Wouter & Ymke 
Construct buildings to expand the village and turn the small Hamlet into a bustling town! In Hamlet, each player takes control of a number of villagers and has them erect new buildings, transport goods and make deliveries to the church in order to ultimately collect the most points!
1-4 players, age 10+
Playing time: 60-90 minutes
Designer: David Chircop
Artist: Yusuf Artun
Publisher: Mighty Boards
https://www.mighty-boards.com/
The Kickstarter campaign for Hamlet is launching on March 8th:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyboards/hamlet-the-village-building-game
I’ve always been fascinated by village building games, building something and seeing it evolve during the game is something that always gives me great satisfaction. The special thing about Hamlet is that, unlike in most other village building games, the buildings have all different shapes that can be joined together in different ways, with the only condition that the roads must always run through. This makes the playing area look completely different every play!
In Hamlet, buildings never really become the property of the player who builds them, except for the landmarks that score points at the end of the game. Each player will be able to use the buildings and the goods on them for his actions, as long as he makes sure he has access and the capacity to transport them.
Transporting goods is an important aspect of the game: you can move your workers along the roads that are pre-printed, but you can also build new roads that not only give access to buildings, but also earn you points at the end of the game. To transport goods you will need to hire donkeys; they allow you to move the goods from the tile on which it is located to the tile where your worker is standing and thus performing the action.
I’m very impressed by the amount of interaction in Hamlet, especially in comparison to similar games. At its core Hamlet is a tile placement game that combines both city building and pick-up and deliver mechanisms in an excellent way. The ingame economy makes the game really tight and you also start to wonder to what extent you can give other players advantages. Even with the placement of new tiles, you can start to cut off opponents or just help them out because you benefit sufficiently from it yourself. The game area may look a bit busy, but please note this prototype is still a work in progress and I’m pretty sure the final version will improve on this.
If this sounds like something that might interest you, I’d highly recommend you to check out the Kickstarter campaign which launches on March 8th.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyboards/hamlet-the-village-building-game
