Sunshine City game overview
I got a chance to play the solo version of Sunshine City for the first time last week and have a few thoughts to share. Sunshine City is a new print-and-play roll-and-write game that is currently on Kickstarter. I wanted to talk about it while the Kickstarter is still live because I really love seeing the print-in-play movement grow in popularity. My hope is that even more people will support it.
In Sunshine City, you are moving your city away from being powered by fossil fuels over to solar energy. To do this, you have to build a certain number of solar farms (the number differs based on the game mode). When playing solo, Angus the anti-environmentalist is going to be working against you trying to fund new fossil fuel initiatives in every district of your city.
The solo game is played with a single sheet of paper along with four differently colored meeples and two dice. Three of the meeples each represent a different kind of worker with the remaining one representing Angus. You will be moving your workers around districts in the city based on the dice you roll. When you move one of your workers to a district, you get resources that let you create buildings, inventions, and vehicles. If you create all of one of those things in a district, that enables you to get a solar farm!
Player count: 1 to 100 players
Playing time: 30 to 60 minutes
Complexity: Medium
Sunshine City BoardGameGeek page
Sunshine City first impressions
I had a lot of fun with my first play of Sunshine City! It gives me the feeling of a worker placement game in a roll-and-write form, which is fun and different. The game is also very rewarding because you are constantly getting better and better at doing things. Buildings give you more resources, inventions unlock special powers, and vehicles earn you gears to use on powerful, single-use abilities. As a result, you are able to combo more and more stuff together, letting you do a lot on your turn.
Overall, I recommend checking out Sunshine City. I’ve only played the first city (which is free to try out right now), but there are a bunch more as well as a random city generator.
A question for you
Have you played or are interested in playing any of the latest wave of print-and-play games that have come out on Kickstarter? This includes Sunshine City in addition to Voyages, Aquamarine, Shu’s Tactics, and many others. I really like how they’re consolidated to one or two sheets of paper. That way you don’t have to cut anything out. I think this reduces the barrier to entry.
This post is part of my First Impressions series where I discuss my initial thoughts for new tabletop games I have been playing. Click here to read my previous entry in this series: Wingspan Cooperative Variant