PREVIEW : Dorfromantik (PC)
Depending on which environment you come from, the term “village romance” might trigger completely different associations. While some may have had enough manure, tractors and boredom, the country life attracts others with its presumed idyll. Players can now at least digitally slide a quiet puzzle ball between cows and fields.
Greetings from Carcassonne
First of all, I should like to praise the four-person team for opting for a rather unusual concept in the tradition of “Zen gaming” in this flood of small games – which made me curious as a board gamer along with the title. There is a lot to choose from in terms of large building strategies à la ANNO 1800 or Endzone – A World Apart and Nebuchadnezzar with complex chains of raw materials, buildings and goods, which I also like, but rather little reduced laying tactics with a relaxed puzzle flair.
However, the name “Dorfromantik” is ultimately more innovative than the game design because that is, of course, in the tradition of Carcassonne, with which Klaus-Jürgen Wrede created a classic in 2000 that has already been digitized umpteen times. However, this is not a special criticism because, in the end, almost every game is a quote from another – only very few are innovative in the literal sense of the word. The entire game world consists of a never-ending cycle of influence – the art is to be inspired rather than clumsily copied. And the Berliners succeed in doing this with a few modifications.
A landscape emerges
In the beginning, the landscape consists of only one field with six possible cultivation areas. But on the right-hand side, the randomly created stack of further hexagonal parts is already waiting. This conceals plains, forests, fields, villages and all sorts of mixed forms so that you can also move a few houses with trees or rivers, meadows with a little train route or dozens of other elements – this always creates a new landscape with fresh challenges.
Because for every tile placed, you get points, whereby the type of placement is relevant. Therefore, creating contiguous landscapes such as vast forests or large settlements makes sense by rotating the parts accordingly and laying them in advance. At regular intervals, some tasks require, for example, that you have a certain number of rivers or simply 50 trees in your forest. Since these build on each other, you will soon need maybe 100 trees; the constant further development is worthwhile.
Tasks with bonus points
So you collect bonus points almost by the way, while when you complete it, you can watch, for example, trains chugging along on the completed tracks or ships chugging along the widely branched river. Over time you unlock more tasks and tiles, including windmills, water stations, lavender biomes, fjords & Co. Piano sounds accompanied almost meditatively interprets its parts. At some point, the stack of parts is used up, and then it’s game over with a high score.
So there is a certain demand, and you can also make mistakes, such as completing special landscapes too early so that they can no longer grow. The control is precise with rotation and zoom, but it is not always very clear how the parts deform or transform after being placed so that dead-ends sometimes arise involuntarily. The automatic containment of watercourses, for example, also ensures comfort, but the result does not always correspond to the territorial concept – an undo function might have been helpful.
In the long run, the relaxed placement will also run out of breath a little. However, maybe the announced creative mode can still help. This is also because the aquarium effect is limited, i.e., the enjoyable observation of small processes. After all, there are small animations in the pretty pastel backdrop, such as migratory birds, rotating windmill wheels, etc. The abstract board game design can create a certain aesthetic from a distance. Still, on the large screen, you miss more details up close – in the end, it is not worth zooming in here Microcosm or even a village, so that a mobile implementation for Android or iOS is obvious.
