I like to move it, move it... I like to...

🏙️ Shake That City is the newest game from AEG coming to Kickstarter next week!
It’s a quick spatial puzzle game about building a little city on your 6x6 grid, which ideally should score the most points by the end.

❤️ The heart of the game is a cardboard gizmo that dispenses cubes in a 3x3 pattern. Each round the gizmo will spit out 9 cubes. Players then pick a color and place down buildings of that color/amount/shape on their boards accordingly.

Picking a bigger cluster of cubes could be beneficial, otherwise you might not completely fill your board in 15 rounds. However haphazardly placing down buildings won’t work either - your board might fill up too fast, allowing less legal placements later, and possibly ruining adjacency bonuses. Choosing less cubes allows for more precise placements.

Scoring conditions depend on the board you use, e.g.:
🟥 Houses score 2 points for each cluster of them. Having 10 continuous houses scores the same as 1 house would do. Adjacent Factories cancel out houses, so watch out!
⬜ Roads are only worth 1 point each if they are connected to the edge of the board, either directly or through other roads.
🟦 Shops score more points if they are on the brown or grey spots of your board, but only if they are connected to the board edge through roads.
⬛ Factories give 1 point if adjacent to other Factories and another 1 point if adjacent to Roads.
🟩 Parks give 1 point if adjacent to Houses and another 1 point if adjacent to Factories.

💬 I like how you can’t really “solve” the game. Depending on the randomized cube pattern, the perceived value of colors changes every round - either because of their amount/shape shown, or due to the situation on your player board. That way Shake That City will stay fresh each game.😉

I think a comparison will be unavoidable with Tiny Towns - both are light-weight games from AEG about city building. In direct comparison I’d say Shake That City is a simpler game, but also faster. Though both of them present you with a spatial puzzle to solve, the puzzle itself is actually quite different, as is the gameplay experience.

Finally, don’t underestimate the fun of shaking that gizmo!🤩