Wednesday, May 6, 2020

My Little Castle isn’t magic for me

I realized recently that it had been weeks since I taught myself a new game. Which isn’t that extraordinary (years ago it would have been) but I have gotten into the habit of making little solitaire games so I do have a library of games to try out.

So I pulled out My Little Castle and played a handful of games. I’d made it earlier this year and had been meaning to try it.

My Little Castle is a tile-laying game where the tiles are rhombuses where the two acute triangles that form the rhombus are the each specific terrain types. Like side has to go with like side and you are trying to form empty spaces in the shape of triangles and hexagons. 

It can be played solitaire or multi-player. One touch I liked in my solitaire plays is that you use three draw piles and you discard the top tiles of the piles you didn’t pick if they share a terrain type with the tile you did pick.

Okay. Here’s the brutal truth. The two most interesting things about My Little Castle are that it uses rhombuses and the component sheet is just one page. There’s nothing broken or wrong with the game but there’s also nothing that really grabbed me about it either. It didn’t have that spark.

When I want a quick little tile-laying game, I usually play Autumn or Ambagibus. If I want something with a little more meat, I go with Orchard or Micro Rome or the Architect. There’s nothing about My Little Castle that would make me choose it over those games.

(At some point, I read in someone else’s blog about the Autumn test. If a PnP game made folks ask ‘Why aren’t we playing Autumn?’, it failed the test. I don’t see My Little Castle passing the test for most people. It doesn’t for me.)

 As usual, I am glad that I made and tried My Little Castle. Part of my interest in PnP is looking at different ideas and games. From that standpoint, it was rewarding. However, if you were to ask me to recommend a PnP project that uses rhombuses, I’d suggest Cronberg.

No comments:

Post a Comment