Let's take a look on Golem!

Even though we bought Golem at SPIEL21 we only managed to get it to the table now. 😨

The game is played over 4 rounds. Every round you make 2 marble actions and 1 rabbi action. Added up that is only 12 actions throughout the game, however by the game's end that doesn't seem as little as it first may.

When the round begins the colored marbles are thrown into the synagogue structure. Every row is associated with an action. The more marbles are in a row the stronger the action will be when chosen. The color of the marble picked is also important, so there is quite some thinking involved when choosing.

The rabbi action is traditional worker placement with random action tiles for each new round.

On your player board you have 3 main areas.
🔵 Blue: Here you will collect books that give you many kinds of bonuses. The more columns you make the more points you will get, however it is also worth it to make columns bigger because you can re-active books you have gotten earlier in that column.
🔴 Red: Here you can build and upgrade your golems which then go to the main board. Golems move each round forward on the 3 colored streets. The more far away they are the more powerful actions you can make them do, however you also have to be able to control them or you could lose victory points.
🟡 Yellow: Here you can build artifacts which give you additional income each round.

Many of your end game points will come from the amount of books, golems and artifacts you have built multiplied by the amount of upgrades you have done in those areas.

There are many more nuances that I cannot mention in such a short review.
The game is definitely fun, many systems are dependent on each other and require some lateral thinking.
Keeps you engaged throughout.

Some cons I would mention:
1. Throwing the marbles into the synagogue doesn't work well. E.g. if you throw them in at the bottom, the top row may not get any marbles.
2. There is a lot of rules overhead and upkeep in the game where you could miss some things. That could get better with repeated plays though.