Board Game Friday: Sprawlopolis - GAME REVIEW

Sprawlopolis is a small card game published by Button Shy, the makers of many small card games!  In Sprawlopolis, you will use the 18 cards to create your own bustling city that meets the demands of the people for that particular game.  Sprawlopolis was designed by Steven Aramini, Danny Devine, and Paul Kluka.  The game claims it is a 1-4 player game, but I wouldn't recommend any more than two players at a time.  For the record, all of my plays of the game thus far have been solo plays (which seems to be the recommended way to play the game based on Boardgamegeek voting).

According to Boardgamegeek, there are 13 different expansions or other content for Sprawlopolis, but for the purpose of my review, I'm going to focus entirely on the base game.  

Game Summary:

Sprawlopolis is all about building a city while managing various (oftentimes, competing) interests.  Despite the limited number of cards to play, there are many interesting possibilities on every turn.  Much like Sid Meier's Civilization on the computer, Sprawlopolis is one of those "just one more try" kind of games where you can easily spend an hour playing through the game many times, always trying to improve your score.

Game Setup:

You begin by shuffling the 18 cards.  Three of the 18 cards are turned over to their criteria side and placed out of the way of the play area.  Then you deal yourself a hand of three cards and one more card as your "seed card" to start your city in the middle of the play area.  The remaining cards form a (face-up) draw stack.

How to Play:

Each turn is dead simple: you play one card, then draw one card.  Play until there are no more cards to draw, then play out the remaining cards in your hand.  The catch here is that each card played has to be played in a horizontal layout (but you may rotate the card 180 degrees).  In addition, cards must be played such that they either touch a card already in the city or overlap at least part of a card already in the city.  In this way, you can cover up unwanted zones and/or connect zones that otherwise wouldn't be able to touch.  After a few turns, you have a large decision tree to go through to find the perfect move!

Winning the Game:

Once you've played through the deck, you score the three criteria cards, the largest size of each zone in your city, and finally, you lose points for the number of different roads.  You win if your final score equals or exceeds the sum of the numbers at the top of the three criteria cards, otherwise, you lose.  The entire game from setup to cleanup takes about 10 minutes!

My Thoughts:

I'll admit that the first time that I played Sprawlopolis I didn't see what the hype was all about.  The game is highly reviewed on Boardgamegeek (earning a 7.3 as of the time of this review), but I didn't think it was great.  However, after getting a few more plays under my belt, I'm firmly in the camp of this is an awesome little card game.  

There is a wide variety of goal cards that seem to be scored mathematically perfectly.  It's amazing how many games I've played where I've either won or lost by a point or two.  The different scoring criteria can also wildly affect how high you score. Some games will be super low-scoring, rather intense games, while in other games, the points will flow freely.  No matter what, the final result is bound to come down to the wire in terms of the final scoring!

The Bottom Line:

Pros:

• Super easy to learn
• Quick to set up and tear down
• Quick to play
• Tons of variety despite the small size of the deck
• Super small packaging

Cons:

• Best played as a solo game, despite what the game packaging would have you believe

Overall Score:

9.  Sprawlopolis is a fun, engaging solo game that is incredibly quick from the time you take it off your shelf to the time you put it back away.  There are plenty of goal cards that combine in a new, fun puzzle every single time you play (there are 18 choose 3, or 816, different goal card possibilities, so every game is bound to play differently)!  I've now played the game enough times that I'm tempted to try and track down some of the various expansions, and if that isn't enough praise for a solo game, I don't know what is!

Note:  I am using Board Game Geek's rating scale to come up with my score. 

Board Game Geek's Rating Scale:

10:  Outstanding - will always enjoy playing

9:  Excellent - very much enjoy playing

8:  Very good - enjoy playing and would suggest it

7:  Good - usually willing to play

6:  Ok - will play if in the mood

5:  Mediocre - take it or leave it

4:  Not so good - but could play again

3:  Bad - likely won't play this again

2:  Very bad - won't play ever again

1:  Awful - defies game description