Cloud City Review

April 10, 2021 at 9:47pm
By Jason Stettner

Time to get your head up in the clouds as you aim to build the largest skyscrapers in this high towering city. It won’t be easy as others are expanding as well, and the pieces you have available for construction are held in place by the general setup of the game. It’s interesting as your room for expansion is limited based on the plate setup your group number has dictated for the match being these preset grids.

They could be 3x3 or 3x4 for example. From there you’re filling out the area in a strategic way in order to line up the various towers to maximize your points. You’ll need to be smart in order to not cause obstructions in the walkways you need to create using the towers and you get some very dynamic city builds each time you go to play.

It’s always going to be different, and at times you might notice a misplaced tile that could have really changed your situation up after completing your build. So that’s an interesting dynamic for it. With that, it’s a fairly simple set experience. You’re placing tiles, building towers and then completing walk ways. You’re earning “votes” for each walkway you build, and those points will determine the victor of the match.

There are some extra elements to this, that being the special request scoring cards since they can add to your total if fulfilled, or detract if not. In general this is a fairly quick concept to grasp, and a decently easy one to start playing. It really doesn’t take much prior knowledge to get a hold of, and the matches go by fairly smoothly.

The Board/Pieces
While simple in the concept, the game is loaded with pieces that you use while playing. This includes a set of illustrated rules. Then there are ninety-six buildings, ninety-three walkways and forty-eight cloud tiles. Past that are ten special request cards.

This is designed for two to four players during matches with it noted as taking about thirty minutes to play which I would say is a fairly accurate assessment, that could vary slightly based on the quantity and skills of the players involved. Our matches were typically quicker, but it was adults partaking in the games. The design of the items are decent in terms of look, nothing too stylish but simplistic and they get the job done.

With the coloring you can clearly tell what everything is and the cloud pieces were nice as well. They could have went with something more wild for the aesthetics, but it was fine enough from that visual perspective. The pieces fit onto one another in a fine matter, with it only being slightly hard to place walkways on lower hanging spots.

The Conclusion

Cloud City is an easily accessible board game concept, being fun and straight forward in design. I did wish it had some extra layer of complexity to it, as it’s almost too straight forward in terms of how it plays. I sort of wonder about the longer term replay value of it for most that are looking to jump in.

Now with that, I think it’s a very easy game to grasp and something that most ages can easily understand. You’re just putting towers in proximity to each other, and adding a bridge in order to score points. It’s not all that complex, and still decently fun to play.

The look of it was alright, I would have liked something fancier there but I think it gets the concept across quite well from understanding the colors and shapes of the pieces in play. I also wish there was more strategy here as the point system seemed to rely somewhat on luck in terms of what you get instead of purely the planning you were doing while playing.

Cloud City Review
Review Sample Provided by Blue Orange Games

Rating Overall: 7.5