With the board game aficionado that I am, and my love of games like Carcassonne, I naturally was already well familiar with Dorfromantik, the co-operative landscape building game where you shall try to solve objectives and reach massive scores with random tiles to place. I somehow never played the videogame though, which is a… fully single player experience, actually. It’s been out on PC for a long while, now it’s time to give it a spin on Xbox. Here’s our review for Dorfromantik, tested on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S!
Give me that tile
Dorfromantik is the kind of videogame that features extremely easy rules, yet it quickly becomes addictive for the strategic depth and variety that all offers, with the tension of the (usually) random tiles to pick that keep you on your toes, especially when you’ve nearly lost the match. With hexagon-shaped tiles (six sides, for those who failed maths), the player has to create landscapes by fitting identical-sides in the best way possible, forming a beautiful flat landscape that slowly populates in front of our eyes. Fields, towns, forests, rivers, railroads – the player needs to find the most optimal placements both in terms of connections, and both for the objectives the game sets out for them.
Higher points are attributed when sides are correctly matched, with even bonus points and extra tiles awarded for a “perfect” tile placement – that is, when all six of its sides matches the neighbouring tile. Very satisfying multi-perfect combos can also be created, which also come with large scores. However, this isn’t just aesthetics – various objectives have to be met to be able to play long. Many tiles, in fact, will have a set number of fields, trees, pieces of river and so forth the player has to achieve – either a minimum (so the player can overachieve, if needed), or a fixed amount. Completing these objectives nets a ton of points and 5 extra tiles to spend, thus most of the game will revolve around trying to meet these goals.
It’s not over ’till it’s over – oh wait it’s 5AM
With the classic game mode ending when the player ends their tiles, generating extra ones to place is an absolute necessity to go on. Sometimes, we’ll need to sacrifice some lofty combos just so that we can score a few extra tiles via a perfect tile placement to stay alive. Other times, our greed in keeping a ridiculously large area of a thousand trees and beyond may cause us to expand way too wide, not giving us enough time to close it all down to score all the flags. I didn’t mention flags, did I? Unlike most objectives that don’t demand an area to be closed from all available sides, flags require us to completely lock all possible connection points of however big of an area we created. That 100+ tile field of houses that looks so damn good? Well, it has to be locked down at one point.
Needless to say, this is quite the terrific gameplay loop, absolutely on par with the eternal classic that is Carcassonne – it even shares a very similar design philosophy with that board game, all things considered. Me and my partner spent various evenings playing this game together, giving each other tips, reaching some gargantuan scores after 4+ hours marathon matches as well. Oh look, it’s 5AM, where did the time go? There is tension in seeing the available pile of tiles dry up, as we have to carefully calculate how many placements we need to finish certain objectives that would grant us a lot more tiles to survive longer and to go for higher scores. The game’s calm music, nature sounds, gracious tile designs with even some animals, moving boats, trains, various biomes and day/night looks… they all add up for a soothing, yet painfully addictive experience. One that runs smooth on both Xbox Series X and S, aside from a hiccup or two when loading a previously played match on a massive board.
The heart of competition
The game seems to feature leaderboards, though we didn’t seem to be able to find it inside the game actually – only seeing our position for each game mode and not other players’ scores. Weird, that. Speaking of game modes, there’s plenty to choose from. The aforementioned classic mode, a Hard mode with slightly less tile shapes and more difficult objectives, a handful of challenge modes with a fixed set of tiles to use, all the way down to free play and custom rule matches, where we can set the individual tile types’ frequency, the difficulty of the objectives, the amount of starting tiles and many more rules. All in all, it’s basically endlessly replayable, and way too addictive even after a couple dozen hours of play.
There’s even all sorts of achievements and goals to claim. First, these need to be found by claiming hidden tiles on the landscape. Then, they can be completed in future matches to unlock new tiles, skins, biomes and more. These range from cumulative ones, asking us a certain amount of perfect placements or finished objectives, all the way down to some rather sadistic ones where the player has to place large quantities of tiles in a row without rotating them, or without ever making a wrong connection between any two sides. These achievements demand some lateral thinking, adding some further variety and value to an already very replayable title. Individual matches can even be saved, so that we can consult exact board and tile placements we did – neat!
A brilliant single player game, but what about…?
Alongside the videogame’s original release in 2022, Dorfromantik received a board game version – which, as mentioned, I already played. That is more or less the same game, though it offers for co-operative gameplay for up to 6 players, unique campaign scenarios with new tile types that keep getting added and even some player agency in choosing paths, and so forth. And so, it begs the question: how come Dorfromantik, the videogame, features absolutely no multiplayer/co-op option whatsoever? It would be absolutely logical to have even just the basic game modes with multiple players alternating one another in placing tiles towards a common goal. Indeed, my partner and I had a great time thinking the matches through together, but it was still a single player game. How much better would it have been if she could have grabbed a controller for local play or, even better, online play for when we’re apart?
Don’t let that one oddity mislead you, however. Dorfromantik is a brilliantly crafted single player puzzle game that just happens to look like a board game, as it’s all about placing hexagon-shaped tiles in the most optimal ways possible, creating beautiful landscapes in the process. What seems like a simple formula that may bore you quick, may keep you up way too long at night – and it certainly did so for me, so you can trust my word on that. I’d really love some form of multiplayer options, but even as it stands, don’t sit this one out – it may just become your next addiction, alongside games like Balatro and Soulstone Survivors.
Dorfromantik
Played on
Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
PROS
- A simple yet painfully addictive formula
- Soothing atmosphere
- Various gamemodes and customizable rulesets
- Late game tension is fantastic
CONS
- No multiplayer whatsoever, despite the board game showing that it could work well
- A few UI oddities, such as the "hidden" leaderboards
