Designed by Keith Piggott, 2024’s River of Gold takes place in the world of the Legends of the Five Rings (if that means anything to you…). In River of Gold, players take on the role of river merchants allied with legendary samurai clans, each vying to exploit the river to earn wealth, glory, and wisdom. You can invest in developing ports, markets, shrines, and more along the banks of the busy river. Or you can rely upon sailing the river, growing your wealth and influence through delivery contracts, visiting the nobility, and garnering a bit of divine favour during tough times.
At its heart, River of Gold is a ‘roll and move’ game. This means rolling dice in order to dictate your actions, but there is so much more here. There are tracks and contracts and set collection and a multitude of ways to get points which culminates in a really interesting gameplay and a gorgeous production.
Rolling on the river…
On your turn you will roll a dice. A standard D6. However, each side of the dice also links to an area on the board, dictated by a colour and symbol. This number can be changed by spending favour, a resource you can gain throughout the game and even up the cap on how much you can have at any one time. This resource means that, if well managed, you are never stuck with a bad dice roll. It also means that due to rolling at the end of the hour turn you have plenty of time to decide what to do on your turn so gameplay is pretty fast. There is not a huge amount of interaction in this game aside from racing to complete shared goals or to get ahead on influence tracks.
There are many things you can then do with that roll. The first is simply to sail. Each player has two ships placed in the river itself which take the majority of the actions in the game. Sailing allows you to activate any buildings at the location in which you land. This could get you resources, (silk, ceramics or rice), or money. It can also give you straight points or even influence in the area you landed. Influence is shown through a series of tracks on the right hand side of the board. The players with the highest influence in a track will get a set number of the points at the end as well as gain in-game rewards the further you move along it. This is not a mechanism you can ignore. Influence is going to lead to major points. Once your boat gets to the end of the river, it wraps around to the beginning again but gains a series of rewards for doing so.
The next major action is building. You can spend money to build along the river in the area you rolled. Buildings give you rewards when you land there but also when others do too. They will also give you immediate influence as well. This will be the game timer. Once the first stack of buildings has been depleted, there will be a mini in-game scoring and once the second stack is gone, the game ends. I love player led timers. The ability to hold out for a few extra turns or to purposefully take that last building just before your opponent can take that vital turn they are working towards is wonderful!
Finally you can complete a customer card by paying the resources and gaining a variety of rewards. Monks will allow you to up your favour cap, Nobels will upgrade your boat, Merchants give you an extra reward when reaching the end of the river, Artisans make it cheaper to build and Elders give you double your influence rewards at the end of the game. These also can be collected and will earn points for how many completed cards you have. There are also shared goals which anyone can achieve offering higher points for getting there first and these contracts are part of the majority of these goals so are not to be ignored.
River Deep, Mountain high…
:This is a gorgeous production with a gold embossed game board that really adds table presence. The little wooden tokens are very satisfying to manipulate around the board and the dice feel great to roll. But what makes this game really shine is the super easy access point. It is easy to teach and quick to get playing but yet offers a satisfying amount of decision making. There is plenty of variability as well due to the way the buildings work along with the random selection of goal cards.
This is a great game for those not too drenched in hobby gaming but want something to challenge them but also works well for active hobby players, however I would avoid mixing those demographics to allow for a level playing ground. I am also not sure how much life this game has before it becomes a little repetitive but unless you play it an awful lot I think you will have a great time on the River of Gold!
Scores:
Score: 75%
Artwork: 4/5
Player interaction: 3/5
Complexity: 3/5
Replayability: 3/5
Component quality: 5/5
You might like:
● Beautiful production
● Easy to learn
● Interesting spin on ‘Roll and Move”
You might not like:
● A certain amount of luck
● Not a massive amount of replayability
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