dorfromantik

Inspired by tile-laying board games, Dorfromantik offers the relaxing gameplay of creating a pastoral landscape of trees, villages, water, railroads, and fields. Designed by four German and Swiss students (Timo Falcke, Sandro Heuberger, Luca Langenberg, and Zwi Zausch) in a game design master’s program at HTW Berlin, Dorfromantik is a peaceful, minimalist game that lives up to the title, cozy. Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here. We’re back with another cozy video game review. Even though Dorfromantik has crossed over into an award-winning board game, we’ll be discussing the equally stellar indie video game by Toukana Interactive. Get ready to build a gorgeous landscape with Dorfromantik.

Game Mechanisms: 7/10

Dorfromantik takes a simple concept of tile laying and does it exceptionally well. I’d wager the idea of Dorfromantik stemmed from playing board games like Carcassonne. Dorfromantik’s game mechanisms lend themselves well to board games, so there is an excellent, cooperative board game by the same name. Sometimes, you don’t need an elaborate set of mechanisms to make a game sing. Sometimes, you just need to do a simple concept well, and Dorfromantik does just that.

Chain similar land types with each other to gain points and finish goals (that the game presents) to score even more points and to increase the number of tiles you have to draw from. Dorfromantik can be played competitively–there is a leaderboard–or you could watch the countryside bloom as you place tiles. Dorfromantik‘s ability to make me invested in a landscape reminds me of another cozy video game we covered, Terra Nil.

Gameplay Loop: 9/10

Whether you play Dorfromantik to get the highest score possible or casually place tiles and find your Zen, you can’t deny Dorfromantik’s gameplay loop. Once you get started, you won’t build just one pastoral scene. You’ll want to go farther with your next run, reveal new tiles like the windmill (pictured above), or watch your boats and trains traverse the landscape. And yes, the scene above is animated. It’s so neat watching your creation come to life.

Because the tiles can come out in different orders, no two scenes in Dorfromantik are exactly the same. This adds spice to the simplistic gameplay. Dorfromantik is an easy game to get into, but a difficult one to master if you want to climb that leaderboard. Or you could be like me. I just want to discover new tiles and watch my landscape get bigger and more diverse. I’m so glad Dorfromantik has been ported over to the Switch. It’s the perfect game to play on the go.

Narrative/Storytelling: 1/10

I should’ve excluded this element, but I didn’t with other video games that had little to no story, so narrative/storytelling is staying in the lineup. Let us know what you’d replace this element with for games that have little to no story. Dorfromantik has no story to speak of, so it receives a low mark in this category.

User Interface: 10/10

Dorfromantik has a stripped-down but effective user interface. The tiles feel great to manipulate. They almost feel like placing a board game’s tiles. The picture above shows how Dorfromantik will highlight the spaces where a tile can be placed. Gamers can only place the tile on top of the draw pile. Dorfromantik does an excellent job of not only showing where a tile can be placed, the callouts show where you can gain extra points, and whenever you hover a tile over a space and begin rotating it, Dorfromantik will make the matching tiles shimmer.

Dorfromantik’s elegant and minimalistic user interface makes it accessible. Like I said, Dorfromantik may use a familiar board game mechanism in tile placement, but every element Dorfromantik adds is handled with care and purpose. I had to give Dorfromantik top marks for user interface.

Graphics: 8/10

Dorfromantik has excellent graphics for a top-down isometric video game. The art style works well, and I appreciate the small details. Look at the clock towers, cottages, and windmills in the image above. Like I mentioned before, Dorfromantik uses small animations to denote movement. The boats (if you’ve unlocked the boats) move along the waterways. Smoke puffs from chimneys. While all of this is great, Dorfromantik does venture into cartoony graphics.

These cartoony graphics work well when one zooms out and sees more of the landscape, so I understand why Dorfromantik chose a minimalistic, cartoon-like art style. Players are meant to take a macro view of their village. But I dock Dorfromantik a point or two for graphics because the game doesn’t quite hold up on closer inspection.

Audio: 7/10

Dorfromantik’s music exudes the concept of a cozy game. I’ve listened to Dorfromantik’s soundtrack to fall asleep. It’s that soothing. Unfortunately, the game’s sound effects detract from this calm. The clacking and clicking of the tiles often takes me out of the game’s vibe. I would’ve preferred more pastoral sound effects accompanying the mechanical sounds of turning and placing tiles on the board. Yes, I could reduce the sound effects’ volume or turn them off altogether, but that would eliminate half of Dorfromantik’s audio. We’re grading the game’s entire audio. If we were only grading Dorfromantik’s soundtrack, its audio would score much higher.

Replay Factor: 10/10

Dorfromantik has an addictive gameplay loop, so the replay factor is through the roof. I can see myself playing Dorfromantik on my Switch while waiting in line. Heck, I’m surprised Dorfromantik hasn’t yet made it to the mobile game space. I could see plenty of people playing Dorfromantik on their phones. It may be an even better game for smartphones. The Switch tends to be a game’s first foray into mobile gaming. Fingers crossed that this cozy game classic makes it onto more mobile devices.

Aggregated Score: 8.6

Sure, I gave Dorfromantik a story/narrative score, but I’m not including that score with its aggregated score. Sometimes you need a cozy video game to find your Zen. Dorfromantik is a great game for that. I’m hoping more gamers will have the opportunity to play Dorfromantik on other platforms soon.

Happy Wednesday, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here. Since it’s Wednesday, we have another post from our Whatcha series. Today’s topic is games, both video games and board games. We’ll hear from Season and Skye soon, but I’ll kick things off this post with the games I’ve been playing over the past month.

Kyra’s Board Games

Bruno Cathala’s Kingdomino takes the simple mechanism of laying dominoes beside a starting castle (domino piece) and allows players to build their own scoring tableau. Each domino has two sides. Each side will belong to a terrain type, and players attempt to connect like terrain types, chaining as many crowns (which will be printed on some dominoes and determine how much each terrain scores) as they can to their largest collection of each terrain type. Kingdomino has restrictions on how far out from a player’s starting castle they can build, and this is where the game gets tricky.

I don’t know how many times I’ve ended up with dead corners (corners that I can’t legally add another domino), but it’s satisfying every time I can put down my full complement of dominoes. Kingdomino is a quick game. The 15-30 minutes printed on the box is accurate. I love Kingdomino’s selection system. Each player has two royal meeples. One will claim the current round’s domino, but the domino you select in the current round will affect when you can select a tile in the next round. Each tile’s backing has a number. Typically, the more valuable tiles have higher numbers, and if you pick a higher value tile, you’ll pick later in the following round. Brilliant!

While many board games grant an advantage to seasoned players, Uwe Rosenberg’s Spring Meadow almost requires players to have a similar experience. The person who taught me and a couple of other noobs how to play Spring Meadow skunked us. Spring Meadow has an intriguing mechanism of players choosing a polyomino from a communal display and then placing the polyomino on their player board filled with holes. You’re trying to fill each row or column (depending on your board’s orientation), scoring points for each filled row or column with some added bonus points.

There are tricks involved, a dash of luck, and not all of the polyominoes are created equal. But you won’t know the best plays during your first playthrough, and if you’re playing against a seasoned Spring Meadow player, they will easily beat you. Despite my utter failure of a first play, I enjoyed Spring Meadow. I’ve since rematched the person who taught me how to play, and I managed to eek out a victory during our third, two-player play. Spring Meadow is fantastic as a two-player game against players who know how best to place their polyominoes.

I’d include Lotus in the group of games where it’s best played when all players involved have similar experience. The same person who taught me Spring Meadow also taught me Lotus, and the result was similar. I have yet to replay them at Lotus, but I plan on it.

Players compete to complete flowers. Seriously, the image above is what most Lotus cards look like. Lotus is a stunning game. It’s quick to teach, but knowing when to add pedals or use an ability makes all the difference. Usually, new players will misuse their abilities, unlock the wrong ones first, or add too many pedals to make a flower easy to complete and leaving themselves open for another player to take advantage of an opening. Lotus is the definition of a game that’s easy to learn but difficult to master. It doesn’t have a lot of moving parts, but the parts that are there are chef’s kiss.

Kyra’s Video Games

I gave Bleach: Brave Souls a try this past month. Notice how I didn’t say I played Bleach: Brave Souls. Bleach: Brave Souls offers an autobattle function. I did more watching Bleach: Brave Souls play itself than playing the game. To be fair, Bleach: Brave Souls is a ten-year-old gacha game. During boss battles, players borrow the featured character from a random player (chosen from the tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of players). Typically, I’d borrow a character from a player who had maxed out their character five or six years ago. Most boss battles had a cutscene. I would skip the cutscene, and the borrowed character will have already beaten the boss. Did I really play Bleach: Brave Souls?

Bleach: Brave Souls was a nice trip down memory lane. I wish the game had tightened the story a little bit. Each scene from the manga received its own level, so there are hundreds, if not thousands, of story levels. I gave up on Bleach: Brave Souls after a few days, but I could see the game being fun years ago, when it first released. I like the chibi character designs.

Those are the game highlights for me this past month. Let’s see what Season and Skye have been playing.

Skye’s Board Games

The fabulous Kyra Kyle has done it again. While Dorf Romantik was not a game they created, they were the ones who introduced me to it. Props to them, because I thoroughly enjoyed it! Dorf Romantik takes concepts from games like Catan and Carcassonne, but manages to be a special kind of fun. With the help of your fellow players, y’all gotta build the best town you can. It’s Sim City without financial stress. What can I say?

The Night Cage is a game that’s right up my alley. As a big fan of cooperative games, horror, and eldritch themes, The Night Cage is perfect for a dark game night with your friends. In a Lovecraftian setting, you find yourselves in a place of eternal darkness. You’re trapped in the Night Cage, and you must escape. The corridors shift and change direction. You only have a candle, and monsters hunt you at every turn. Good luck.

Skye’s Video Games

Lately I’ve been into casual phone games. Tap Gallery is a simple game about tapping arrow blocks to reveal a hidden image underneath. That’s pretty much it. While not the most complex, what appeals to me about Tap Gallery is its premise. It’s satisfying to watch every block slowly disappear from the screen. Sometimes that’s all you need in a game, and Tap Gallery has me hooked.

Cryptogram, while still a casual phone game, requires its players to use their brains. As you can likely tell from the title, Cryptogram is all about decoding a hidden message by following the clues given to you. Cryptogram helps stretch your brain while not being too difficult. Many of Cryptogram’s hidden messages are famous quotes from historical figures. Wait, you can solve puzzles and learn history? Sign me up!

Season’s Video Games

I’m kicking things off with a classic platformer. Psychonauts was released back in 2005 and is one of the more unique platformers I’ve played. Each level takes place inside people’s minds, so the player learns about each character by playing through their level. The level itself represents the character’s cognition of the world, but there are collectibles called “memory vaults” within each level. These memory vaults allow the player to sneak a peek into each character’s past through pictorial storytelling.

Players also spend a fair amount of time roaming the campgrounds in the overworld. I spent several minutes chatting with my fellow campers, collecting arrowheads to upgrade my gear and scavenger hunt items. Most objects/creatures in Psychonauts allow players to interact with them in some form, so there’s never a shortage of things to discover. I used clairvoyance on everything. Everything.

Fallout 4 has been out for ten years, but this is my first time playing it. Dead serious. I’ve never been crazy about open-world RPGs. In the past, I’d try them for twenty minutes before wanting to play something else. I tried playing Fallout: New Vegas on Steam many years ago, and it crashed every few minutes. I got frustrated and gave up on it. That said, I’ve enjoyed Fallout 4 so far. I like to stop tracking quests periodically so I can explore the world. I’m a digital hoarder, so picking up everything and being over-encumbered is my way of life.

I have one question for you, Geekly Gang. Why do radscorpions burrow under toilets?

Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here again. That’s all our writers have for what they’ve been playing this past month. Feel free to share what you’ve been playing, Geekly Gang. Thank you for reading, wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

Tag: dorfromantik

Cozy Video Game Review: Dorfromantik