The long view of the Architect: it keeps getting better

About a year ago, I tried out a solitaire game called the Architect. At the time, I thought it was better than I had expected and I knew I should play it some more. Yeah, it took me a year to get back to it.

(Spoiler: it is even better than I remembered it being)

The Architect is an 18-Card tile laying game where you are creating the floor plan for a one-story home. It needs to have a central corridor and as few isolated rooms, doors opening into walls and gaping holes in outside walls as possible.

The tile-laying rules are very generous. There are columns that have to form a grid. Beyond that, you can both cover up previously placed cards and tuck under them. That gives you a lot of flexibility.

Which you need because it’s surprisingly tough to make a good layout. The rules say you should have plenty of space when you play and the rules weren’t kidding. Unlike many similar games where you end with blocky card patterns, The Architect can create some very snaky, spread-out layouts.

Going back to The Architect, I realized what really makes it tick and stand out is that every card is very different. In a lot of tile-laying games, there’s a lot of symmetry and similarity in tiles. Every card on the Architect is very distinct while still being very true to the architecture theme. I’m really impressed with how much design work had to go into this seemingly simple idea.

The variety of cards creates a lot of interesting decisions and means that the layouts really change from game to game. There’s a lot of changing challenges and replay. 

I have played a lot of micro games. I’m a lazy PnPer and they’re easy to make. And I have seen a lot of game crammed into a few components. But even by that standard, there’s a lot of game in eighteen cards here. If it was 52-cards, it would be overwhelming.

The more I have played The Architect, the more of an interesting puzzle it becomes. Eighteen cards and minimal ink, I’d recommend it to anyone who is curious.

Initial thoughts about the Architect

Despite being exactly what I thought it would be, The Architect managed to surprise me.

The Architect is a free PnP game consisting of eighteen cards where you are designing the blueprint for a home. The artwork is seriously minimalist, just simple lines and squares. (Which is still quite effective since that is evocative of blue prints.) All in all, it’s an easy, very ink friendly build.

It’s a solitaire tile-laying game, draw a card, place a card. You know the routine. The placement restrictions are that the support columns must form a grid. Beyond that, you can overlap cards, turn cards sideways and even slide cards under other cards. You need to create a central corridor. You get points for rooms directly off the corridor but you lose points for big holes in the outer walls, doors that open into walls and rooms you can’t get into.

Here’s where The Architect surprised me. Even with the really open placement rules, I found the game surprisingly hard. I went into my first game, thinking it would be easy and I ended up completely messing up the central corridor.

I did much better on my second game and I might be done with the game after ten or so plays. But if I get that much play out of a free PnP micro game, I feel that’s really good.

There’s apparently plans to make a multi-player version, which I’m curious about. In the solitaire version, you have two cards with double doors that you can place anytime that define the central corridor. I can picture each player having their own set, turning the game into a vicious fight.

I have a feeling I’ll be writing about the Architect again. It might fizzle out quickly or it might get more interesting the more I play it. However, I went expecting meh and it surprised me.