This doesn’t happen every year – in fact, it’s never happened before. This year’s Spiel des Jahres, a prestigious German award for the best board game of the year, has gone to a video game adaptation: Dorfromantik: The board game.
Video game adaptations are common enough in table games, and many of them are excellent, but the Spiel des Jahres award belongs to the traditional heart of the board game industry. Since its inception in 1978, it has remained focused on widely accessible, family-friendly board games, as opposed to war games, role playing games, collectible card games, and other more complex or hobbyist forms of table games. Previous winners include canonical classics such as Carcassonne And Ticket to driveso a video game adaptation winning the award is a big deal.
But if you look at the game in question, it might not be that unexpected. Dorfromantik is a minimalistic tile-placement game about building beautiful rural landscapes of cities, rivers, forests, farms and train tracks. While it’s pretty tightly designed, there are no competitive elements and no resources or populations to worry about. It’s very similar Katan or, especiallyCarcassonne, reimagined as a single-player meditative chillout game. And it’s absolutely amazing.
Dorfromantik: the board game, by Michael Palm and Lukas Zach, adapts the design of the video game and opens it up to as many as six players, though it remains a purely cooperative, non-competitive experience. Spiel des Jahres jury president Harald Schrapers praised the game’s relaxed approach: “This cooperative, feel-good game has new, exciting goals from game to game, but you can never lose,” said Schrapers (via Google Translate).
At the moment of writing, Dorfromantik: The board game is out of stock at Amazonbut you can find a copy at Cardhaus games.