Dorfromantik - First Play!

10th August 2023

It's a Thursday evening and we're round Simon's for some gaming fun.
First game of the night was cooperative, tile-laying game Dorfromantik which is a board game adaptation of a computer game and translates from German as 'village romance' or possibly 'romance of the village'?

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What's in a game?
Tiles: Well, this is a tile-laying game, so you're going to get a lot of tiles, in this case hexagonal ones that come in 2 types.

• Landscape tiles: A rural environment is shown on these tiles which will contain 1 or more of 8 different landscape types. These landscapes will include woods, fields, streams, tracks, sheep and so on.
  Additionally, some landscape tiles will feature flags.

The (wheat) field has a yellow flag while the forest has a green one.

• Task tiles: These tiles differ from landscape tiles in that that also have a 'speech bubble' on the front which relate to 'tasks'. The speech bubbles are colour coded to different landscapes and also contain related icons.
  The back of each task tile also shows the same icon to differentiate them from landscape tiles.

​Task markers: These small card tokens are colour coded to different landscape in a manner identical to the speech bubbles on task tiles. There are 5 types of task markers which correspond to 5 of the landscape types, each task marker is also numbered from 4-6.

2 task tiles with a task marker on each.

Mystery boxes: What are mystery boxes? Well, you'll just have to find out but basically, Dorfromantik has a very light sort of persistent/campaign mode where boxes become 'unlocked' and provide more content to play through in what is a gameplay loop. Suffice to say that 5 boxes numbered 1-5 come with the game.

Don't you open that card box, you're a fool if you dare!

Score & campaign pads: Usually I don't bother mentioning this kind of component as it's not directly related to the game play. But in this case, how the scoring plays out is important here as it relates to the campaign.
On the left is a column of objectives and targets that can be achieved by completing games, on the right are achievements which can be unlocked in certain ways while in the centre, is an advancement track which can be checked off to unlock more content.
What is this extra content? That's a secret!

Results and achievements earn 'ticks' that progress along a central track and unlock more content.

The components in Dorfromantik as what we would consider to be average, that is nothing to write home about but the tiles, cards and tokens fell perfectly acceptable: Nothing bad here.

The tiles use bright colours as well as illustrations to display differing landscapes and there's also as surprisingly detailed artwork, especially the village areas which show homes, shops, market stalls and so on. Charming little flourishes of artwork are found throughout the game.
It's crisp art that's clear and easy to comprehend.

Dorfromantik employs a handful of icons to represent different landscape types which are easily recognisable and that's about it. I can't imagine players having any problem here.

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How's it play?
Setup
Tiles: Sort the tiles into their 2 types, then shuffle them into face-down stacks and discard 3 landscape tiles out of play.
Task markers: Sort the tokens into their types and shuffle them into face-down stacks.
First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Dorfromantik is a cooperative game were players are collectively creating a landscape with an eye towards typically maximising the victory points (VPs) they earn. Although they may have other objectives/achievements they might be working towards.
The game follows a typical turn order with the active player taking their action which essentially involves drawing and placing a tile before play progresses to the player on their left.

Draw tile: On their turn, the active player will draw a single tile and place it into the central playing area according to the following rules.

• Less than 3 task markers: If there are 2 or less task marker tokens in play, the active player must draw and play a task tile.
  Thus; since there are no tiles of any sort in play at the game start, the first 3 tiles drawn will always be task tiles.
• 3 of more task markers: If there are 3 or more task markers in play, then the active player draws a landscape tile.

Placing tiles: There are slightly different rules for what happens when landscape or task tiles are placed.

• Landscape tiles: When placing landscape tiles, they must be placed with at least 1 edge adjacent to another tile already in play. It's also possible to place a tile so that multiple edges will adjacent to multiple tiles. Not all landscape types need to be honoured, e.g., it's entirely permissible to place a field adjacent to a village. However, rail and stream connections must be honoured, that is, they cannot be blocked.
• Task tiles: For the most part, task tiles follow the same placement rules as landscape tiles (Except of course for the 1st tile played in the game, which cannot be adjacent to another tile!) but with the added element.
  When a task tile is revealed and played, a matching task marker must be drawn, revealed and placed on to that task tile. This will come into play when 'completing' or 'scoring' that task.

​Scoring tasks: As explained above, task markers will appear on tiles during the game and every task marker has a value of 4-6 for its particular landscape type. This means a task will earn VPs if the players manage to create a closed off or completed landscape containing that marker with a size which exactly matches the value.
E.g., if a forest task marker has a value of 5 and the players create a forest across exactly 5 tiles, then the task has been completed.
When a task is completed, the marker should be immediately removed and added to a scoring area. It is possible to immediately complete a task marker on a task tile if that task tile is played in the into a location which matches is requirements. It's theoretically possible to complete more then one task in turn.

• Failed tasks: If a task is ever failed (This can be done by closing off an area which is too small or making an area too big.) then it' task marker cannot be scored and is removed from play.

Next Player: Once the active player has played a tile and resolved any associated actions, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
The game immediately ends if any player has to play a landscape tile and there are none available.
The game then goes to scoring and VPs can come from 3 sources.

• Tasks: Completed tasks earn VPs equal to their value.
• Flags: As mentioned above, some tiles may possess a flag. If the landscape related to a flag has been closed off or 'completed' then it will earn VPs.
• Rails and streams: VPs will be earned to the single longest stretch of rails and for the single longest stretch of stream.

VPs are totted up and that is the final amount that all the players have collectively scored. However, there's just one more thing:

The end is the beginning!
Now that players have achieved a final score, it's time to look at the campaign pad.

On the left side is the column of objectives which can be completed at the game end and these go from score up to 99 VPs all the way score 400 VPs! Every objective that is completed can be crossed off and earns the players a 'X'.

X's can be used to cross off spaces on the advancement track. As more spaces are crossed off, players will gain access to the boxes of extra content that come with the game. This content provides new tiles and new ways to score VPs as well as more achievements to work towards.
Furthermore, on the right are achievements that can be ticked off which contributes to the overall completion of the game.

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Overall
Dorfromantik is a game about creating a beautiful village and the tile-laying mechanic does match up with the theme, albeit a little abstractly.

It's also quite a light game rules-wise, the challenge comes from optimising VPs earned from tile placement and this comes from planning ahead.
There seems to be a basic tactic of creating bunches of 3 of each landscape type so that if a 4 point task marker is drawn, it can potentially be used to immediately close and score a landscape - provided the right type and value of task marker is drawn. Although it can backfire if players calculate size 3 landscape types incorrectly.
As with pretty much all cooperative games, luck can play a big part here and players may be forced to make tricky decisions when things don't go their way.
There's also some tricky, meaningful decisions to be made regarding the rails and streams because players will be faced with conflicting scoring objectives: As well as trying to complete tasks related to those landscape types, players will also be looking to score points for the longest rail/stream.

Dorfromantik includes what loosely is described as a campaign mode. As the game is completed multiple times, players will acquire the means to score higher and higher VPs through unlocks but also will need to score higher to unlock more content in order to score even more VPs. It's a classic gameplay loop.

This brings me to another thing, one of the players bounced hard off Dorfromantik. They just did not like how there was no overt way to 'fail' a game.
While this is 'technically' true, a game can still be kind of failed by not achieving any objectives and getting no crosses, but for them it wasn't enough of a 'failure' for them.
Consequently, we didn't really get to give the campaign mode a good try.
I feel this could be a bit of divisive issue that could put people off what is otherwise a fairly solid tile-placement game.

Another curious aspect is that while Dorfromantik can play with a large player count it feels a bit like a solo game. - That is; a solo game where everybody can potentially contribute to the placement every turn!
The choices and options players face do not change with player count or different players. Players do not have hidden hands of tiles or anything like that which could alter their priorities and the dilemma of where to place a tile never alters from player to player.
The same information is open and available to all players at all times which essentially means players are free to confer during a individual's turn or not. I guess that many minds working on optimal moves can make for some strong decisions - or probably more likely, lead to more bickering!

It's also not a game for single occasional plays and I think it would also definitely benefit from repeated plays as unlockable content changes the game.
Dorfromantik is at the lightweight end of games and could appeal to casual or less dedicated gamers and be used as a crossover game.
If a undemanding, cooperative game is what your looking for, then this could be one for you provided you can find some players to dedicate time to it. Alternatively, you could just play it solo as the game experience is identical but quieter.