Between Two Cities

When I came to the table and saw stacks of facedown tiles with loud Arabian patterns in yellow and purple I was intrigued. The face of the tiles could not be more contrasting and disappointing. The buildings look fine, I guess, but did they have to surround every image with a paving pattern so your finished city, already destined to be a boringly shaped 4x4 grid, is a wash of gray dreariness? In any game even if multiple cards or tiles have exactly the same function I would like to see at least a few variations in the art, and especially in a city building game where the tiles will be sat next to one-another, in one eyeful, and you want to have an attractive city to look at at the end of it all.

The pull of this game is that you build two of these cities, one cooperatively with each of your neighbours. Love games that play with the lines of cooperation and competition between the players. You could still conceivably be quarterbacked in this game, but only when playing with an asshole on both sides. I had a jolly old time shifting around tiles and working out scoring possibilities with Lizzy on my right, only to turn left and work out with Karl the best way to develop the city that would hopefully lose Lizzy the game.

Scoring is pretty standard stuff — different tile types score in different ways based on position and quantity in your city etc.

It took, what, 40 minutes to play, if that? No downtime.

I do wonder if hidden in the DNA of Between Two Cities there is a bigger and prettier game waiting to be born. Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig?

Did that deck of cards with options on how to choose player order (eg. by date of birth, height, colours of clothing in order of the rainbow) come with the game or was that something Lizzy keeps in her pocket?

Wrong section Could a mod relocate this to Games Discussion. Thanks much.

Sam, I agree almost entirely. There's a lot to like about it but great artwork would elevate it further. I think the 4 x 4 grid is a necessary constraint, otherwise it'd be too easy.

I think one thing that the game gets right is the design of the tiles. The rules for scoring are really nicely summarised with clear symbology and the printing is sharp and clear. I do agree that the artwork is then a bit of a letdown as everything looks a bit dreary and the variations in the tiles are barely noticeable. However, I really enjoyed the gameplay, the interaction and the 'compactness' of the game with its lack of downtime and nice short play time (matching the 'compactness' of the box which is exactly big enough to fit everything in). Definitely a keeper!

PaulG wrote:I think one thing that the game gets right is the design of the tiles. The rules for scoring are really nicely summarised with clear symbology and the printing is sharp and clear. I do agree that the artwork is then a bit of a letdown as everything looks a bit dreary and the variations in the tiles are barely noticeable. However, I really enjoyed the gameplay, the interaction and the 'compactness' of the game with its lack of downtime and nice short play time (matching the 'compactness' of the box which is exactly big enough to fit everything in). Definitely a keeper!

It would be better if the box was gold foil embossed and individually numbered... like mine is! :-p

Yeah - I clearly had too much money when this Kickstarter was running. How times have changed...