Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/6998174/point-city

Designers: Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich
Publishers: AEG, Flatout Games
Artist: Dylan Mangini

Point City is a cute, fun, quick board game that’s super easy to teach but still has some interesting decisions and strategic opportunities. Honestly, I’m surprised at how much I enjoy this game considering it’s such a seemingly simple game.

The deck used in the game is created by combining a certain number of cards (contingent on player count) from each of the three levels of buildings. As you can imagine, as you progress through the deck and get to the higher-level cards, the costs go up but so do the rewards.

There is a tableau of sixteen cards (a 4×4 grid) in front of all players called the Market. Each turn, players choose two orthogonally adjacent cards from the Market and add them to their personal tableau called their City (makes sense, right?!).

The cards in this game are double sided, which is where the fun comes in. On one side, you have resources, and on the other, buildings. The resources can be collected from the tableau any time, but each building has a cost. You can only take a building from the main tableau if you have the resources to “purchase” it. Any spent resources go into a discard pile, and any purchased buildings get added to that players’ tableau. Some buildings have permanent resources on them that can be used when purchasing buildings (and don’t get discarded), but these cannot be utilized the turn the building is purchased.

As you progress through the deck, some buildings have points or have a civic icon meaning that player can select a civic token (provide varying ways to score points) from the display. The only way players score points at the conclusion of the game are points on their building cards and civic tokens; that’s it. Leftover resources are only useful as a tiebreaker if needed.

So, Point City is basically a light but clever engine building game. There are a lot of cards, and since only a certain number get used each game, there is lots of variability and therefore replayability. The differing civic tokens are also nice. The Kickstarter version adds some civic tokens; they’re nice for the sake of increased variety but they’re certainly not a necessity unless you play a lot. The three different building levels are also unique. They provide an interesting twist on engine building while still keeping the mechanic true to form.

While I enjoyed playing with two players and look forward to playing at higher player counts (I wish it played more than four), I adore the solo mode. In the solo mode, two tokens (one for rows, one for columns) are placed on the edges of the Market indicating which cards the AI will take. While being exceptionally simple, easy to facilitate, and straightforward, the added strategy behind knowing which cards will be taken and how to mitigate the AI’s success is mind-blowing.

I’d honestly recommend this game to everyone – it’s very easy to get to the table, creative, and a lot of fun, but I especially suggest it to solo players looking for a unique, expeditious experience.