Toukana Interactive; Windows
Part town-planning exercise, part board game, this thoughtful debut gives plenty of scope for strategy and idealism
So-called “city-building” video games have long offered us the chance to reshape the world by turning urban design into a high-scoring pursuit. They offer the localised divine power of the town planner who, with a flourish of a pencil, can summon a dog park over here, a high-rise over there. Soon – in game as, presumably, in municipal life – glee turns to headache as you must balance the needs and desires of a whingeing populace who want to know why, precisely, you have put a nuclear power station next to the nursery school, or a phone tower in the middle of an A&E ward.
Dorfromantik, the debut from a team of four game design students from Berlin, is a simpler affair. By laying and arranging hexagonal tiles illustrated with various pieces of scenery – villages and forests, rivers and railways – you build an idyllic world, devoid of a complaining populace, or the threat of imminent natural disaster. Play has the rhythm and tactility of a board game: you take the top-most hexagonal tile from your randomised stack, and place it on the “board”, then attempt to match one of its sides with the next tile in order to expand the village, or the corn fields. Soon enough, a unique vista emerges.
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Originally posted in the guardian.
