Tag: kingdomino

Whatcha Playing, Geekly? August 2025

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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.

Tile Placement Starter Games

Getting Started with Tile Placement Games

Published on by Kyra1 Comment

Hi, everybody. Kyra’s back with another older write-up that never got posted. This week’s post is a beginner tabletop games. I may add a game or two because there have been countless games that have been published in the six or so years since this write-up was written, but so many people cover newer games. Let’s stick with the older games.

Today we’ll cover tile placement games. A tile placement game is one where players lay or place tiles in groups or patterns to achieve various effects. Usually, but not always, where players lay their tiles will earn them victory points (or just points) needed to win the game.

Okay. The boring part’s over. Let’s get to the games.

Kingdomino

Kingdomino and not its sister game Queendomino makes this list because Kingdomino is more streamlined and easier to learn. It’s not that Queendomino is all that more difficult to play. If you know how to play Kingdomino, it’s easy to learn how to play Queendomino and progressing from King to Queendomino works with my idea of learning tabletop games with a scaffolding approach. One game that builds on another.

Anyway, in Kingdomino players take on the role of a lord or lady as they try to gain the most land—or the most value tracts of land—by collecting dominos. The dominos in question have numbers on their back denoting how valuable they are and two sections of landscapes on the front (that can be forests, deserts, mines, wastelands, or swamps). Dominos equal to the number of lords or ladies (the players pawns) are placed in number order with the lowest number on top and players take turns selecting dominos and placing them in their kingdom.

I won’t go into much more detail with how Kingdomino balances who picks first each turn, but it’s well done (as one can expect from designer Bruno Cathala). Instead, let’s focus on the tile placement aspect. Players start with a 1×1 tile, their castle tile. All the dominos are 2×1 tiles and when they’re claimed and added to a player’s kingdom, they must share a side with a section of land that shares their type (forests with forests, deserts with deserts and so on); castle tiles count as all land types. Players also can’t exceed a 5×5 kingdom, but their castle doesn’t have to be in their kingdom’s center.

This all makes for some interesting maneuvering, but the scoring mechanism further complicates tile placement. Players count their scores for each region they have in their kingdom. A region is every continuous area of the same land type and there can be more than one region for a land type. Someone could have a forest region of five and another forest region of three. For each of these regions multiply the number of spaces by the region’s number of crowns. Pictures of crowns show up, usually, in higher value tiles. If the forest region with five space has one crown, it’s worth five points, but if there are two crowns in the five-space forest region, it’s worth 10. A region with no crowns yields no points, no matter how big it is, so it’s ideal to get at least one crown in each region.

Kingdomino received the 2017 Spiel des Jahres; it deserved the game of the year.

Tsuro

I know I’ve included Tsuro in a previous starter games list (route/network building games), but Tsuro pulls double duty as a great starter tile placement game. Each player has a pawn and their pawns begin the game on the edge of the board (a 6×6 grid). On a player’s turn, they place a tile from their hand—these tiles will have paths on them—on the board continuing the path (or route) their pawn is taking. As soon as a new tile is placed, the player moves their pawn further on the path. The aim is to be the last player with their token on the board.

Players are not only building a route or network in Tsuro, they’re placing tiles to do so, and this simple, elegant game makes for a great introduction to both game mechanisms.

Patchwork

Patchwork remains one of my go to two-player only games to teach people. Sure, the designer Uwe Rosenberg has plenty of games the reimplement the same game mechanisms as Patchwork and other designers have followed suit, but the original Tetris-like tabletop competitive game about making a quilt retains its power.

On a turn, players may spend buttons to buy one of three available polyomino tiles (that are patches shaped like a Tetris piece) and add it to their quilt or pass. It takes time to stitch new patches into a quilt, so players will move their time token closer to the center and when a player’s time token reaches the center, they may take a final turn and the game ends.

There are a few more rules to Patchwork, but it’s a simple, streamlined game that works well with its theme. Who’d think that making a quilt would make a great game? Patchwork’s simplicity masks deep strategies. Do you go for larger patches for more points, but leaving you fewer options with which to place future tiles, or do you go for slow and steady points throughout the game, making sure you fill up as many spaces as possible? The options are endless.

I had to include a polyomino tile placement game on this list. Patchwork may not be as hot of a game as it once was and other games may have taken its place (Bärenpark and even Rosenberg’s own Cottage Garden and A Feast for Odin have even taken Patchwork’s place) for a lot of gamers, but it’s still a great starter tile placement game.

Azul

Azul is another game that I included in a previous list of great starter games (Card Drafting Games), but it works for tile laying as well. In fact, Azul’s theme is tile laying a Portuguese wall. Players draw tiles from a bag and four of them are placed on 7 cardboard discs that are accessible to each player. Then, players take turns claiming similar tiles on each disc and adding them to their player boards (that represent the walls the players are tiling). Each board has the same wall pattern and the player to finish a row of tiles initiates the game’s end.

Again, Azul can be classified as card (or tile) drafting and that’s a core ingredient to the game as well as set collection and chain effects, but the combination found is Azul is so unique for a tile placement game that I had to include it on this list.

Chomp

This is the newest game of the list and the only one I added to the original post. I played Chomp a week ago for the first time. Chomp refers to the 2023 Allplay title, not the 2000 food chain card game Chomp! from Gamewright. In Chomp (without the exclamation point), players build a dinosaur biome by laying tiles with dinos, plants, tar pits, and other things you may find in the age of the dinosaurs.

Players must build their land so that herbivores have plants to eat, and carnivores have herbivores their size that they can eat. Dinos of the same type that are placed adjacent to other dinos of their type form a herd. Players can chain as many of these dinos together as they can to form massive herds and potentially earn big points.

Any dinos placed next to tar pits automatically die at the end of nine rounds (I played with 3-players, there may be more or fewer rounds at different player counts), so be careful where you place tar pits. But you may want your dinos to perish. Each tile is double-sided. One side depicts the land you’re placing, while the other gives the player a scoring option. Each game, players must balance whether they want to play or score the tile they pick up that round. Such a great twist.

Final Thoughts

We had a couple more games in this starter board game list than usual, so I hope there’s something here you’ll enjoy.

Know of any other great beginner tile placement games? Are there any games on this list you disagree with? You can place your suggestions and complaints in the comments.