A review of

Big City

Manufacturer: Gold Seiber Spiele (in Germany), Rio Grande Games (in the US)

Designer: Franz-Benno Delonge

Price: $39.95

In Big City, 2-5 players compete to build the biggest and best edifices in a burgeoning new town. The boards represent areas of the city and are grouped by numbers: one “block” is the 20s, another is the 30s, and so on. You are dealt cards from numbered decks, each card representing property on the board with that number. Getting adjacent properties is the key to building bigger - and hence more valuable - buildings, especially near the beginning of the game.

At first players only build basic stuff like residential blocks and commercial areas. Once someone places the city hall, however, fancier locations like the shopping center and the post office can go up. Since the player who places city hall on the board doesn’t score points for it or get to do much else that turn, there’s a certain strategy to making sure other players can’t take all the good spots before it comes back around to them.

The value of buildings depends on where you put them (commercial is worth more at the center of the city, for example, while the opposite holds true for residential). Adjacent squares aren’t always necessary for the bigger-point buildings, but the really choice architecture must meet certain conditions (adjacent to a residential and/or commercial area, access to the subway routes). Score is tracked on a separate board, and the player with the highest point value wins.

Big City is certainly a nice looking game. The pieces are gorgeous and the plastic trays for carrying them are molded to hold everything firmly in its place (no fear of losing pieces in transit, and there are a lot of bits to keep up with). It’s one of the most attractive-looking games in recent memory, but it suffers a somewhat mechanical feel. You get the impression you’re just going through the motions and most of what happens is preordained by the boards. Making the Big Score is tough with some properties because so many requirements must be met, and the other players almost have to allow you to get away with it. Alas, Big City is a triumph of style over substance.

--by Andy Vetromile