Dorf Romantik is a cooperative world-building game where you strategically place tiles to create countryside regions to score points in a variety of ways. Play is solitaire-like, but rather than matching suits you're matching landscape. It stands out for how this simple premise results in knife-edge decisions about which place your next tile should go.

Up to six players work together to place tiles and create areas of towns, forests, and fields with train lines and rivers flowing through them. As you do you gain three missions to create specific size areas to fulfill the orders of the population. Finally, there are the flag tiles that give you points when you create closed-off areas.

As you progress you learn how to create the worlds that score the most points. Although you can't technically lose, you can badly place tiles that don't maximise your score or options for future tiles. It's here that the placement of rivers and train lines is most important as only exactly matching tiles can be placed next to these.

Whether you do well or badly, it's a game that is relaxing to play. To add some bite to the experience, as you play you can earn the right to expand the game in different ways. This includes adding new tiles that are initially unavailable. These add new options and additional tasks for you to extend your high score.