Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a light puzzle game that you dip into here and there for brief 15-minute sessions, but those hoping for more may be left disappointed. This is very much a ‘one trick pony’ of a game, and once the initial concept has worn thin, there isn’t much else to keep you engaged. The downside to this, however, is that Dorfromantik proves to be relatively shallow in the long run. There’s something wonderfully meditative about emptying your head and just focusing on building out little villages and railways in quiet forests while the relaxing and chipper music plays softly in the background. You could agonize over every tile placement and ensure that every edge lines up perfectly, it feels like you’re just expected to do your best and occasionally produce an imperfect landscape. Dorfromantik is not the kind of game that pushes you too hard to optimize your playstyle and this more laid-back approach can make for a nice change of pace. Quests can keep you going for a while, but you inevitably run out of tiles, at which point you’re given a score and the opportunity to start over. Once you complete a quest, you’re given a big point bonus and a few extra tiles are added to the bottom of your stack. These are easy enough to fulfill, with tasks ranging from building a river that’s eight tiles long or making a forest that’s worth over two hundred points. You start out with a limited amount of tiles, but you can occasionally top these up by fulfilling quests that randomly generate as you place the tiles down. Each hex tile in your stack has a collection of things like houses, forests, or rivers on its various edges and you get points for each edge you can match to an already placed tile. And though it sacrifices some of its long-term appeal with this approach, we commend Dorfromantik for committing wholly to the peaceful atmosphere it endeavors to create.īased around a simple score-based puzzle, you start off with a single hex tile floating in space and your goal is simply to build out a countryside as far as you possibly can by adding to it. Here you have a puzzle game that doesn't chase after complex mechanics, cutting-edge design, or intense action Dorfromantik is simply about building warm, rural countrysides at your own pace.

In an age where it feels like many big-budget projects are falling victim to 'FOMO mechanics' and stricter price schemes, it can be refreshing to play a game that focuses on simplicity, like Dorfromantik.

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