Tsuro: Phoenix Rising becomes the second sequel to the beautifully simple abstract game

After the watery depths of Tsuro of the Seas, Tsuro is soaring into the fiery skies with the second follow-up to the simple path-making abstract strategy game.

Tsuro: Phoenix Rising is a new standalone sequel in the Tsuro series, the second after 2012’s Tsuro of the Seas, which applied the beautifully pure challenge of keeping your token on the board as long as possible by laying down twisting tiles to an ocean full of sea monsters and waves.

Phoenix Rising sticks close to the Snake-like gameplay of Tsuro: once again, you’ll be placing tiles to wiggle your token around the board, avoiding the edges and other players’ tokens.

What’s new is the ability for the double-sided tiles to flip over and rotate during each playthrough, creating new paths and closing off others to give players an extra challenge to deal with. Players also have an extra chance to gain victory, with life tokens letting them rise from the ashes after their first collision.

The new tile-shifting gameplay is apparently supported by a “revolutionary board”, with players’ phoenix miniatures moving around in an effort to reach seven lantern tokens first to win.

As with the previous Tsuro games, Phoenix Rising plays with anywhere from two to eight people, though its length is said to be anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour – making it a potentially longer experience than the 15 minute blitz of the original and half-hour run time of Tsuro of the Seas.

Tsuro: Phoenix Rising will be released next year.