About the game
Dorfromantik is a game Designed by Lukas Zach and Michael Palm, in which players work together to make the most picturesque village. You achieve this by laying task and landscape tiles to build up villages, forests, grain fields, train tracks and streams. Every round you play you will gain points to then unlock further components to help score more points. It will be your decision of what to unlock, the circus, the castle, the harvest festival. How many round will it take you? That’s the challenge!
Game play
Players start by shuffling task tiles into multiple piles, and then shuffling landscape tiles into separate piles. Then, lay all your task markers face down and you're ready to go! Start by selecting 3 task tiles and 2 task markers to go alongside each other. You then select landscape tiles to help you complete the tasks. When you complete 1 of the tasks you then move the marker to the scoring pile and select a new task. Keep doing this with 3 tasks in play until you run out of landscapes to place.
Once you run out you can then add up your score, including points for the length of your longest stream and track and flag markers. Once you have your score you can check what rank you are, I started off as a vagabond, and see how many spaces you can mark off. This will allow you to unlock more boxes that will either give you a component you can use straight away or a new challenge to complete.
You keep doing this to try and move up the ranks of fisherwoman, forest ranger and architect, all the way up to Empress. I’m still yet to go further than the farmers wife but I'm trying!
My review
Artwork 2/5 – Paul Riebe illustrations on the tiles are simple but effective with images on the tiles lining up creating a seamless flow to the overall village
Complexity 2/5 – The rules for placing are quite simple. Only streams and tracks have to connect and a new task can go to a place where it already exceeds its number. This makes it very good for a group pregame as its very simple to pick up
Replayability 5/5 - The game is designed to be played over and over again. And once you’ve unlocked everything and got the highest score, we’ll you can start over again and see if you can do it faster.
Player interaction 5/5 –Even with playing with multiple people, your are essentially 1 person which creates plenty of discussion to what is the right choice. This makes for great debate as to whether you go for the most picturesque village, as the game title ‘ Dorf Romantik ‘ says, or the most points, the correct answer.
Component quality 4/5 – I’m going to rate this high not for the tiles itself but the fact that the additional game boxes and the box insert allows you to easily store the game weather you want to reset it or keep it ready to pick up from where you left off
Comebackability 1/5 –there’s no comeback, just try and do better next time.
Solo 3/5 – Whether you are solo or playing as a group it plays the same. I tend to play this as a gap filler as you can easily restart where you finished last time.
Group 5/5 – this makes an idea pre game to warm up the group, set up and explaining the game is quite quick and you can play it on off over a series on months with the campaign pad keeping track of you.
Family 4/5 – Now I don’t come from a competitive family but even though it’s and easy game to play the lack end goal or there being a winner can put some people off.
Improvements to be made
- There needs to be more landscape tiles to start off with. I found it hard to score points in the first few rounds
- I think there needs to be an overall goal for those who need it.
What I enjoyed
- Being able to easily pick up a game from where you left off
- Plenty of elements to unlock
- The tiles all lining up well
My final thoughts
Although for me it doesn’t have the elements of a main game, I love it as a pregame or to finish off a game night!
