Last modified October 2, 2025 by Krushpin

GENERAL PRESENTATION

Nusfjord is a worker placement and resource management game designed by Uwe Rosenberg. You run a fishing company in the Norwegian village of Nusfjord and must construct buildings, manage forests, build boats, trade company shares, and benefit from the wisdom of the village elders. All with the goal of prospering and winning the game.

My review, based on five criteria

** Replayability **: 5/5

Excellent!

The game contains three decks of buildings in the basic version. In our group, we shuffle all the decks to increase the variability of buildings offered in the market and it works very well. This way, no game risks presenting the same combination of cards and we have to adapt to each game.

Even though the main strategic axes are limited (focus on the fleet, end-game point bonuses, resource conversion, economy, elders, etc.), replayability is mainly based on combos to build around the building market offerings. Strangely, a bit like in Glass Road, even if all players have access to the same buildings, it is very rare that we want to exploit the same combination. So we end up with diverging paths to the endgame along the way.

To add a little spice, during the game, each player will have private buildings that he can build. If he doesn't do it in the next two turns, they become public. One man's garbage becomes another man's treasure!

**Depth**: 3.5/5

Very present.

Nusfjord is a straight to the point game, with quick and easy actions, without any frills. From this point of view, it is not very deep in the "complex" sense of the term.

However, thanks to the very limited number of actions (3 x 7 turns), it offers a optimization puzzle very fine. All the richness is revealed in the programming of the sequence of our actions. Each building constructed that saves a fish or generates $1 or gives a bonus wood, for example, can become the turning point of the game. So you have to know extract the maximum profit from each action. As in many of Rosenberg's games, the scores are not very high and this makes every crucial decisionTypically, a game of Nusfjord ends with between 30 and 35 points for each player.

**Interaction**: 4/5

I will only comment on the two-player version because this is the configuration I have explored the most. Overall, the interaction comes from worker placement and buildings to acquire at the market.

With very limited number of shares available for our workers on the board, it is out of the question to think that we will be able to have access to our 3 actions "planned" in our head each round. This force to plan alternative plans and react to our opponent's. I love reactive games like this!

As the first player changes between each round, there is the phenomenon of " one two punch " as we like to call it in my group. That is to say that with two players, the one who has the last action of the round will also have the first action of the following round. This gives rise to very strong tactics if this parameter is not taken into account before giving away the first player token. With more than two players, this is not a factor.

That said, as with many games where you can buy cards to build your board, themajor interaction comes from the market race. We don't want our card stolen! And from this stems the race for resources that we use precisely to appropriate building cards. Inevitably, the opponent puts us sticks in the wheels with his actions, whether voluntarily or not.

** “Fun” factor ** : 4.5/5

Very strong!

It is very satisfying to plan a group of buildings that work well together and to see our board grow by creating synergies between the buildings, the elders and our fleet.

I mentioned it before but having relatively low scores makes us appreciate every little point, every little bonus that we extract from our machine. It is common that games end with less than 3 points difference, which for me is the sign of a very good game well balanced and which results in enjoyable suspense when calculating the score!

With a quick playtime, it makes a nice summary of decisions by the minute and we don't see any downtime! Even between our turns it's torturing to imagine that an opponent could buy the building you want or place a worker on the action space you are targeting.

** Depending on the number of players **: 4/5

The game is played by 1 to 5 players. I've only played it solo, 2 player, and 3 player.

À 2 or 3 players, it's faster, more direct, and we feel the tension as much on the important boxes of worker placement as the race to buy buildings. It is a trench warfare for each action box and where "timing" is an important factor to consider! With two players, it's a bloody duel where it is relatively easy to see where our opponent is orienting his strategy and to act accordingly. The only catch with two players is that the mechanics of selling/purchasing shares are not fully exploited and that it gives more dynamism with more players.

Personally, I wouldn't play it with 4 or 5 people because one of its strengths is fluidity and the towers that come back quickly. I have the impression thatwith more than 3 players, it would become difficult to program a sequence of moves and the chaos factor would be too great.

As for the solo, it's a puzzle where you try to beat your best score. As our score is very dependent on the supply of buildings, it can be difficult to evaluate our performance compared to another part. It becomes more of a training exercise without a fixed objective and without a win or loss condition. I'm less of a fan of this kind of solo variant. I prefer to play against an automaton that can better imitate a human.

** In conclusion **

Nusfjord is a game mixing long-term strategy and reactive tactics very well. With two players, a game ends in 45 minutes approximately, which gives it a very attractive decision-to-play-time ratio for my group. The final scores are generally very tight, each game forces us to optimize each of our actions and resources. With the multitude of cards available, only one a small fraction of them are revealed at the start of the game. It is from this that players must build a strategy. There will be never two identical parts!

Final score: 21/25 Great game!