Walking in Provence is the 2nd title of the “Walking in” series from Taiwan publisher, EmperorS4. At the time of this writing, the publisher already released the 3rd title, Walking in Osaka, in 2025 and about to release the 4th one, Walking in Kamogawa in 2026.
The first 2, Burano and Provence were designed by one designer but the other 2 were done by different designers. All of them have a unique gameplay mechanism. For Provence, you will be laying cards, adjacent to existing or overlap some of them like in Sprawlopolis.
This is one of the more dynamic tile laying games where not only you have end game scoring, but there is a race element to score things during the play. It is less static as you might end up destroying your previous effort in order to afford the next one.
Title: Walking in Provence
Released Year: 2019
Designer: Wei-Min Ling
Publisher: EmperorS4
Artist: Maisherly Chan
Genre: Tile Placement, Card Closed Drafting, Pattern Building, Layering, Melding and Splaying, 2 – 5 players, Small Box, Photography, Provence (France).
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Overview
In general, Walking in Provence is a closed drafting card game. Each round, you pick one of 2 cards from your hand and pass the other to the next player. At the end of the round you draw one more card from the deck so you have 2 options again.
Every card you picked always has 6 spaces showing different buildings and terrains. It can be wheat field, lavender field, shops, Chapel, windmill, forest or sunflower field with one space always an empty space. This empty space is where you can move your photographer pawn or the drone pawn to take pictures.
You are going to place the card to grow your Provence area. Not only you can place them adjacent to existing card following the grid but you can also choose to overlap some of the existing spaces with a new one. Unlike other games with similar mechanism, Walking in Provence took one step further. You can also choose to tuck part of the space of the new card under the existing grid.
Different objects and terrains score differently at the end of the game and have their own restriction. Sunflowers have to be facing the deck or you lose points if they are visible at the end. Group of unique shops up to 4 types will give you more points the more unique color you add.
For wheat field, you want to create rectangular shape with at least 2 spaces to score. Anything within that rectangular worth more points. Lavender can be either horizontal line or vertical line. You lose points if a group has both orientations. Not only you want to separate them but you want to grow them equally as possible to get the best score, instead of focusing on one.
Then there are objects like Chapel, Windmill, Forest spaces that works only at the end for majority, assuming the setup says to score them. All of them are scored at the end of the game like a lot of many tile laying games.
However, this is also a more dynamic type of tile laying games where you also score during the game. Every session of Walking in Provence includes 7 photo requirements to score. Four of them from Photographer’s perspective and the other 3 from drone’s perspective. Each photo requirement has a set of objects you need to have within a single frame
For example, maybe you need to have 3 lavender spaces and 3 wheat fields within the drone’s frame. You need to move the drone to a position so that within 5 x 5 space with the drone at the middle contains those objects in order to score.
As for requirements for photographer, the required objects have to be within 3 x 5 spaces orthogonally from the photographer. With the photographer being at the middle of the short end of that frame.
For both types of photo frames, the game includes the grid rulers that players can use before moving their pawns.
Players can score any of these any time but whoever scores each photo first gets more points and only once per photo. Since this is done simultaneously, multiple players can score at the same turn and get the same scoring.
It is possible that you will “destroy” your first layout after you are done with the photo requirement. Maybe to score the next photo or just straight to the end game scorings. The pressure to score as fast as possible before your opponent will force you to maybe lay the next card so you can score right now instead of next round.
You know all of the photo requirements right from the start. So, it is best to make plan and place certain objects next to each other to meet multiple photo requirements and ideally keep growing them. That way, you don’t need to alter your area that much. Especially since some of the end game scorings will give more points for making bigger area.
Every player will always get and place 10 cards. It is possible to accomplish multiple photo requirements within the same round. So, you get more turns to expand the area for final scoring if you do the photo well and fast.
Sometimes, you do have all of the objects required by the photo. But then the empty space to position the pawn is not possible to catch everything within a frame. So, preparing for the position to take picture is also important while placing your next card.
Another challenge that can happen is that maybe you get a perfect card. But in order to make it work. it has to be placed in specific location. Unfortunately, your pawn was there after you took picture last time. You can only move one or both after placing the next card. Obviously, you want to plan as where to position them but the card drafting nature makes it a bit tricky to plan.
That’s the general idea of Walking in Provence game. Will you become the best photographer to document the everchanging beautiful scenery of Provence?
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Session Reports
August 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Another 2-handed session. The second player won with 101 points while first player only scored 96 points. This was probably my highest score ever, first time scoring more than 100. And the other player was not that far.
Both players completed all of the Photo scorings with the 2nd player got each first for 5 photo scorings. First got total of 40 points while Second got 46.
They both also got a set of 4 unique shops plus 2 standalone single shops. First player did better with the wheat field, getting an area with 13 points as their biggest plus 4 more. The second player only got 9 plus 2.
On the other hand, first player didn’t even try to make and grow the horizontal lavender. They actually got 2 vertical ones. So, for that, they only got 5 plus 2. The second player did a bit better. They got 5 from the biggest and 6 from the other.
First player also did better with sunflowers, having 3 of them facing the sun. Second player only got 2. While the 2nd player won but I think both sides did equally well.
Playing time was about 50 minutes.
February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Playing time took about 75 minutes for 2-handed session. Red or first player scored 79 while the Green or 2nd player scored 87. Both managed to score every Photo. The extra score that gave the winning was having 2 wheat groups with 2 x 2 for the Green. Green also finished the Photo the turn before the last one while Red almost failed the last one.
June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok, Tumblr and on Instagram. 2-handed session as usual. Playing time was about 65 minutes. Red or first player only scored 78 while Green won with 93. Green got all of the photo goals and Red failed to get one, missing 6 points. Another 6 points after Green got both majority bonuses.
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January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok and on Instagram. 2-handed session as usual. Red won with 93 points while Green only got 81. Not only Red got all of the objectives, they scored them all first time while Green got stuck a couple of first rounds and failed to score the last one.
September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok and on Instagram. 2-handed session. One scored 81 and the other scored 78. Both failed to complete all goals, one for the winner and 2 goals for the other.
April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. Still playing 2-handed. Nothing new. Green scored 94 while Red scored 92, very close. Both got all Photo objectives.
February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed, Red scored 93 while Green only 76.
December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Played with 2 players, 82 vs 97 points.
September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was my attempt making a solo variant for this game. Scored 70 while the opponent scored 68.
August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, trying out solo variant. Scored 62 for both.
July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed, scored 100 vs 80.
April 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report. 2-handed, with Red scored 80 while Green Scored 84.
March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed, both scored 81.
February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was first time playing the game, 2-handed, 2 sessions, scored 90 vs 94 and 83 vs 75. A bit of first impression.
Here are more unboxing pictures of Walking in Provence on IG.