Arcane Academy is a game of competitive students trying to be become the best spellcasters in the school. While the game becomes a fun and interesting puzzle, it starts out with really simple choices to make. On your turn you can cast one of the spells on your board, exhausting it, or you can rest and remove all of the exhaustion markers on your board.

One of the main spells you can cast adds new tiles to your board, building up the abilities that you can to do on your turn. This is also when the puzzle nature of the game comes into play. The tiles have linking circles on some of their edges so you can combine them to tiles already on the board. When you cast one square, you can also activate any other linked spells that aren’t exhausted.

The other actions that are available get you resources from the general supply that are used to complete either your private tasks or one of the public tasks in the middle of the table. Some of the tasks that you complete will give you items that can be used with one of the other casting squares. Some of the items even help you unexhaust some spells without having to rest which is super helpful.

Once someone has completed 8 assignments everyone, including the player who had triggered the end of the game, gets one more turn to try to get the most points possible. Lots of simple choices in a strategic puzzle game makes Arcane Academy lots of fun and worthy of its place as #58!