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Chatty on Games #1: Dorf Romantik

August 10, 2021 by The Chatty DM

Dorf Romantik on Steam
Dorf Romantik screenshot from Steam

Heya all, y’all. It’s been ages.

Many things have happened in my life in the last few months: The Sentinel Comics RPG came out, my contributions to Pathfinder 2e’s, a handful of monsters in the Bestiary 3 are published (look up the Slithering pit!), and I got a promotion at work… I’m now a Ubisoft Senior Scriptwriter AND a Junior Game Designer!

One of the things I do at work now is write micro reviews and/or design thoughts about some of the games I play. I thought it might be of interest to share them here.

So without no further ado I give you:

Dorf Romantik

“It’s like they put a high scoring mechanism on a Rainy-Day-Jigsaw-Puzzle session and realized it was (redacted) addictive.” -me on Twitter.

Dorf Romantik is an Early-Access German PC game created by three Berliner Game Design students who recently created Toukana studios. It’s a tile placing game where you build bucolic landscapes made of villages, farmed fields, forests, rivers, lakes, and railroads. You try to score the highest possible score while placing tiles from a stack (a bit like Carcassonne). Some tiles have challenges on them, asking you to build some elements of the landscape of a certain size (sometimes strictly) or more. When you meet these challenges, you are rewarded with more tiles. When you run out of tiles to play, the game ends. 

The game is relaxing. There’s is no timer, no rush to get anything done. It’s also got an unobtrusive soundtrack that blends in the background as you play.

The game IS challenging as some tiles are complicated to place properly. You must also place them carefully to keep as many of your options open. And as the game progresses, the tiles you get become more complex and the challenges you’re given to get more tiles get harder to complete.

It’s currently about $9 on Steam and I look forward to new developments!     

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Filed Under: Featured, Musings of the Chatty DM, Newest Critical Hits, Reviews, Video Games Tagged With: dorf romantik

About the Author

  • The Chatty DM

    The Chatty DM is the "nom de plume" of gamer geek Philippe-Antoine Menard. He has been a GM for over 40 years. An award-winning RPG blogger, game designer, and scriptwriter at Ubisoft. He squats a corner of Critical Hits he affectionately calls "Musings of the Chatty DM." (Email Phil or follow him on Twitter.)

    Email: chattydm@critical-hits.comWeb: https://critical-hits.com//category/chattydm/

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