Dorfromantik review – the simple pleasures of world-building

So-called “city-building” video games have long offered us the chance to reshape the world by turning urban design into a high-scoring pursuit. They offer the localised divine power of the town planner who, with a flourish of a pencil, can summon a dog park over here, a high-rise over there. Soon – in game as, presumably, in municipal life – glee turns to headache as you must balance the needs and desires of a whingeing populace who want to know why, precisely, you have put a nuclear power station next to the nursery school, or a phone tower in the middle of an A&E ward.

Dorfromantik, the debut from a team of four game design students from Berlin, is a simpler affair. By laying and arranging hexagonal tiles illustrated with various pieces of scenery – villages and forests, rivers and railways – you build an idyllic world, devoid of a complaining populace, or the threat of imminent natural disaster. Play has the rhythm and tactility of a board game: you take the top-most hexagonal tile from your randomised stack, and place it on the “board”, then attempt to match one of its sides with the next tile in order to expand the village, or the corn fields. Soon enough, a unique vista emerges.

Dynamic goals layer on to the simple pleasures of world-building. If the game notices that you’re starting to build, say, a railway line, it will set you a challenge to extend the line across a set number of tiles. Complete this mission and bonus tiles are added to the stack. When the stack is fully depleted, it’s game over, so you must remain strategically mindful of these various goals in order to keep playing.

While your world soon becomes complex and filled with numerous and sometimes competing objectives simultaneously, the ambience is soothing, your actions gently shooed along by a spare but cheery piano and synth soundtrack. This is game-playing at its most thoughtfully relaxing, with that rare chance, in video games, to be the architect of a world, rather than its conqueror.