As a Family-Friendly game site we always on the lookout for chill, relaxing, non-violent gameplay. Earlier this year I had been following the Steam Festival and a particular demo caught my eye. After playing the demo for Dorfromantik I’ve been instantly hooked. I have been waiting on the release of the game on Steam Early Access on the 25th of March.
Dorfromantik is a hex-based building, strategy and puzzle game. Developed by four-game design students who form Toukana Interactive.
Peaceful Building
Dorfromantik is a peaceful game where you create a beautiful and ever-growing village landscape by placing tiles. The isn’t any combat or fighting of any kind just gentle relaxing hex placing. This town-builder game is designed for casual play, similar to the mechanics of mobile games.
At the beginning of the game, you start with a set of tiles. You will need to arrange them well to gain points. More tiles will be given to you if you complete the quests. Once you’ve used up all the tiles, the game is over.
Place the Tiles
There are a variety of colourful biomes tiles to the right of the screen, as each one becomes available you can place it with a click of the mouse. The idea is to match forest tile to another forest tile and so on.
You gain more tiles by completing quests. A little speech bubble appears on certain tiles, indicating quests such as adding 8 additional house tiles to the coloured edges of a placed house tile. Or by connecting 3 fields to a quest tile. If the speech bubble has a tiny arrow on it hints to follow-up tasks to be completed.
Variety of Biomes
It’s not only houses and forest tiles you get to place in Dorfromantik, there are also river and railroad tiles to name but a few. These tiles have special restrictions, as once placed some empty spots around the tiles can’t be used for other tiles. These unusable spots are marked with an X tile and you have to work around them when they appear.
Reach a High Score
By using some planning skills, you can achieve combos to increase your points for the way you piece together the procedurally generated hexes of forests, houses, railroads, and watch as you bring the world to life tile by tile. In a way, the game really reminds me of Townscaper with some light objectives and puzzles to solve.
Peaceful Gameplay
Dorfromantik soundtrack is just as relaxing as the gameplay is, you’ll hear lovely ambient music and nature sounds like chirping birds in the background. There are satisfactory little clicks of the wooden tiles as you place them together. With animations of trains moving along the track and the sails of the windmill turning, which gives the impression that what you’re creating is alive.
Chill Gameplay
Dorfromantik is a game that might not suit all gamers as the gameplay is very chill and peaceful. Just by fitting tiles next to each other, you’ll watch your little world slowly grow. As you do you’ll discover new tiles, find achievements, and all is done without any pressure whatsoever.
Whether you want to think about maximizing efficiency, trying to play as long as possible and get a high score or just chill and stack some hexes into beautiful landscapes, the choice is yours!
Further Details
So far Dorfromantik is available on Steam and GOG priced at $9.99 / £7.99 / € 8,99. As I’ve mentioned the game is out on Early Access at the moment with a full release planned for the 2nd half of this year.