Tag: Tile Placement

Games with Tile Placement mechanics require players to place tiles on a game board to create and modify the game’s environment.

NEOM

| OTSG Staff
NEOM

NEOM

NEOM is a modern city-building game featuring simultaneous drafting and tile placement that takes inspiration from games such as 7 Wonders, Carcassonne, and Sim City. Players compete to build the most impressive city utilizing a tree of 17 different goods (from three different tiers) that can each be unlocked, allowing the placement of increasingly powerful tiles as the game progresses. Tiles also feature roads which must be connected without being rotated, meaning that players must always plan their city layout with an eye to the future.

At the start of each game, players draft cornerstones — powerful, unique tiles that heavily change what is most valuable from game to game.

NEOM has been in development for seven years and the rules and tile set have been iterated on over the course of more than 3,500 games logged in a custom online prototype, leading to an exceptionally well balanced game with a wide variety of viable strategies.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Closed Drafting
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.60

My City

| OTSG Staff
My City

My City

My City is a competitive legacy game in which you develop a city on your own playing board through the ages.

The game consists of 24 episodes, beginning with the development of a city in its early preindustrial stages and progressing through industrialization. During each game, players customize their experience by adding elements to their personal boards and adding cards to the game. Players’ choices and action made during one session of gameplay carry over into the next session, creating a personalized gaming experience.

For players who do not want to experience My City as a legacy game, a double-sided game board offers an alternate set-up for repeatable play (some elements from the legacy experience are needed for the repeatable play game, players can unlock these elements by playing through the first 4 episodes).

Game Mechanics:

  • Bingo
  • Campaign
  • City Building
  • Grid Coverage
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.02

Miyabi

| OTSG Staff
Miyabi

Miyabi

Elegant, graceful, and refined – that’s how you should design your Japanese garden! Careful planning and watchful eyes are needed as you tend your garden. Only by skillfully placing stones, bushes, trees, ponds and pagodas on multiple levels can a player become the best garden designer of the season. Think you’ve got it figured out? Try one of the five included expansions!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Puzzle
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.06

Minecraft: Builders and Biomes

| OTSG Staff
Minecraft: Builders and Biomes

Minecraft: Builders and Biomes

As in the original Minecraft digital game, in Minecraft: Builders & Biomes players explore the Overworld, build structures, and mine resources, earning points for structures and the largest connected biomes of forest, desert, mountain, or snowy tundra spaces on their player boards.

Familiar foes like Endermen, Creepers, and other mobs also appear throughout the game, and they need to be defeated using weapons collected from the board. Defeating mobs earn players points in addition to granting additional awards. Game scoring occurs as the resource cube’s layers are depleted. As soon as the third layer runs out, the adventure comes to an end, and the builder with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Grid Movement
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.93

Mercado de Lisboa

| OTSG Staff
Mercado de Lisboa

Mercado de Lisboa

Modern day markets offers to their visitors various kind of stands, restaurants, and services.

In Mercado de Lisboa, players buy stands in the market, open new businesses that influence those stands, and bring customers to them.

Mercado de Lisboa is a thinky filler title, a tile-placement game based upon the Lisboa city-building system in which players pay money to own stands in the market, open restaurants next to them to improve their profit and bring in customers that earn money for players with matching stands. Mercado de Lisboa is a fast-paced game, very straightforward and easy to learn rules with deep tactical choices.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Area Control
  • Economic
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.07

Lords of Vegas

| OTSG Staff
Lords of Vegas

Lords of Vegas

You and your opponents represent powerful developers in a burgeoning Nevada city. You will earn money and prestige by building the biggest and most profitable casinos on “The Strip,” the town’s backbone of dust and sin. You start with nothing but parking lots and dreams, but from there you build, sprawl, reorganize and gamble your way to victory. Score the most points investing in the most profitable development companies and putting the best bosses in control of the richest casinos. Put your dollars on the line . . . it’s time to roll!

The game board is broken into 6 different areas, each consisting of a number of empty ‘lots’. Players build lots by paying money and placing a die of the value matching the one shown on the lot’s space onto the lot, along with a casino tile of one of 7 colors. Adjoining lots of the same color are considered a single casino. The casino’s boss is the player whose die value is higher than any other in the casino. On each players turn, players turn over a new card representing a new lot they get. The card also is one of the casino colors. Any built casinos of the matching color will score both money and points. Money is earned for each lot in the casino, where each lot may be owned by a different player. Points go only to the casino’s owner. Players can expand their casinos; try to take over casinos owned by other players; make deals to trade lots, casinos and money; or gamble in opponents’ casinos to make more money. Ultimately, though, only points matter, and that means making yourself boss of the biggest casinos.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • City Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Tile Placement
  • Trading

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.34

Living Forest

| OTSG Staff
Living Forest

Living Forest

In Living Forest, you play as a nature spirit who will try to save the forest and its sacred tree from the flames of Onibi. But you are not alone in your mission as the animal guardians have come together to lend a hand around the Circle of Spirits where you progress. Each turn, they bring you valuable elements, so try to combine your team of animal guardians as best as possible to carry out your actions, but be careful: some of them are solitary and do not like to be mixed with others…

You have one of three ways to achieve your goal: by planting 12 different Protective Trees, by collecting 12 Sacred Flowers to awaken Sanki the great Guardian of the Forest, by extinguishing 12 Fires to permanently repel Onibi.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Push Your Luck
  • Racing
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25

Kingdomino Origins

| OTSG Staff
Kingdomino Origins

Kingdomino Origins

Go back in time to the prehistoric era of Kingdomino!

Kingdomino Origins plays similarly to the original game but introduces new components for additional actions and new ways to score points. Regions in your territory will earn you points if they contain fire. Fire is either part of your terrains or earned by adding dominoes with volcanoes. There are three game modes to play:

  • The first one introduces fire and volcanoes.
  • The second mode uses wooden resources.
  • And the third one features cavemen tokens.

You earn points by collecting resources, with additional points when you have the majority of a type of resources. These resources allow you to bring cavemen to your territory, and each type of caveman has its own way to give you points based on their position.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.10

Juicy Fruits

| OTSG Staff
Juicy Fruits

Juicy Fruits

Each player has their own small island paradise where they grow delicious fruit. To win, you must gain the most points by cleverly supplying ships and by adding the best businesses to your island.

Your turn in Juicy Fruits works like this: First, you slide one of your fruit collector tokens a number of unblocked spaces and collect that many fruits of the token’s type: banana, orange, lime, pomegranate, or mangosteen. Then you may either fulfill the order of a ship on your shores or claim a business from a shared display and place it onto your island (or do nothing). Clever planning and timing is vital because until you supply the ships on your shores, they block valuable island space which could be used to collect more fruit — but if you concentrate too much on the ships, the most promising businesses may get snatched by your opponents. Also, the sooner businesses are claimed, the quicker the game might end.

With each play, Juicy Fruits poses new puzzles of how to move your tokens efficiently and how to balance clearing your island with claiming businesses. The game also includes an additional “juice factory” mode and four modes of solo play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Isle of Skye: Big Box

| OTSG Staff
Isle of Skye: Big Box

Isle of Skye: Big Box

Get the full load (minus 4 expansions) of the modern classic tile-laying game with the Isle of Skye Big Box! The Big Box contains the award-winning Isle of Skye base game (Kennerspiel des Jahres 2016), the Druids expansion, and additional scoring and tunnel tiles. A new addition is the mini-expansion Randgebiete.

In the game, you embody one leader of each of the five traditional Scottish clans. You create your own small empire in order to gain the necessary victory points. But in each game only four of the included 24 score cards are in play. This makes each game different and requires different tactics and strategies.

In each round you can buy one of the tiles of a fellow player. Face down, all players simultaneously set the prices of the pieces they offer. A high price can lead to prosperity and much needed money. However, if no buyer can be found, the seller must add the tile to his empire himself and give up the money he has invested. In the end, the player who has scored the most victory points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Economic
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00