Dorfromantik

Dorfromantik (2021) is a peaceful village-building strategy puzzle game for one player, inspired by tile-based board games like Carcassonne. You have a stack of hexagonal tiles and work to match their edges while creating areas of towns, forests and fields to score points. It stands out for offering a calming puzzle you can take at your own pace, that also has hidden depths to discover.

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Hexagonal tiles are drawn from a random stack and can be placed and rotated on an expanding board to create a growing rural landscape with buildings, fields, forests, lakes and rivers. Each tile is rewarded points for how well it fits against the surrounding ones. As you progress, new tiles and biomes are unlocked and quests can be completed. The idyllic landscape scenery is further enhanced by animated tiles, like windmills and steamboats. One round of the game runs until all the tiles in the stack have been placed on the board.

As you progress you slowly uncover the different ways to maximise your score. Perfectly matching all the edges of a tile. Completing missions to connect a certain number of houses, forests, rivers or trains. Then closing off areas if you have a mission that results in a flag. It all builds to create a gently strategic experience that you can hone as you perfect your approach.

This colourful game was developed by four game design students from Berlin. It can be played either casually, as a relaxing and calming distraction, or as a challenging puzzle to beat the high score by planning ahead and strategically placing each tile.

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Our examiner, Goran Wallgren, first checked Dorfromantik 4 years ago. It was re-examined by Andy Robertson and updated 9 weeks ago.