Title: Dwellings of Eldervale
Authors: Luke Laurie, Peter Vaughn
Artists: Merilliza Chan, Sergio Chaves, Anton Fadeev, Leesha Hannigan, Irina Kuzmina, Nathanael Mortensen, Sasha Radivojevic, Sam Turner, Brian Valeza, Frank Wade
Publisher: Breaking Games
Release Date: 2020
Price: $99.99

Dwellings of Eldervale is a pretty, but overly complicated fantasy colonization game where you master magic.

I have designed and built video games as part of a team. Board games are not video games, but they are not too far removed from each other — art, gameplay loops, each element has an analog counterpart. Some game design classes even teach that you should try a physical prototype first, since that’s essentially a board game. So here I will be giving my first review a shot after Gen Con. There are three main areas I will be looking at for this game: art, gameplay, and design. I could further divide these, and in the future I probably will, but for now this is where I’ll start.

Art

The game’s box art draws you in — it drew me in. Fantasy world strategy, sign me up. Although most of the game’s artwork looks amazing, there are issues. Monsters, factions, and environments match up really well. The ability to turn workers into dwellings is smart and creative. My only real critique is that the pieces (workers, warrior, wizard, and dragon) and the resource tokens don’t match the rest of the game’s feel. While most of the art is epic fantasy, the pieces are minimalist and the resources are cute. Everything still gets its point across, though.

Gameplay

Dwellings of Eldervale has a fairly standard gameplay loop for most of the game: a gathering stage, then regrouping, then building — all simple and relatively easy. For gathering, you send out workers to gather, explore, and fight. Regrouping pulls workers back from the board to reset and activate bonuses. In the building stage, the player uses resources to buy units or build dwellings. This is admittedly a very simple breakdown, not touching on elemental power, magic, or scoring. In just this area, the game is comparable to Catan — fairly basic and easy to understand. This is where you will spend the bulk of your time.

Design

Yes, all games are designed, so this is a broad category. Most of the categories for the game work well. End conditions are in place: either a player has 6 dwellings, or you draw the last terrain tile. If you know what you’re doing, it can be an hour-long game. If you don’t — well, I played for 3 hours and had two dwellings, so it can take a bit longer. Costs for actions and rewards are clearly marked on all cards, even if some of the instructions can be unclear in regards to the underworld, where your pieces go when you die. Terrain tiles can be shuffled and placed strategically, making the base game have hundreds of possible iterations. This is fantastic for replayability. The elemental mastery system, though, could be cut entirely and change gameplay very little, as it’s only used for a few cards and the end game.

Final Score (2 Out of 5 Stars)

Honestly, problems arise in the details. When you make a video game, programming is key — without it, you don’t have a game. The details make Dwellings of Eldervale an if-else ladder, and that isn’t fun. The details range from faction selection, which alters how each player plays, all the way to scoring — and honestly, scoring is the worst part. Instead of a simple win condition (first to six houses), you use the elemental multiplier system: you take the score you accumulated through the game by going through the gameplay loops, and add your dwelling score multiplied by the mastery score of the element that dwelling is on. Then you have adventure cards, vaults, and prophecy cards that can also drastically change how you play. In some ways this is good; in others, it’s needless and overly complicated.

All things considered, if you wanted the fantasy child of Monopoly and Catan, here it is. Unfortunately, it’s not beginner-friendly.

Featured Image: Dwellings of Eldervale

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