit down with. For a traditional tile-placement game, a genre that can occasionally feel a bit under-stimulating for our household tastes, we were pleasantly surprised by the mechanical depth and spatial coordination required to build upward.
We did notice a distinct gameplay shift when running this strictly at a two-player count. Because you have access to a very wide pool of tile options with only two people pulling from the basin, the tight tactical friction drops significantly into a gentler, parallel-play layout puzzle. Without an opponent constantly fighting to cycle the market, the pool majority scoring track can easily get choked or unbalanced, allowing a runaway leader to take off unless both players actively police each other on all three scoring fronts. Ollie heavily prioritizes aggressive player interaction, so while it serves as a wonderful, cozy optimization puzzle for a chill two-player evening, we are incredibly eager to scale this up to 3 or 4 players to watch how a crowded table naturally throttles the available options and elevates the blocking strategy.
Try this if you like...
Stunning, vertical table presence
You love physical 3D setups where everyone’s completed structure looks completely unique and textured by the end of the game.
Dynamic, trigger-based scoring
Perfect if you prefer an open, organic scoring pace where point counts happen actively mid-game based on direct player movement rather than standard round boundaries.
Delicate, high-stakes spatial planning
You enjoy maximizing spatial connections but want to be heavily penalized for mistakes, forcing you to think twice before accidentally covering up old paths.
Tense defensive maneuvering
A great fit if you like trying to optimize your personal board while carefully blocking or starving your opponents of the ideal tiles they need to score.
