Game Village

Board games are beautiful with their originality, which manifests itself in nuances. Small elements make simple standard mechanics fresh and original. Imagine a standard worker placement with the addition of a time mechanism that inevitably kills your medieval family. This time a review of Village .

Subject matter

You represent an ancient family in a boring medieval village and peacefully spend your days. One member of your family goes to learn a trade and make plows, another raises cows, another goes into politics, someone tries to become mayor, while the most restless member of the family, the curmudgeon Willie, spits and goes on a trip to see the world. No matter what you do, sooner or later your family will cross the river of time and someone from your family will die.

The game is extremely thematic, we have given families names and created stories, you really feel like you are managing your family, caring and worrying about your dice.

Components

I wish more games were of this quality. The game map is beautiful and easy to understand, with very thoughtful iconography that helps teach the game to new players more easily. Wooden men are excellently used, for which the game even has small graves in which these players can be placed when they go to their "lifetime homes". The only thing I didn't like were small stickers with numbers, which you had to stick to the wooden men yourself, and it was an unbearable process, where you definitely need to find an assistant with small fingers or a lot of patience.

Mechanics

A standard worker placement game where you remove a block, which is also a useful resource, and perform the corresponding action. But there is one nuance - most actions take time. Time moves forward, and every time it passes a certain point, an older generation of the family dies. Old Alfred was a great wheelwright? Nothing to do, now you will have to think of other ways to get the cart. Time is also a specific game timer, as deceased family members will be recorded in the town's annals or, if they are full, simply buried near the church. Until a certain amount of people have passed away, it's time for the end of the game.

In addition, very interesting church mechanics should be noted. Players have the option of sending their family members to serve the God, which they do by dropping the workers into a black church bag, where they stand with black monk dice until the end of the round. At the end of the round, a certain number of men are drawn from the bag. The only way to guarantee that these men will be pulled out is corruption by paying one dollar to the church. This mechanic adds extra excitement to the game, as well as an exciting story when your family members join the church and are thrown into the black bag and no one has the slightest idea what is really going on there.

Multiplayer

And this is the point where the game gets seriously stuck. The game and its mechanics are very exciting, but after the 4th, 5th playthrough, they seem repetitive. It's the same village, with the same choices, but once you've chosen the right path, there's little stopping you from doing the same thing the next time. I definitely only recommend the game for 4 or 3 players, because then there are more variables that affect gameplay as well as multiplayer.

Rating

I really like the mechanics, the story, the theme of Village, I mention death a lot in the description, but despite that, this is a very good family game that successfully and at the same time logically weaves this serious theme into its mechanics. But the multiplayer is what keeps me from giving this game a really high rating, which is why I give Village a 7 out of 10.

Kristaps

Images: Board Game Geek