Dorfromantik
Welcome to the build-a-burg workshop
WITH JUST THE BASIC TOOLSET YOU’RE CAPABLE OF CRAFTING SOME TRULY IDYLLIC SCENERY
Of all the tiles in Dorfromantik— tiles that snap together in magical ways—edge pieces are the cruellest. There’s a finality at odds with the endless nature of this procedural jigsaw, whose forests, towns, rivers, and railways want to expand in every direction—not be curtailed by the results of a lucky dip.
Dorfromantik is a puzzle game, but also a city builder, and sort of a board game. You spend your time constructing settlements, and all the necessary stuff around them: Forests, train tracks, rivers, and patchwork fields, by placing hexagonal tiles that are randomly drawn, one at a time from a pile on the screen. You don’t get to choose between tiles, or remove ones that have been set already, although you are allowed a glimpse of upcoming tiles, to better plan out your world.
Why are you doing this? Not to increase a population, or make a happiness slider go up, but to appease the tiles themselves, many of whom have their own ‘quests’ you’ll want to fulfil. For example, this clump of trees wants 54 trees connected to it, while this town tile wants to cosy up to at least 15 houses. As long as you’ve formed a chain—a chain of hexagonal edges—then you can connect the tiles in any shape you like.
HEX CELLS
While points are awarded for merely slotting themed tiles together—trees beside trees, houses by houses, with as many of each tile touching as you like— you earn the big bucks by fulfilling quests, an action that additionally rewards you with a few more tiles. The draw pile is limited, counting down with every hex you place, so completing quests is the only way to stave off the inevitable game over— in the high-score-chasing Classic mode, at least. It’s the only mode currently in the game, and its implementation of scores is limited. Mainly, the game encourages multiple playthroughs by tantalizing with brand new tiles and tile reskins.
Every tile you unlock is shuffled into the deck for future games, making Dorfromantik’s worlds a little more interesting each time you unlock something. But even with just the basic toolset, you’re capable of crafting some truly idyllic scenery.
In a traditional building game, you’re trying to build a functioning thing: a settlement, usually, one that meets the needs of its inhabitants even as it expands. Generally you’re free to make this settlement an orderly utopia, or an ugly, sprawling mess.
Dorfromantik, on the other hand, is a game about making beautiful places. Its quest system encourages, and ultimately cultivates an aesthetic approach to urban and environmental planning. Not too many houses here, it says, but let’s have lots of forest over here. And would it kill you to start laying down a second waterway?
Tiles update to match their surroundings, so a small cluster of houses will give the impression of a rural hamlet, while a sprawling conurbation will automatically be painted in an urban gray. The end result is a game that, on a basic level, will always be beautiful. But it takes skill to join its tactile tiles in ways that will both maximize your score and, more importantly, extend your game session, letting you expand the borders of your map, fill in any gaps, and better realize the potential of each model world.
I will be curious to see how Dorfromantik expands from here, as its tile-laying core is as rock-solid as they come. More biomes and tiles should help with the slight lack of variation, but this is already an engrossing puzzle game.