Waterworks!

Bringing water to a medieval town.

Part citybuilder, part card game, part turn-based management sim, Waterworks! is an inventive browser game that tells the history of a settlement – or the liquid part of it at least. The medieval town of Grudziadz is struggling to provide clean drinking water to its residents, and you’ve been brought in to help, first with literal buckets of river water and later with more sophisticated infrastructure including wells and pipes.

With the town’s houses fixed in place, you’re left to sort out the routes of water carriers, to build off-screen structures and lay pipes at strategic points, and each action costs you valuable cash and resource cards. You can only achieve so much before you run out of resources, though each new turn doles out more money and refills your hand. Typical cards include foremen, builders and scribes, carriers, wagons and sumps, and various gifts to or from the local ruler.

Waterworks! is simplistic and fairly linear, but it commits to its theme of water distribution in Poland. It’s not dry, despite that. Quite the opposite, it’s full of life: a tableau of the medieval world.

History comes to life in this satisfying management game that wrings plenty of ideas from its water theme. ★★★★★