HFS: Leonardo da Vinci

In the spirit of Leonardo da Vinci, one visionary host assembles shapes into a secret masterpiece on the grid. Fellow Apprentices race against time, piecing fragments to mirror the creation. When the image takes form, only sharp minds can reveal which invention or artwork inspired it—earning glory through discovery.

Leonardo is a puzzle and deduction game inspired by the works of Leonardo da Vinci. It can be played in two distinct modes: Party Game for 3–6 players, and Strategy Game for 2–4 players. Both versions use the same components—puzzle boards, tiles, and object cards—but apply different rules and objectives. The Party Game focuses on quick imitation, deduction, and guessing, while the Strategy Game emphasizes long-term planning, tile placement, and tactical scoring. Players may also explore a Solo mode or adjust time limits and difficulty for variety.

In Party Mode, one player becomes the Master (Leonardo) and secretly builds a design on their board using puzzle tiles. This design is linked to a hidden object card chosen by code tokens. The other players, called Apprentices, must race against a timer to copy the visible pattern from the Master’s covered board, using only the arrangement of black and white squares as clues. Once an Apprentice finishes, they place their bidding token on the object card they believe the Master’s design represents. Points are awarded based on participation, correct guesses, and whether the Master successfully challenged the group. After each round, the role of Master rotates, and the game continues for a set number of rounds. The winner is the player with the most points at the end.

In Strategy Mode, players compete over multiple rounds to score victory points by carefully collecting and placing puzzle tiles on their personal boards. Each round has four phases: Gather Tiles, where players draft from a shared lineup; Place Tiles, where tiles are arranged on boards under strict placement rules; Scoring, where players secretly bid on object cards by forming exact “combined patterns” from adjacent cards in the central Garden; and Clean-Up, where new tiles are drawn, and turn order rotates. Scoring requires precision: players must match two separate patterns on their board, gain points equal to the larger one, and mark those areas with transparent tiles so they cannot be reused. The game ends when a player runs out of bidding tokens, and final bonuses are added for rows, columns, and special icons. The highest total wins.