Each player takes charge of an emerging city-state in ancient Greece. Over the course of 9 rounds you’ll be developing your economy, culture, and military in order to raise your prestige, population and troops.
2-4 players, age 12+
Playing time: 75 minutes
Designers: Head Quarter Simulation Game Club
Artwork: David Chapoulet & Jocelyn Millet
Publisher: Iello (Dutch version by White Goblin Games)
https://www.iello.fr/co.uk
Every round starts with the revealing of an event, which will occur after players have performed their actions. Players receive income equal to the level of their marker on the tax track, followed by rolling their dice.
Now players secretly assign one of the 7 different action tiles to each of their dice. Each tile has a specific value (0-6), you can activate them by assigning a die with a value equal or higher than the value shown, eventually spending citizens to virtually increase the value of your die.
The tiles are handled from low to high, and allow players to develop their city-state in various ways: for example by playing politics cards that give you bonuses, explore or trade to gain knowledge tokens, etc.
When all players have finished their actions, they get the chance to advance one of the tracks on their player board, and before moving into the next round the event is resolved and the achievements are awarded.
A game of Khôra lasts only about 60-75 minutes, which is definitely short for a civilization game, but this doesn’t mean there aren’t enough meaningful decisions to be made.
Each game you can play as another city-state, as the game comes with 7 different city tiles that all provide different benefits and guide you in a certain direction.
The only downside for me is the look of the game: sure, the art on the cards and tiles looks nice, but the whole thing reminds me of a spreadsheet, which makes the game play rather abstract and you never really feel like you are building your civilization.
Leaving this aside, we think Khôra is a fun and accessible game, which was very well appreciated here thanks to its short playing time and streamlined design!
Tabletopping 