Semi-comfy city/farm/field/forest/sea/lake/river builder revolving around placing tiles. Has a self-contradictory approach where continued expansion and creation is based around placing tiles with conditions on them to get more tiles.

This often means a sudden switch to tactical and less aesthetic placements; which seems quite antithetical to what the initial aim is? Despite its best efforts to make you mix and match, it seems that the ideal plan is to have a field area, a town area, a river area, etc. than a natural intermingling scene.

Might just be a me-issue I guess.

Dorfromantik is a landscaping puzzle game about placing hexagonal tiles on a big board in order to create twee Nordic dioramas. It's score-based and you get more points if you rotate each tile so that its edges match those of the adjacent tiles already on the board. You also have to chain different groups of geographical features together. So, as you play, you might get a quest to create a forest with 300-odd trees, or a town with 50 or so houses, a railway with at least 15 different sections of track. The more of these quests you fulfil, the more tiles you get. The game ends when you run out of tiles, at which point your score is tallied. The challenge comes from finding just the right spot for the tile you're given, or the next best fit, and placing each one on a map that gets incrementally bigger the longer the game goes on.

I found it very addictive but also calming to play at the end of a long day. The charming visuals and soothing soundtrack, as well as the innate satisfaction that comes from finding a suitable space for each tile, coalesce into a peaceful, gently pleasing experience. It's the very definition of a 'cosy' game, and goes well with a podcast or audiobook and nice cup of tea.

Like Dead Cells, however, which I 'completed' last week, it's essentially endless - each time you run out of tiles you start over and try to get a higher score; there's no other concrete objective - so you can keep playing it until you get bored, or want to move onto something else. I've spent six hours with it so far, and although I'm not bored of it, I do feel the need to play something with a bit more direction, so I'm going to say I'm done with this for now. I've categorised it in Steam under 'Background Games', however: stuff I can happily chip away at while I'm watching or listening to something equally undemanding. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for something similar.

People say comfy or cozy when describing this game. I'd call it zen-like. There are a handful of games that I go back to constantly when I want to relax and zone-out by playing a podcast in the background and playing on auto-pilot. Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain 2, Monster Hunter, and this game served the same purpose. But it didn't last that long. Unlike the other games where I can feel a sense of progression, variety, and accomplishment, the only real progression in this game is getting new skins or trying to beat your previous high-score. So while it was nice for the first 6 hours to play this and zone-out I eventually just got tired and wanted to do something else with my time. It made me appreciate those other games more and realize why I always go back to them and have hundreds of hours in each.

But I will say it is very satisfying to get very far in the game. I didn't get good enough to have over a hundred tiles at once, but seeing other people's gameplay is crazy when they expand so far. When you get to that point the game really is beautiful to look at.