Wouter & Ymke 
Paddy is one of those games that looks very relaxed at first. You see green tiles, little animals, waterfalls… it almost feels like it should come with background music. But yeah… it doesn’t really stay like that.
In Paddy, you build a shared landscape inspired by rice terraces in Southeast Asia. You place tiles, stack them into layers, and slowly create this growing mountain of fields. It starts small, but after a while you’re looking at the board thinking “okay, this actually looks pretty cool.”
At the same time, you’re placing animals to claim areas and score points. Everyone is building the same board, but you’re all trying to get the best spots for yourself. Height matters, water matters, and timing matters… sometimes more than you expect.
👥 2-4 players, ages 8+
⌛ Playing time: 40 minutes
📝 Designer: Alberto Camaño
🎨 Artwork: Tatiana Boyko
🏢 Publisher: 2Tomatoes Games (review copy provided)
Gameplay overview
The game is played over four cycles, each with three phases: sowing, growing, and harvesting.
During the sowing phase, you get ready for the round. You draw cards, discard one paddy card without seeing it, and figure out who goes first. In later rounds, the player with the highest score starts.
The growing phase is where the game actually happens. On your turn, you play one paddy card and one day or night card. One tells you what kind of tile you place, the other tells you where on the board you’re allowed to place it. So yeah, sometimes the game just says “nope, not there.”
You place tiles either flat or on top of others, building up terraces. These terraces are basically groups of tiles on the same level, and they’re what you’ll be fighting over later. There are a few placement rules that matter more than you’d think. You can’t build on waterfalls, and you can’t place tiles in certain positions around them. Also, you can’t merge terraces that already have waterfalls. And if you ever get stuck and can’t place anything legally, the game just tells you to place a tiny one-tile piece instead. Which… I mean, it works, but it’s never a great feeling.
After placing a tile, you can add animals. You can bring them in from your reserve or move them around the board. Scoring is all about majority, so you’re constantly trying to have more animals than everyone else in a terrace. There’s also this rule where you’re not allowed to tie with the player who has the most animals there. You have to go over them. It sounds small, but it does change how you end up placing them. You can also take animals back into your reserve if you want, which helps a bit, but you’re still quite limited in how many you have.
Then there are waterfalls. At first they look like just another thing to place, but they matter more than you’d expect. You can only place them on empty tiles at higher levels, and not just anywhere. So you don’t always get the spot you want. And where you put them affects how points are scored later, not just for you, but for everyone.
Once everyone runs out of paddy cards, the round ends and you move to harvesting. In the harvesting phase, you score terraces where you have the most animals. You get points based on how big the terrace is and how high it is. Water also plays a role, but there’s a twist. If a terrace has a waterfall on it, it doesn’t get irrigation points itself. Instead, those points go to lower terraces. So sometimes you think you’re setting yourself up nicely, and then… not really.
There’s also a small bonus for the highest terrace. It’s only five points, so not huge, but people tend to care about it anyway. I guess because it’s very visible. You also have event cards. You can play one per round, and then it’s gone for the rest of the game. They let you change the rules in small ways, like placing tiles differently or moving things around. They can be fun, but sometimes they feel a bit random, depending on the situation.
After four cycles, that’s it. Most points wins.
Artwork, components, and visual design
I’ll say this straight away, Paddy looks really nice on the table.
The wooden tiles are probably the highlight. They stack well, they feel solid, and as the game goes on you get this layered landscape that actually looks like terraces. It’s one of those games where you stop for a second and go “okay, that’s satisfying.”
The animals are simple, but they do the job. Different shapes, bright colors, easy to see. Nothing complicated. The waterfalls stand out because of the blue color and the shape. You can always spot them quickly, which helps, because they matter more than you think.
The cards are clear, easy to read, no unnecessary clutter. Same with the boards. Everything feels functional. Not overdone, just clean. So yeah, nothing over the top, but it all works together nicely.
Our experience
The whole game is built around a shared board, and that means everything you do affects everyone else. Sometimes in ways you didn’t even intend. You place a tile thinking you’re helping yourself, and suddenly someone else benefits more. It happens a lot. What stood out pretty quickly is how sensitive the game is to small changes. One tile can completely shift who controls a terrace, or how water flows. You can have a plan, and then one turn later it’s just… gone.
The structure of a turn is simple, which helps. You always know what you’re supposed to do. But the decisions themselves can take a bit longer, especially later in the game. The board being split into two halves also plays a bigger role than we expected. At first it feels like a restriction. Like, why can’t I just play where I want? But after a while, you get used to it. It kind of forces you to pay attention to the whole board instead of just one area.
You feel each other’s moves all the time, but not in a direct way. No one is attacking you, but they are definitely getting in your way. Blocking spots, changing majorities, messing with water flow… it all adds up. It’s one of those games where you say “I didn’t mean to do that” and everyone knows you kind of did. The animal rule, where you can’t tie the leader, makes those decisions a bit more demanding than they first seem. You can’t just match someone, you have to invest more, and with only a few animals, that matters.
Waterfalls ended up being more important than we expected. Not just for points, but for shaping the board. And because placing them is restricted, getting one where you want it isn’t always straightforward. Event cards… yeah, mixed feelings there. Sometimes they create nice moments. Other times they just interrupt what was happening. I guess it depends on the group.
One thing we did notice is that the game can slow down a bit towards the end. There’s more to think about, more options, more consequences. It’s not heavy, but it’s not something you just play quickly either. So yeah, for us it was engaging, but also a bit more thinky than it first appears.
Our thoughts
I think Paddy is a bit misleading at first. It looks light, but it asks a bit more from you than you might expect. What I like is how everything connects in a way that makes sense. Tile placement, animals, water, and scoring all connect, so your decisions never feel isolated. You’re always thinking about how one move affects something else later.
At the same time, it’s quite tactical. You react to what’s happening rather than planning long-term. That’s partly because of the cards, partly because the board keeps changing.
Scoring tends to focus on a few important areas. Big terraces with good water access become the main targets. So you often see players circling around the same spots. The highest terrace bonus is a bit funny. It looks important, and people go for it, but it’s not always the best use of your effort.
The game is shaped by its constraints, and not everyone will enjoy that. You don’t always get to do what you had in mind, and that can feel a bit frustrating depending on your expectations. Event cards will probably depend on your group more than anything. Some people will enjoy the extra variation, others might feel it interrupts the flow a bit.
In the end, Paddy feels like a tactical, slightly abstract game that just happens to look very nice. It’s easy to explain, but there’s enough going on that you won’t just play it on autopilot. Not quite the relaxing farming experience it might look like… more like farming where your neighbours keep moving your fences 😄
📝 We received a copy of the game from 2Tomatoes Games.
