Friday Filler: Souvenirs from Venice

The last two weeks you have spent in the city of Venice have been amazing. You have visited the Doge’s Palace, St. Mark's Basilica, and the Bridge of Sighs, as well as taken a gondola ride on the Grand Canal, explored the Rialto Market, and taken a day trip to the island of Murano to discover its unique glassblowing tradition. The food and wine have been good too, but now your holiday is nearly over. Your flight home leaves tomorrow, but you have one left one last thing you have to do to the last minute—gifts to take home for your friends and family. In fact, you are not really sure that you have enough time to search the shops for right gifts and get to Marco Polo International Airport for your flight home. It is not helped by the fact that the three friends you are buying for, hate it when they are not treated equally, but you have hired a gondola and you are going to search high and low for the right gifts for the right people—or miss your flight trying!

This is the set-up for Souvenirs from Venice, another game from Oink Games, the Japanese publisher best known for Scout. It is a set-collecting game designed for two to five players, aged eight and up, that can be played in thirty minutes, and it is from the same designers who did Deep Sea Adventure. The aim of the game is three sets of matching souvenirs and get to the airport. At the end of the game, each matching set of souvenirs will score points, whilst souvenirs that do not match will lose a player points. The players have to find the right souvenirs, make sure they do not have wrong souvenirs in their hands, and get to the airport. Only a player who gets to the airport in time will have a chance of being the winner.

Besides the rules in French, German, and Spanish as well as English, Souvenirs from Venice consists of forty-eight Souvenir Tiles, thirty Money Tokens, five Summary Cards, an Airport Card, a single die, and five Gondolas. The Souvenir Tiles range in value from five to ten and in turn depict Venetian Glass, Venetian Masks, Leather Goods, Gondolier Shirts, Squid Ink Pasta, and Fridge Magnets. Each Souvenir Tile is actually a shop and items are the goods they sell. Two depict the ‘Pigeon’ and ‘The Pigeon Feed Seller’. The die is marked one, two, and three, rather than one to six, and the gondolas are done in brightly coloured wood. The Summary Cards are reference cards for the play of the game.

Game set-up is simple. Each player receives a gondola, six Money Tokens, and a Sun. The Souvenir Tiles are laid out in a seven-by-seven grid, or five-by-five if two players, all face down, whilst the Airport Card is placed in one corner instead of a Souvenir Tile. The grid is open as the spaces in between represent the canals of Venice where players’ gondolas will travel, moving from intersection to intersection. All of the gondolas are placed on the Airport Card where they start play.

On his turn, each player must do three things in strict order. These are ‘Research’, ‘Move’, and ‘Buying or Selling’. In the ‘Research’ step, the player flips over any tile face down so that everyone can see it. In the ‘Move’, the player rolls the die and moves his gondola that exact number of spaces, hopping over any other player’s gondola in the way. ‘Buying or Selling’ gives a player two options. If he buys, it can be done in secret, looking at a Souvenir Tile adjacent to his gondola, but keeping it hidden from the other players, or he can buy any face up tile. Either way, he replaces it with Money Token. If he sells, he places a Souvenir Tile in his hand on the table face down, replacing a Money Token which he takes.

If the ‘Pigeon’ and ‘The Pigeon Feed Seller’ are both revealed—and they have to be revealed face up when discovered, they force each player to pass a Souvenir Tiles (or a Money Token if they have no Souvenir Tile) to the player on his left. This can mix things up, forcing a player to scramble to find matching Souvenir Tiles with the ones he has in his hand. However, this really comes into play later in the game rather than earlier, as the earlier it happens, the lower the chance it has of mucking up a player’s hand.

Souvenirs from Venice is a primarily a push-your-luck game, although it does have a memory element in that a player may need to remember the Souvenir Tiles he has looked at and where they are. However, what a player is mostly doing is pushing his luck to three sets of Souvenir Tiles, ideally of a higher rather than lower value. Of course, there are more of the latter than the former. Thankfully, a player can choose to sell to get rid of a poor value Souvenir Tile if he knows where one with a better value is or if he simply wants it out of his hand. The latter may be necessary because the other push-your-luck element of game is the timer element. Once all of the Souvenir Tiles have been bought or flipped over and face up, the flight leaves the airport. Anyone not at the airport by then, cannot score any points for the Souvenir Tile sets they have collected and automatically lose. Any player with sets of Souvenir Tiles at the airport gets to score, and the player with highest score wins.

Souvenirs from Venice is decently presented, if as with every Oink Games title, packed tightly into its little box. The quality of the components is good and the rules are clearly written.

Souvenirs from Venice is a solid, satisfying little game. It is a light game, better suited to family audiences and has a surprisingly decent theme that matches that lightness.

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Oink Games will be at UK Games Expo which takes place on Friday, May 30th to Sunday June 1st, 2025.