Department Store Builder
A Japanalogue Review
Kairosoft Games Meets Sunday Evening Puzzles
Best for: Those who love simple yet engaging puzzle games with an aesthetic to die for
2 - 4 players
30 minutes
23/11/2020
I helped playtest and suggest some ideas for this lovely art-in-a-box, and the first thing I remember saying after we'd played all of our little pieces of paper onto a cardboard grid was, "This feels like I'm playing Mall Story by Kairosoft...and I love it!"
If you don't know Kairosoft (or me and my gaming habits) then check out Game Dev Story or any one of their multiple mobile games; they're amazing. There's only a few games I can play for hours on end, and games like RCT and Kairosoft games are some of them. But I digress!
What makes Department Store Builder so great isn't just the art (I played it before it had anything more than numbers on paper), it's the way it feels like a relaxing Sunday afternoon game that finds a great balance between testing your puzzle game senses and making a little shopping eutopia for some imaginary new neighbourhood. You can play it a lot like Azul; worry about your board and your points only, or try and work out which cards might also make your opponents' lives harder. I really enjoy games where you can choose to be competitive or not; it lends way more flexibility to what tables you can bring the game to.
So how do you play?
Well, you take your empty mall board and a hand of 4 store cards. Once you've set up the face up request cards (achievements) and laid 4 shared store cards out on the table face up, you're ready to start. Your aim is to fit the store cards on to your board in a way that means you fulfil as many request cards as possible to get the most points. So that might be trying to get 2 restaurants on top of each other, or a kids and a sweets store next to each other. Some store cards have certain floors they must be placed on, but are also worth more points.
Each turn you'll either place a card from your hand and then take a store card from the face up ones on the table, OR take an achievement card if you've met the requirements.
You have to build from the ground up--you can't build right on to the 4th floor for example. You can build on the 1st or basement floors at the start, and then as soon as you have a card down on the 1st floor you can build on top of that to the 2nd floor, etc. This makes it interesting for when you're working out the best way to get your extra points cards in there, as you really have to think ahead! You get points per store if you're the one with the most of that type as well, so it's a careful balance between getting a bunch of the same store, and fulfilling as many request cards as you can.
When you think your department store is full and you can't make any more points, you can take a Grand Opening card and call yourself done. You can't take any more turns once you open your store to the public, but if you take a Grand Opening card faster than your opponents, you get extra points.
Once everyone has opened their departments stores, the game is over and the player with the most points wins!
Simple, right? It's that simplicity mixed with the pleasingly pastel art and the just-complex-enough puzzle mechanic that make this a new favourite of mine. There's English rules online, and the cards are easy enough to understand once you know the iconography so the language barrier is relatively low for English speakers.
Overall I think this is one of the most fantastically well-made indie games of 2020, and if you haven't got a copy yet I highly recommend it.
Language dependency: ●●○○○
Learning the rules: ●●○○○
Price: 3,000 JPY
Overall rating: 4/5
Board Game Geek (English rules available)
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