2024: Year of Legacy Games

Dorfromantik is a great cooperative tile-placing game, but what happens when it's not? Dorfromantik Duel answers that question. A spin-off of Dorfromantik, "Duel" is what gamers call a "multiplayer solitaire". Both players are playing side by side on their individual "boards" and the actions of one player does not really affect the actions of the other player. They just want to become a single land mass Dorfromantik Duel is almost strictly a "multiplayer solitare" with very little interaction between the two players. The game is well constructed, but it does take up a lot of table space (instead of the one playing area needed in the original Dorfromantik, two playing areas are required). In all four of the games we played our maps ended up bumping into each other no matter how hard we tried to keep them away. Duel came with two "expansions" included in the core box. One module rewarded players for completing tasks speedily. With eve...

With the purchase of an expansion pack, the world of Dorfromantik become more wonderful, more whimsical and more... romantic. Two new types of tasks have entered our sessions, a photographer now wanders our landscapes. Over the past seven sessions we have unlocked 4 new tiles, pushing our maximum tiles to 112 up from the 73 we started with in Game Numeral Uno. Will we ever play a session where all 112 tiles are laid out on the table at the end? That is TBD. One thing I have noticed in the last few games is how inconsistent our scores have been. We have had swings of over 100 points from game to game. This corroborates what I have been reading online- there is a lot of luck in Dorfromantik. But that's part of the blue-print of board games. A game has to be a mix of skill and luck (order and chaos) in order to be fun. Without the elements of luck, you end up with games like chess and little clocks that you punch every time you finish a move. With that said, Dorfromantik is not the re...

When you win a board game there is a feeling of relief and success. Through a combination of skills and luck (you hope it's skill) you have beat out your opponents. But you still feel a little bad. Your friends and loved ones have lost- an hour of their life resulted in failure instead of success. I guess that's the appeal of cooperative games. You and your compadres can succeed or fail together.  Therefore the dopamine rush when you win a cooperative game is untainted. How can I describe the dopamine hit when hitting 400 points in Dorfromantik? Cathy and I worked together to learn and master this game. We unlocked new tiles and abilities. Our scores and skills improved in tandem. And yet, I didn't think we would achieve the coveted 400 point game. I read a lot of tales of other gamers pursuing this grail and coming up short, or only reaching the target after hundreds of games. Cathy and I achieved this together, truly working as a team. At first I thought we had crossed th...