Inspired by the “Bremen Town Musicians,” Tuned is a 2-player board game recently published by ThunderGryph Games as part of the “Made In Wonderland” collection. For those unfamiliar with the Brothers Grimm tale, it follows four aging animals (a donkey, dog, cat, and rooster) who decide to run away and retire. Their goal is to become musicians in the town of Bremen, Germany. However, this is where the similarities between the story and the game end. In the story, the animals never actually make it to Bremen! Instead, the animals run off some robbers and trick them out of their spoils and house, taking them for their own. In Tuned, however, the retired animals are in a barn practicing for a concert (presumably in Bremen).

Though it seemed a little odd to those of us who knew the story, each player gets their own set of animals to play with. These sets contain two Donkeys, Dogs, and Cats, but only one Rooster. Since each player has their own set of animal pawns, we choose to consider it as being similar to putting on our own rehearsals in a shared space when we play. Or perhaps two bands joining forces for one epic show? Regardless of how you choose to see it, once players have their animal pawns, the Barn game board is placed on the table between them. On each player’s side of the board, there are three action symbols. The middle one is “Move an Animal.” The other two are “Place an Animal.” These will be important to remember during the game. The Rooster (a.k.a. “Peck”) is considered to be the band director. Peck’s prestigious position in the band places each Rooster pawn on the “Move an Animal” action space at the start of the game. Once that’s done, the player to most recently see a concert is chosen to go first.

Starting with the first player, players alternate turns placing or moving pawns until someone creates a row of three matching animals. As simple and tic-tac-toe-like as this sounds, there are a few twists to differentiate Tuned from the classic pen-and-paper game. To begin, a player will move their rooster to an unoccupied option (preventing someone from moving a pawn two turns in a row). They will then either move a stack, either in full for just some off the top of a current stack, to either an empty space or added to another stack already in play. The Donkey (a.k.a. “Don”) must always be on the bottom of a stack. A Dog (“Wof”) can be placed on the Barn floor or on top of Don. A Cat (“Paw”) can be stacked atop Wof or in an empty space. As the aim of the game is to get three pawns of the same type to be in a row, being able to move the animals around is a crucial part of the strategy. From a top-down view, the first player to cause three identical pawns to be placed in a straight line is the winner.

It is very easy to see where designer Alessandro Cuneo got some of his inspiration for Tuned if you’ve ever seen even a photo of The Bremen Town Musicians statue. This infamous bronze statue, located in Bremen, was created by Gerhard Marcks in 1953 as a tribute to the popular fairy tale. In addition to Tuned, Cuneo has also designed Atelier, Polywords, Tzulan Quest, and Seed. Veteran game artist Paolo Voto also returns to yet another ThunderGryph Games project, bringing it to life through their stunning artwork. Voto provided illustrations for Darwin’s Journey, Hats, Rebis, and Top Cap.

Tuned first got our attention due to Krista’s love of fairy tales. We greatly enjoyed playing Hats and continue to look forward to more releases in the “Made In Wonderland” line. Much like all ThunderGryph Games products we currently own, the components completely blew us away – especially considering how few are needed to play! There is a nice weight to the animal pieces and they create quite sturdy towers once stacked. The board seems pretty durable and has held up to the multiple games we’ve played thus far. We really appreciate that once the rules are understood, the game becomes language-independent. This makes Tuned great to teach and accessible to a wide range of ages. Tuned is a game we can easily see playing with kids in our group or when settling down for a quick game or two with our grandparents. While other games use similar mechanics, we really like the theme and feel of this one. Tuned may or may not “do it better” than said other games for us, but is certainly a game that will remain on our shelf and table for years to come.

All photos used in this review were taken and edited by Krista unless otherwise stated.