Build your own city, taking it from the preindustrial stages and developing it through industrialization.
My City is a Spiel des Jares nominated game featuring simple rules and a relatively short playing time that takes players on a fun legacy gaming experience where no two games are alike!
What is My City?
My City is a competitive legacy game where you will develop a city on a personal playing board as you play through the ages. The player who has performed the best throughout the course of the entire legacy experience is declared the winner.
A legacy game is a game that you play out over the course of multiple games altering and changing the game along the way. During a legacy game you reach certain checkpoints, sometimes after each game, other times after a few games, where you will “unlock” new elements that will add or change something about the game, sometimes giving new rules or restrictions that players must adapt to. You often will be writing on or adding stickers to the board, cards, or other game materials to alter them permanently.
My City features 8 Chapters that players will play through. Each chapter contains 3 episodes to play. This means that players will play a total of 24 times by the time they have finished the legacy element of the game.
During each episode you will customize the playing experience by adding stickers to and writing on your personal board, making it entirely unique from your opponents’.
Once you have completed the legacy game, or for those players not participating in the legacy experience who still want to try My City, simply flip your double sided board over to reveal the map that allows for repeatable play!
How do you play?
In this accessible polyomino puzzle, each game takes about 20-30 minutes to complete.
Each player has the same selection of city tiles in Tetris-like shapes. A main deck features each of these pieces on a card.
At the start of the game, the deck is shuffled and then players flip a card, one at a time, which shows them the city tile that they must place on their board.
There are different placement restrictions that players must abide by, but how you choose to build your city is largely up to you. The game continues until all players have either placed all their tiles or cannot continue to legally place tiles and thus end their participation in the game.
Then scores are tallied with players earning and losing points based on how their city is constructed.
The player with the highest score wins.
What Do We Think?
My City was an instant hit with us! This is a relaxing and pleasant game that is both friendly and puzzling. I love that there is a definite challenge to the game that has all of us contemplating where and how to build our city to earn the most points, but over all it isn’t a brain burner and regardless of the outcome feels satisfying to look at the city you have created.
At it’s core, My City feels very similar to a roll and write, though here it is a flip and place. We greatly enjoyed the puzzle of trying to formulate how we wanted to build our city, and then the almost immediate need to rethink our plan once a card showing a tile we didn’t want to place next flips over. I like that the game is both random yet predictable. You can do your best to plan for certain pieces to come out of the deck, knowing that they’ll eventually flip, but you don’t know when they’ll show up, they could come too early, or too late. So you need to be able to puzzle your way out of jams to keep enough space on your board so no matter what flips, you have a spot for it.
It doesn’t always work according to plan, but when it does it feels so good! If you are a fan of polyomino puzzles like patchwork, or flip and writes like Kodama, this is going to be right up your alley!
The biggest thing: you’ll want to start and finish the legacy game with the same group. While it is possible to drop people in and out, you won’t want to add a new player midway through or change players since the rules gradually progress little by little. While the game is light, the amount of rules given all at once to a new player may be overwhelming.
Theme
I really enjoy the city building theme for a legacy game! In many ways this felt a lot like Charterstone in its calming, city building aspect, but it was a lot more family friendly. My City is a perfect starter for players looking for a lighter gaming experience in the legacy genre.
Because each game takes only about 20 to 30 minutes, it’s not hard to sit down and play a chapter all the way through in one sitting. I really enjoy how they have three episodes in each chapter that add new placement challenges to work through. This makes the legacy element feel much more attainable, requiring just 8 sittings with 3 short games, rather than 24 long games. You have a much higher chance of completing it than with others.
I found each chapter to be very interesting and love how it continually built upon the last so that as I got better at the game, the game got harder. When well done like this, legacy games can be some of the most fun gaming experiences.
That being said, this is a very introductory legacy game and the narrative element so common in these games is quite minimal here. This could prove too light for players who are looking for a more intense legacy gaming experience where the stakes are higher and the decisions more important.
Components
Everything in the box is very well made! The city tiles all fit together nicely. They are perfectly sized for the board so you don’t have any overhang whatsoever.
I greatly love that the boards are double sided so that you can play the game with family or friends that maybe aren’t participating in the legacy game with you. You’ll definitely want to keep the same group for the legacy portion so it’s nice that you can still play even if you can’t get your legacy group together. This helps keep My City from gathering dust on your shelf and eventually going forgotten.
You’ll just need to play through the first four episodes to unlock everything that you need for the “eternal game.”
But even if you never play My City again after working your way through all 24 episodes of the legacy game, I feel that you will have more than gotten your money’s worth!
How does it play with two?
The rules for the legacy game are the same whether you’re playing with 2, 3, or 4 players. The only difference is the final scoring bonuses are awarded ever so slightly different for 2 players.
This is a relaxing game to play and a great option for couples looking for a lovely date night game to experience together. If you play a chapter every night, you have 8 fun date nights planned right here! Just order your favorite take out and you’re set!
My City is mostly a solitaire gaming experience because while you’re all building your city, you aren’t impacting what other players are doing. (There are some later elements where you do impact each other, but they are mostly minimal.) Everyone builds on their own board, following the communal rules of the game. This also makes it a great date night game because it’s not overly competitive and there’s not a lot of opportunities for emotions to run hot and kill the date night atmosphere. (This may or may not have happened once or twice in our house.)
Can kids play?
We originally were going to keep My City for our date night game, but once our daughter saw it and expressed interest, we couldn’t pass up the chance to play with her!
At 8 years old, Alice has had no issues following the rules of the game, especially since it progresses slowly and doesn’t throw all the scoring rules at players at once.
As I mentioned in this post, the legacy gaming experience is one of my very favorite ways for kids to learn to play games, and My City has only solidified that feeling.
While she does struggle sometimes knowing where the best spot is to place her city tiles so that she doesn’t close herself off for future moves, it’s a great learning experience and she got better and better with each game. I think 8 is the perfect age to play My City if you have a younger kid interested!
Summary
My City is an instant recommend! This is a lovely game that is light and perfect for families or couples looking for their next date night game.
If you have never played a legacy game before or have been intimidated by the concept, My City is a perfect game to jump in and try it out. Each game plays quickly, taking only 20-30 minutes and provides great value for those that play all the way through all 24 episodes! This is also a great option for families with younger children as kids starting at about age 8 should be able to play along just fine with little to no help from adults.
Then, thanks to the Eternal Game mode, you can continue playing My City even after your legacy experience comes to an end!
Bring home a copy of My City for your family.
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A special thank you to our friends at KOSMOS for sending us a copy of My City for review. As always our thoughts and opinions are our own.
Game Info:
Title: My City
2-4 Players Ages 10+
Designer: Reiner Knizia
Artist: Michael Menzel
Publisher: KOSMOS
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