Hi all! My name’s Hulyen and I’m going to be doing some board game reviews for Real Women of Gaming. I love board gaming, video gaming and cats (and am excited to have the chance to review some here!)

The first board game that I’ll be reviewing is the Spiel des Jahres 2023 winner Dorfromantik from Pegasus Spiele based on the video game from Toukana Interactive!

Dorfromantik is a cooperative board game for 1-6 players about creating a perfect village through tile laying. Build up forests, rivers, trains, grain and the titular villages to satisfy goals and end up with the highest score possible. More importantly, the process of playing out each game feels very peaceful and every playthrough leaves me ready to immediately set up and play again!

Gameplay is satisfyingly simple with lots of room for interesting decision points for the group. Flip a tile from the top of the stack and place it onto the shared landscape bordering an existing tile. Task tiles will come into play with a marker showing a number of a type of tile that need to be connected to it to score the tile and add a new one to the board- there are always three Task tiles in play to give ever-changing placement goals as the game goes on! The other initial way to gain points in Dorfromantik comes from Flag tiles. At the end of the game you’ll get points for every connected tile of the matching type, but only if you’ve managed to enclose it with no open connection points.

Part of the replayability of this title is due to the optional campaign sheets, turning it into a pseudo legacy game but without any permanent changes to the board or its pieces. After tallying the final score of each game, grab a campaign sheet (which helpfully have spots for names and dates for both tracking previous complete playthroughs or to help manage multiple different campaigns at the same time) and mark a number of spots on the path based on how well the game went. Different paths lead to unlocking unique achievements, mechanics and ways to score even more points on the next game such that you cannot see all of the possible options in a single campaign playthrough.

Achievement cards are how Dorfromantik handles the legacy portion and unlocks to slowly morph and add more depth to the game as you play through it- start with the ‘locked’ side and once the condition is met you flip it over to ‘unlock’ it and gain something new!

If you’ve played the video game and are wondering how well it translates to a board game, I’ve got great news for you: it feels just as contemplative and peaceful as the original digital title! There have obviously been some mechanical changes, and it’s not possible to go nearly as long in the board game, but it definitely has the feel of the original while being different enough to merit owning both- especially with a solo campaign being an option.

Who do I recommend the Dorfromantik board game to? If you love puzzle games that are easy to teach, cooperative with a reasonable play time (30-60 minutes depending on how much of the campaign you’ve unlocked) then this is a great option to check out for your table!