Faraway

Faraway is a card game about exploring a mysterious continent called Alula, and like any worthwhile journey, it asks you to think about where you’re going before you know what you’ll find there. Designed by Corentin Lebrat and Johannes Goupy and published in North America by Pandasaurus Games, it won the As d’Or at Cannes 2024 and was widely called one of the hits of Spiel 2023. That reception is earned. Faraway does one unusual thing and does it extremely well.

Over eight rounds, each player simultaneously drafts and plays a region card, building a row of explored territory. The twist is that scoring happens in reverse order at the end: the last card you played is scored first, and the first card you played is scored last. Sanctuary cards scattered through your row score points based on how many matching resources or creatures appear on the cards played after them, which means the cards you draft early only score based on what comes later. You’re planning for a future you can’t fully see, in a direction you have to reason about backwards.

What Makes Faraway Click

The reverse scoring mechanic is the reason Faraway has generated such consistent enthusiasm across multiple gaming communities. It takes something most players understand intuitively, the idea of building toward an end goal, and inverts it. The cards you place at the start of your journey score based on what you build after them, so your earliest decisions depend on having a vision of what the rest of your tableau will look like. That inversion is simple to state, but it shifts how you think about every single draft pick.

Play is fast. A two-player game can finish in ten minutes. A six-player game rarely stretches past half an hour. That speed is partly what makes the reverse scoring feel manageable rather than overwhelming. You commit to eight cards and see the results, and then you’re already shuffling for the next game. The cadence encourages repeated plays, and Faraway is broadly agreed to be a game that rewards familiarity. The second and third plays feel noticeably sharper than the first.

The art and production are bright and inviting. Alula as a setting is colorful and distinct enough to make each region card feel like it belongs to a coherent world, which keeps the game from feeling purely abstract even though the mechanics are the real draw. Multiple community reviews mention that Faraway is easy to get to the table precisely because it looks appealing and non-threatening.

The simultaneous drafting structure means everyone is always engaged. There are no long waits, no moments of sitting idle while another player thinks. Everyone picks at the same time, everyone plays at the same time, and the social negotiation of watching what other players might be building adds a layer of table reading that rewards attention.

Faraway’s Rough Edges

The first session is often a rough one. The “place last, score first” logic doesn’t click intuitively on a first explanation, and several community reports describe players completing their first game only to realize during scoring that they had misunderstood how sanctuary cards worked. For groups where learning curve friction matters, the game benefits from one person understanding it fully before teaching.

Some players find the experience chaotic, particularly at higher player counts where you have limited visibility into what others are drafting and what direction their tableau is headed. The overlap between scoring opportunities and what actually comes out of the shuffled deck means that careful plans sometimes don’t survive contact with the draw. Whether that’s a frustrating flaw or an acceptable part of the design depends heavily on what a given group wants from a quick card game.

Faraway doesn’t offer much after the core concept clicks. Once players understand the reverse scoring and can plan around it reliably, there’s not much new mechanical territory to discover. It’s a very good game for what it is, but it doesn’t deepen with more plays the way heavier games do. For groups that need a filler with long-term staying power, Faraway might cycle out faster than expected.

The First Card You Play

Planning in Faraway requires accepting uncertainty in an unusual way. Every card you play at the start of a round is a bet on what you’ll be able to draft over the remaining rounds. Strong sanctuary cards played early can pay off enormously, but only if the rest of your row cooperates. Good players learn to balance ambition with flexibility, seeding their tableau with sanctuaries that have multiple realistic paths to scoring rather than committing entirely to a single plan.

That tension between specificity and adaptability is where Faraway’s strategic interest lives. You can’t play it on autopilot. The backwards structure forces a kind of intentional long-view thinking that feels meaningfully different from most games at this weight. It’s not heavy, but it’s not trivial either.

Should You Play Faraway?

Faraway is well-suited for gateway gamers looking for something with a little more to think about than a standard card game, and for experienced players who want a fast, interesting filler to open or close a game night. It works across a wide range of player counts and plays quickly enough that one game almost always leads to another.

It’s probably not the right pick for groups that want lots of player interaction, direct conflict, or a game where what other players do has an obvious and immediate effect on your choices. The experience is fairly parallel. Players build their own rows with limited direct interference, so if head-to-head competition or negotiation is the main appeal, something else may serve better.

The Verdict on Faraway

Faraway takes a familiar card-drafting framework and flips it upside down, literally building its entire identity around scoring in reverse. The first time you play, the mechanic is disorienting. By the third game, it’s the whole reason you keep coming back. Fast, replayable, and cleverly designed, it’s one of the best short games to come out of 2023 and a natural recommendation for anyone who wants something that feels fresh without a steep learning curve.