Dorfromantik is a confusing one. It was advertised to me as a super casual, relaxing puzzle game. Thinking back, I should have had my doubts straight away from hearing "puzzle" and "relaxing" in the same sentence, but alas. I just had to find out the hard way.
In Dorfromantik, you begin with a pile of hexagonal tiles that you must place on a board one by one. Each of the edges in those tiles has a different type of land between meadow, forest, city, wheat field, train track and water, and each tile must be placed directly adjacent to another already in the grid. By connecting tiles that have matching edges, the player scores points; by surrounding tiles with perfectly connected edges, as well as completing other in-game objectives, the player earns more tiles to use. The objective is to stay in the game while scoring as many points as possible.
There are no timers, with the only limit being the depth of your stack of tiles. Accompanied by calm ambient music, over time, you'll see the game board forming an ever expanding idyllic scenery. Sounds relaxing enough-- what's the catch? In that it's still a puzzle game, and a rather cruel one: imagine you're playing Tetris, and you desperately need a line block. Except the game doesn't give you a line block. You get a square block. A T block. An 己-block. An x*sin(x²) block. You get a tile that's exactly like a line block, but somehow reversed or tilted, and thus doesn't fit the place you need it in no matter how much you spin it.
A lot of the outcome in Dorfromantik is decided by the RNG more than anything else, and as simple as your tile requirements might be, you might lose because the game keeps sending curveballs your way -- the tile mechanics give it an outstanding potential for doing so -- or because the quests it gives you are impossible or impractical. This is all fine for a casual game, sure... but that score counter is right there, staring sneeringly at you. And should fall for that taunt and try to get a high score, well, then you stumble into the second problem with the game.
Luck decides most games, but should Lady Luck be on your side and give the session a good start, so long as you have a good grasp on the game's mechanics, it's possible to reach a critical mass of tiles in a way that you have just too big of a stack to ever lose, and basically play Endless mode in Classic. I discovered this by accident on my seventh or so game, and what ensued was torture: my game lasted for thirty five hours spanning three weeks.
The issue is mainly that as the session progresses, your small island becomes a continent that takes a while to pan around, and at one point, the engine itself starts to struggle with the amount of tiles that are present. Putting down tiles becomes a painstaking task of inspecting everywhere on that landmass for an appropriate placement, especially when the game throws those curveball tiles with completely absurd edges at you. And you want to finish because you want to know what score you'll get, but at the same time, it's just not fun anymore.
I'm not sure how this can be fixed, or if it even is something to be fixed. Seems like most players don't play enough of the game to stumble upon it, and a small but dedicated community seems to enjoy spending hours on end getting millions of points. Even the official board game didn't deviate much from the formula, and instead, session length is more limited by the physical limit of tiles it can give you (it's actually a pretty odd board game).
Ultimately, though, I advise staying in the group that doesn't stick around for long. Dorfromantik a great game to play once or twice, then move along. It's aesthetically pleasing, it features an unusual style of gameplay that is worth getting to know, but the more you play it, the more likely it will be that its idyllic sights will turn into a prison and have the opposite effect you might have wanted from a game like it.
In Dorfromantik, you begin with a pile of hexagonal tiles that you must place on a board one by one. Each of the edges in those tiles has a different type of land between meadow, forest, city, wheat field, train track and water, and each tile must be placed directly adjacent to another already in the grid. By connecting tiles that have matching edges, the player scores points; by surrounding tiles with perfectly connected edges, as well as completing other in-game objectives, the player earns more tiles to use. The objective is to stay in the game while scoring as many points as possible.
There are no timers, with the only limit being the depth of your stack of tiles. Accompanied by calm ambient music, over time, you'll see the game board forming an ever expanding idyllic scenery. Sounds relaxing enough-- what's the catch? In that it's still a puzzle game, and a rather cruel one: imagine you're playing Tetris, and you desperately need a line block. Except the game doesn't give you a line block. You get a square block. A T block. An 己-block. An x*sin(x²) block. You get a tile that's exactly like a line block, but somehow reversed or tilted, and thus doesn't fit the place you need it in no matter how much you spin it.
A lot of the outcome in Dorfromantik is decided by the RNG more than anything else, and as simple as your tile requirements might be, you might lose because the game keeps sending curveballs your way -- the tile mechanics give it an outstanding potential for doing so -- or because the quests it gives you are impossible or impractical. This is all fine for a casual game, sure... but that score counter is right there, staring sneeringly at you. And should fall for that taunt and try to get a high score, well, then you stumble into the second problem with the game.
Luck decides most games, but should Lady Luck be on your side and give the session a good start, so long as you have a good grasp on the game's mechanics, it's possible to reach a critical mass of tiles in a way that you have just too big of a stack to ever lose, and basically play Endless mode in Classic. I discovered this by accident on my seventh or so game, and what ensued was torture: my game lasted for thirty five hours spanning three weeks.
The issue is mainly that as the session progresses, your small island becomes a continent that takes a while to pan around, and at one point, the engine itself starts to struggle with the amount of tiles that are present. Putting down tiles becomes a painstaking task of inspecting everywhere on that landmass for an appropriate placement, especially when the game throws those curveball tiles with completely absurd edges at you. And you want to finish because you want to know what score you'll get, but at the same time, it's just not fun anymore.
I'm not sure how this can be fixed, or if it even is something to be fixed. Seems like most players don't play enough of the game to stumble upon it, and a small but dedicated community seems to enjoy spending hours on end getting millions of points. Even the official board game didn't deviate much from the formula, and instead, session length is more limited by the physical limit of tiles it can give you (it's actually a pretty odd board game).
Ultimately, though, I advise staying in the group that doesn't stick around for long. Dorfromantik a great game to play once or twice, then move along. It's aesthetically pleasing, it features an unusual style of gameplay that is worth getting to know, but the more you play it, the more likely it will be that its idyllic sights will turn into a prison and have the opposite effect you might have wanted from a game like it.