Road to Essen!
Continuing our #RoadToEssen series, where we talk about games we bought at last year’s SPIEL22 as a retrospective, to see if they held up or if they were just a rash impulse buy.
And this time it’s about 4 games that didn’t make the cut, so they had to go. 😶
Let’s go over them one by one:
🍞 Beer & Bread
This one had many things going for it:
Multi-use cards that could be either a contract to fulfill, a permanent upgrade to slot in or an amount of resources to harvest
Card drafting to eliminate draw randomness
Limited storage to make things tight
The theme was always a bit lukewarm, but ultimately it just didn’t work for us because it’s a pure contract fulfillment game. And I also found it wrong how a contract you are working towards could just be played by your opponent as an upgrade or something, so you are left with your gathered resources for nothing.
🏡 Dorfromantik
We love co-op games and we love tile-laying games, so Dorfromantik seemed like a match made in heaven. Unfortunately there is virtually no challenge in this game, it’s only beat your own score. Though the zen nature of it can be a positive, and it seems to be loved by many, I do think co-op games should push back against you and try to lead you to defeat. In the end it just felt hollow for us.
🏘️ Hamlet
This seemed very interesting too. Building a village out of irregularly shaped tiles with network-building and shared resources. I was afraid of sharing things due to potential negative player interactions, but it worked quite well. Unfortunately it just felt like a chore to play somehow, and it was difficult seeing where tiles begin and end.
✨ Astra
A beautiful game in which you mark stars on constellation cards. I like the concept but it’s all a bit monotonous. After a few games I did feel like there is some depth and strategy to where you draw, when you rest, when you activate cards; and there was a bit of engine building as you gather cards - but it just didn’t feel enough to make it all worthwhile.
It’s a shame because I believe these were all somewhat successful games, but I guess you just can’t love everything.
