Village

I'm down with a nasty case of tonsillitis and most of my day I just roll around in bed, hurting everywhere and sweating like I was on a treadmill. First couple days I couldn't do much but now when the antibiotics have started to work, I decided it would be nice to write something about the game I bought last year since in my current condition I can't bake anything.

I hadn't heard about Village before I stumbled upon it in an online shop. The description said it won several GOTY awards and BGG claimed it put a twist on the worker placement scheme that I like. So, I was quite looking forward to trying out something new, unfortunately Village didn't turn out the way I expected.

After spending about an hour sticking numbers on countless figures and skimming the rules, I was ready to play the game. But with whom? My parents didn't like the complexity of the rules, my friends weren't exactly thrilled about its theme. It wasn't until about a month later that I played the game for the first time. And I have to say I was less than happy about my latest purchase. Village seems to me as a game that tries too hard to re-invent the worker placement genre, or better to approach it from a different angle, that it just ended up being quite unpolished around the edges.


There are two features supposed to make the game stand out. One is time as a resource, when each action not only takes manpower but time as well. Once in a while, one of your workers/family members will inevitably die of old age. The other gimmick is influence cubes of four different colours which function as a secondary resource. These cubes sit on the action tiles and collecting them allows you to perform the action and if there's no cube, you can't do it. Some actions require spending specific influence cubes so sometimes you just need to collect cubes of one colour primarily, rather than perform the action you want.

Let's say you would like to make a cart. You pick one of the cubes on the craft tile, then assign one of your workers to the workshop, then you might choose to spend time to train your worker in cart-making and finally decide whether to spend certain influence cubes OR time to produce the cart. Having a trained cart-maker lets you produce carts more easily but it takes more time than just buying it for influence cubes. Spending the time, a resource that is practically infinite, is a bit tricky and you have to operate with it carefully or you might be forced to lose valuable members of your workforce.

However, a dead worker is not such a bad thing in Village. In a game about life in a medieval village, the death is something people are used to. If a person dies, he is recorded in a local chronicle, BUT ONLY if there's space for them there. In a game of two players, only two craftsmen can get their names recorded. That is if a worker stands on the crafting tile (the cart-marker for example) and time comes for him to die, if there is still space in the chronicle for a craftsman, his name gets recorded (his meeple is put in the chronicle on the game board), otherwise he goes into an unmarked grave. Deciding what worker in what profession is going to die next is crucial to winning the game, because the players are awarded a lot of points for having their workers/family members recorded in the chronicle at the end.

Aside from being remembered in the village's chronicle, the victory points are awarded for many other achievements. There are several ways a family member can be used and since the game awards specialization, it's better if a family member focuses on one job in their life because retraining/re-assigning a member takes valuable time. There is the craftsmanship where a worker can make carts and plough or breed horses and cows. Then there's seeing the world and travelling to other cities, local politics career at the village hall, the life of a monk in the village's church or the "simple" life of the landowner/farmer. These are the careers your workers can achieve some chronicle-worthy reputation in. Aside from that, each turn you can sell the goods you produce at the market to customers who are anxious to spend victory points on carts and cows and stuff.

Depending on how many players there are, the number of influence cubes on each action tile varies. It is set thus how many actions will be performed in each round. The influence cubes of each colour (plus all the plague cubes) are randomly distributed. The plague cubes which immediately move your time counter two spaces forward and sometimes you must take it in order to play a desired action. However, taking the plague cube is not always a disadvantage. Since the space in the chronicle is limited, you might want to let someone in your family die sooner to snag a place in it.

My problems with the game start with the fragmentation of the gameplay. Each action (tile on the board) is played differently. In crafts you exchange time and cubes for goods; in travelling you move from town to town for cubes and carts, gaining various bonuses the further you go; in the town hall you climb the political ladder for cubes to get long lasting additional effects; you play a game of chance (and money and food) in the church and the marketplace action happens only once per round for everybody to sell their stuff. Each of the actions is almost like a mini-game on its own. It just doesn't hold together well and it makes the game feel unpolished to me. I found it very difficult (however not challenging, just difficult) to keep up with everything. The church and the travelling especially feels over-complicated.

Another thing that doesn't sit right with me is the game's illustrations. Graphically, the game is very plain and boring. I don't want to call it uninspired since the illustrator's job is a hard one and clearly some thought went into the art (such as the time counter being a stream around the player's house, every time the counter passes a bridge, someone has to die). Thinking about it now, its looks are quite similar to Stone Age, though that one I liked a bit more. Perhaps it was the variety of the main board in Stone Age that looked better. In Village, the maind board treads the line of art and functionality, similarly to Dungeon Petz, where the illustrations are integrated with the gameplay - individual buildings have icons and arrows on them showing what is produced there for what resource and stuff. Yes, the board is clearer to understand than the compared Dungeon Petz' but it lacks any charm whatsoever.

Interestingly, I had a discussion about Village with a board game shop owner the other day. He praised it for its friendliness to new gamers, easy rules and explanatory board. I argued that Agricola in its family rules variant is the perfect combination of complexity and having a clear goal with only a couple ways to reach it. He said that Agricola's rules are long and deep and its problem lies in the inability to catch up if you miss a critical action early in the game. I said I thought that Agricola was more forgiving than Village where you have to cover all the actions to produce resources needed for other actions (which again produce resources for yet another actions such as the time and cubes - cart - travelling - money - donating it to the church to have a monk).

Still, the second time I played Village, I enjoyed it a bit more than the first time. Does it take time to learn to like it? Perhaps. I am still wondering whether I should keep it and play it more or sell it and get something else instead. It's not a bad game, it's just... average and bland.