Shrinkopolis: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Pattern Building, Drafting, Set Collection, Tile Placement, Resource Management
Player Age: 10+ Player Count: 1 - 4 PlayersTime to Play: 15 - 45 Minutes
Game Designer: Ondra SekaninaGame Artist: artBLOCKPublisher: TlamaYear Published: 2025BGG Weight: 2.25Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.
Player Age: 10+
Game Designer: Ondra Sekanina
Introduction:
Having to survive the many growing issues in the world. Scientists decided to go smaller to keep resources at an all time high. To start with this was meant to be a small test group but the experiment went awry and the whole population was shrunk. Now players are competing against their fellow neighbours to build and fill their new civilisation their Shrinkopolis. Whichever player built the best shrinkopolis wins. This is done through a clever point salad card placement game. Players will gain resources through connections allowing them to play more cards, but be careful resources are represented by a die of that colour, spending that resource spends the entire die with no change.
Game Anatomy:
City Cards:
Each game every player will have built six city cards. Each turn a city card will be gained and will have to be played. The city cards are the easiest to understand.
Throughout this card and all cards there are a series of connections that could be blank, have one of the three resource types (yellow, purple, green or any of one) or points represented by a heart with a particular value. For any card type the rule is the same, whenever a connection is connected to any other connection on another card the player will gain the points at the end of the game, and any resource at a value of one. Since these connections don't need to match players can gain two bonuses from one connection.
Resource Dice:
The resource dice come in three colours yellow, green and purple matching the card types. Each player can only have one of each coloured resource die at a time. Whenever a player gains another resource, they will increase the value on that coloured die by one. Whenever a player plays a non-city card they have to spend the entire resource die as long as it meets or exceeds the cost. There is no resource change when playing these cards.
Tools and Tool Cards:
Tool cards are the yellow cards, the benefit they add to a player's shrinkopolis is points on the bottom left of the card and a tool. There are three types of tools each tool can only be unlocked by each player once.
These tools are essential to manipulate the restraints created by the resource dice. Each tool can only be used once per turn and are refreshed after the turn ends. The paint brush allows the player to use a different coloured resource die when playing a card; the scissors allows the player to keep the change after playing a card; lastly the glue let's the player combine two resource die to play a card, one of these resource die have to match the colour of the card.
Objectives Cards:
Each player starts the game with one objective card. Objective cards unlock tools like the tool cards. Instead of giving straight points the objective cards give an opportunity to score higher points. Each objective card has an objective that will score points if a condition is met. This is something a player can build a strategy around as long as it is played into the player's shrinkopolis.
More objectives will appear from the deck when the game is played these objectives will go straight to the market.
Animal Cards:
Animal cards appear in five animal types. Each animal will have three cards in the deck of that type.
Each animal has two available points that can be earned. If the player has built two or three animals of the same type connected by the long edge then they will unlock the larger scoring bonus instead of the lower scoring. When the player has achieved two of these animals connected together they will gain the animal token matching this type. This animal token will score one point at the end of the game. Instead a player can spend this animal during another players turn giving them the animal and gaining the resource they just gained through a connection as well.
Culture Cards:
Culture Cards often have point connections on them. They also award the player one connection cube when placed. A connection cube can be placed anywhere when placing a card and can act as a blank connection. Making connections much easier to organise.
Player Board:
Each player will gain a player board allocating a space for tools, connection cubes and resources.
Design Cards:
There are two sets of design cards A and B. Randomly both A and B cards will be added in the setup present for the whole game.
A design cards, work from players having the majority of this connection type (these two connection symbols making one connection) or the most animal meeples. Only the highest scoring player in this will gain points, second place will also score in higher player counts.
B design cards, allow all players to gain these points. These designs however, work from restricting the player. Preventing certain card colours from being played, or building the shrinkopolis in specific formations.
Setup:
- Shuffle the objective deck and deal two to each player.
- Shuffle the city deck and create a pile of four city cards.
- Each player selects one objective and places it in their reserve and discards the other objective on the recently built city pile.
- Based on player count more city cards will be randomly added to this pile. 12 cards at two players, 18 at three players and 24 at four players.
- Deal one of these city cards to each player face-up starting their Shrinkopolis.
- Shuffle the reward deck (tools, animals and culture cards). Reveal three creating the market.
- Place tool tokens, connection cubes, resource die and animal tokens within reach of all players.
- Create an offering around the design cards with four city cards and four reward cards. With each card alternating.
- The first player is the shortest player.
- The second player in turn order, gains one connection cube, the third player gains one resource, and lastly the fourth player gains one connection cube and one resource.
How to Play:
On a player's turn they have to draft two cards in the centre. One of these cards has to be a city and the other card will be one of the more interesting reward cards directly adjacent to that city.
That player then has to play the city card in any rotation as long as one connection connects to a connection on another card. After playing this card the player can play other cards in the same way as long as each card cost is paid separately. The card can come from the card that was drafted, any cards in the players reserve or any card in the communal market.
Multiple cards can be played in this phase. When playing cards remember to gain the resources on the resource dice.
When the player ends their play phase, if they still have the reward card they gained to their hand this turn. They must either play it into their reserve. The reserve has a maximum of three cards at a time and cannot be discarded from a future turn. Alternatively add the card to the market. If the market is less than three cards more reward cards will be added. A city card and reward card will replace the two cards drafted this turn.
The game will end once all players have six city cards in their tableu, this will show that there have been five turns each for all players. Points will be scored for animal tokens, cards (tools and animals), objectives, design cards and connections with points. Whichever player has the most points wins.
Final Thoughts:
- Lots of range with the point salad scoring.
- Challenging optimisation and play sequence puzzle.
- Resource die is a very smart resource management puzzle.
- Tools make resource management more manageable.
- Some bits of the rulebook took a little bit longer to get my head around.
Shrinkopolis is a great tile placement/ point salad game. Players are managing their resources carefully in the pursuit to score many conditions, objectives, designs, animals and smaller points throughout the tools and culture cards. This is much harder than it appears and no matter how I played I was not able to balance it all. The fun of the game is the pursuit of this balancing act though.
Players have five turns to build the best shrinkopolis they can, everything they need is there. There is an abundance of reward cards available through the reserves and market, however balancing enough resources to play the cards is the challenge. Players have to use all the resources of the correct colour when building a reward card, this means if a turn is very successful in generating resources the player may in fact over spend, by spending the entire die value of six when only four resource of that colour are needed. This may be a sequence of events that they want this card played first or they may have to learn to play that card at a later date to get the best beneficial results. Each game lasts 10 minutes per player but still captures the optimisation puzzle of larger games. I can easily recommend the game and will be giving Shrinkopolis a go to golden seal.
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