Dorfromantik arrived on Switch in November. I already had it for PC, but the prospect of being able to take it on the go with me, or just lounge around on the sofa like a potato, rotating the little hexagons and listening to the soothing "pop" noises of placing them down... It was just too tempting! So I double dipped and got it for Switch as well.
Those popping noises are so good, right?!
This is exactly the kind of moreish game that I find it impossible to put down at first ("Just one more game!" I think to myself at 4am), and then after a while I'm finally satiated and then I can play it to chill out at random intervals. It's very easy to pick up. You rotate the little hexagons. You put them down to make landscape. Sometimes you're required to join up similar landscape features in order to meet a specific challenge (eg: lay down enough connected housing to reach 56 houses, or enough river to have 6 river tiles, or enough farmland to have 20 parcels of farm, etc.)
There are other rules that give you more points for placing tiles into a void in such a way that they match well with surrounding edges, and so on. You can figure out or learn many of these other rules over time; the main mechanic is pop tiles down and try to match them up.
If you build out towards the "edges" of the map, you can also find special tiles that will unlock a new landscape feature if you meet specific requirements around them. And there's other similar challenges along the way. It's nice to unlock some swans for my rivers, or a ruined castle for my forests, and so on.
Building up the landscape slowly sees it coming to life. Birds fly by overhead. Sometimes you can place a tile that makes trains run along your railway tracks, or boats travel down your rivers. You can also unlock different seasons, so that your forests are pink with blossoming trees in the spring, or your farm fields have a silvery, frosted sheen in the winter.
There's different modes to enjoy. In classic mode you play till you run out of tiles, and achieving challenges unlocks more tiles along the way. In creative mode, you have an infinite amount of tiles and can discard any you'd rather not use as you play. Quick mode gives you a short round with limited tiles. Hard mode is... Harder, with fewer quests, more complex tiles, greater difficulty. There's a monthly mode with a fixed game seed where you can compete with others. There's a custom mode where you can set up different rules and settings and share your game seed with others so they can try out your creation too.
This is to say: it's a game that's easy to pick up and play, and you by no means have to make it more complex for yourself, or even pay much attention to all the possible rules and challenges and modes, but if you get seriously into it, there's also a generous scope to play in more than one way.
It's a very soothing and relaxing game, and it's exactly the kind of thing I'd play while on a train journey, or also listening to music - though the in-game sounds and music are soothing and enjoyable in themselves. Basically something that I can focus on, but in a laid back way, taking my time with it, enjoying the way the world slowly grows and comes to gentle life with each little tile. Pop!
