Product-Micro City

Producer– ThisTroy Games

Price– SOON!

Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 30 to 60 minutes (1-2 players)

Type- Euro

Depth-Light

TL; DR-Packs a punch for its size 90%

Basics- If you build it, they will come!  MicroCity is a simple building game that almost has a rondel and worker placement feel to it.  Each round you play a card from your hand.  This card moves your one worker on the map to different locations that give you resources, let you trade resources, or even spend resources to build.  The card also gives you a second action that can let you get more resources or removes investment tokens from the board.  Thus, the cards really shape your play.  Alternatively, you can pick up all your cards and not do a card action and just move one place.  In addition to the cards, each round you roll two dice.  These dice can be spent, if they match the location or the card, to make the action more powerful.  Or if neither is used, you can use them to gain extra money.  At the locations you take your actions then place an investment token.  These tokens block future uses of that location until they are removed.  The goal of the game is to spend different combinations of resources to build different parts of a building within a number of turns (in the cooperative or solo mode) or earn victory points in the competitive mode.  If you run out of turns or can’t place an investment marker, you lose!  If you have the most points or complete the buildings before time is out, you win!

Mechanics-MicroCity is a simple game.  You just read most of the rules above.  It’s pretty simple.  However, it does have some meat on its small bones as the game’s timer can be brutal if you don’t plan ahead.  However, much like my problems with Scythe, you can end up just doing the same action multiple times in a row.  That’s not as much fun.  The game limits this as investments can stop you from just doing the same location actions again and again.  MicroCity isn’t the most complex game I’ve played, but it does have some depth despite it’s small size.  4.25/5

Theme-Did I feel like a builder?  Solid kind of!  The locations in the city where you send your one worker have a feel like you are picking up wood or steel.  The pieces make you feel like an engineer.  Was it the most character driven game I’ve played?  No.  This game can’t be that involved given its small size and small run time.  Overall, this is the most solid building experience I can expect from something the size of a large matchbox. 4.5/5

Instructions-The rules are the weak point to the game.  They work, but the flow is honestly weird.  Parts and their meanings are explained  before the flow of the game so I felt like I was lost until I saw the flow.  There are multiple versions of the game which is amazing, but the way they are separated in the rulebook feels off.  You won’t need YouTube or Board Game Geek to play, but learning all by yourself is a bit hard given the flow of the book. 4/5

Execution– Honestly, for a small game the pieces are nice!  Check out our unboxing here-https://youtu.be/pAvDwAu_lCQ   Art is solid, tokens are good, and the cards are good quality.  There are lots of extra pieces given the different game modes, but there is enough here to make that happen and make you happy to get the kickstarter copy.  Good pieces do come in small packages! 5/5

Summary-This is a fun game that feels like a few other games I own with some good and bad.  I did feel like I was building, but some goals made me feel like I was just doing the same thing over and over again.  The rules are hard to start, but get you through decently at the end.  The game itself is pretty to look at and solid to play with.  If I want a good less than one hour co-op building game, I think this will hit my table again. 89%