Yeah it's aight I guess
I saw this game a few days ago, saw it had a demo, thought "Sure, I'll take a look", and gone were the next 3 days of my life. Kudos to the devs for offering that demo. It convinced me to buy the game. So, what can I say about the game? Simple Concepts For Complex Gameplay It's rare to see such an amazing execution of this idea. Good complexity is constructed by seamless interaction of simple concepts. Gameplay is deceptively simple. You start with 40 tiles. Each tile has 7 parts: 6 sides and a center. Each part can be 1 of 6 features: plains, forest, fields, city, railroads, or water. Match one side of a tile to the side of another tile with the same feature. Score points by correctly matching sides of a tile. The more points you score, the more tiles you earn. Play until you run out of tiles. Sounds easy, is easy at first, but quickly builds to challenging gameplay. Not Just Mix'n'Match If it was simply a matter of matching tile to tile as best you could, the game would become dull pretty quickly. The devs wisely included goals as part of some of the tiles you place. This is where that center part of a tile becomes important. When placing a tile, you can get a quest which requires you, for example, to build a forest of at least 50 trees. So, you have to connect tiles in a way to build a continuous forest. If two sides of a tile that aren't touching are forest, and the center part of the tile is a forest, you can now connect distant forest tiles this way. At first quests are easy to fulfill. For example, requiring exactly 10 houses in a city, or at least 6 fields connected together. Later quests might require a city with at least 100 houses, or forest with at least 800 trees. Now, placing tiles isn't just matching sides, but strategic placement. You have to weigh long term goals vs short term demands. Chill and Relax Despite how complex the game can get, it keeps a relaxed vibe. It's easy to start a game and play for an hour and a half without realizing it.
