The beautiful city of seaside city of Cape May is just waiting to be developed. Are you ready to help it out? It’s not all beach days and fun and games, you know. There will be plenty of hard work to develop attractive residential areas and lucrative businesses. Although, we can probably make a little time for bird watching along the way. Think you can handle it? Time to find out!

What Is It?

A city building game with a plethora of mechanisms!

Action Points – Players have 3 actions per turn which they can use to move, build shops or cottages, upgrade those to businesses or Victorians (and later landmarks), draw or play activity cards for improved actions, retrieve spent movement cards, or collect money.

Set Collection – Players can pick up bird tokens when landing on certain spots on the board which build sets for points.

Hand/Resource Management – Players only collect income every 3 rounds, so balancing money is important in order to have enough to pay for actions (and possibly event cards). Players also need to plan the best time to pick up their movement cards so they don’t end up in a bad spot.

Event Cards – A new event is played each round (except the first) that may affect the board, pricing for buildings and upgrades, or something else. Players need to be able to adjust to accommodate these events.

Who Is It For?

  • Ages 13+ – The game isn’t super heavy, but it is on the longer side, which may not appeal to most younger audiences
  • 1 to 4 Players – Scales well for any count
  • Fans of city building
  • Fans of a combo of mechanisms and having many choices / strategies per game

Variants

SOLO – The solo mode has you play against “Ava” who will perform certain actions (build, upgrade, increase bird track, et cetera) based on card draws from a solo deck.

I thought this was a super solid solo mode for the game. It played smoothly and, while Ava did plenty of things, it didn’t feel like too much upkeep between your own turns. Personally, after reading through the rules, I felt it was easier to learn the solo once I had experience with the mutli-player game, but I think if the solo was your only/primary experience the learning curve wouldn’t be bad for that either.

PROS

  • Aesthetics – Looks great on the table
  • Quality – The building minis are excellent; all the other components (cardboard, cards, et cetera) are also great quality
  • Bonus Cards add to the variety of each game, and give players something to work towards for points
  • Double-sided board for different player counts is a great touch
  • Plays smoothly; turns are generally pretty quick and straightforward
  • I thought getting income only once per season instead of each round was unique and added to the strategy of trying to make your money last for 3 rounds
  • A lot of opportunity for different strategies / a lot of choices turn to turn and game to game

CONS

  • Event Cards – I’m generally not a big fan of these in any game because they can be swingy. For example, some can cost some players a lot of money while others are not affected; it would be less hurtful if you could see the upcoming event, which would help you plan accordingly
  • The Victorians don’t sit flat in the landmark bases, which is a little annoying
  • The player colors on the cardboard pieces (shops/cottages) are a little hard to differentiate from afar because they’re dark

Final Thoughts

So full disclosure, the first reason I wanted to play this game was because I’m originally from New Jersey, and there definitely aren’t enough games based in my home state. But after that initial reaction, I also thought the mix of mechanisms sounded pretty cool, and it was! Overall, I thought this game was pretty neat and everything melded together really well.

My biggest qualm is definitely the event cards, because they don’t always balance out for all players. I feel like that maybe could have been fixed by pre-revealing a card the round before so players know what’s coming next and can prepare, but I’m not sure.

The game can be a bit length time-wise, but I personally don’t think it overstays its welcome; I think the 12 rounds make a lot of sense for the gameplay, and ultimately it works well, especially with how/when players collect money.

For me, this one sits at a nice, aesthetically pleasing, medium-weight game with plenty of options that I think fans of city building will enjoy.

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 7/10
Designer – Eric Mosso
Artist – Michael Menzel
Publisher – Thunderworks Games
MSRP – $59.95
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

If you like what I do, consider Supporting Me.

If you like what I do, consider Supporting Me.