Cardboard Town

Turkish-made Cardboard Town, which blends the city-building game genre with card game mechanics and rogue-lite, made its debut on the PC platform as early access as of April 12. We take a look at this domestic production developed by Stratera Games, which has made a great impression in the foreign press, too.

 

Cardboard Town, the new game of Istanbul-based Turkish video game studio Stratera Games, went into early access as of April 12. Cardboard Town, the latest game developed by the studio, managed to attract everyone’s attention by combining cardboard graphics and two genres that we have not seen before, and became one of the most anticipated games of April on Steam!

Build a city with cards

Cardboard Town offers really interesting and different gameplay. At the beginning of the game, we lay the foundation of our city and develop it with cards such as houses, slums, apartments, parks, roads, which are randomly distributed to us. We continue to develop our city with the random cards we receive at the end of each round. Of course, not everything is that simple. We have four resources in Cardboard Town, such as water, electricity, security, and the environment, and when three of these resources go below minus, we lose the game. In order to protect these resources, we need to pay attention to the features of various buildings that give a surplus to these resources.

 

Personally, I like this system very much, the loop of the game does not get boring, it gives you the ambition to start over every time you lose. But assuming we spend most of the game in the early game, I wish there were a little more early game cards. After a few plays, the starting cards are too repetitive.

A real challenge

Stratera Games has really caught the middle of being too easy and being too hard. Cardboard Town has thrown away the mechanics of a city building game that requires too much technique (such as infrastructure, traffic) and leaves us the simpler, fun parts. Don’t be fooled by what I said simple, although it may seem simple, the disaster system that provides you with negative features from time to time and of course the luck factor that should be in a card game adds difficulty to the game.

The luck factor can sometimes affect the game a lot. I found myself in the rounds where I passed every round and looked for a water card, and lost with the disaster that followed. I think the luck factor has a little too much influence on the game, or I was just very unlucky.

A different visual

Cardboard Town has gone to a visual that we do not see very often. I think it is very nice that all the buildings in the game are like cardboard, it makes the game feel like a real board game. In addition, it is very nice that the building animations turn into a building by folding it from a cardboard. The design of the cards are also very entertaining and aesthetic both visually and in content.

Weak music

Another point of criticism of Cardboard Town is the background music for me. The music of the game is not enough for me to provide this calm environment, I played music in the background myself for most of my playing time. I think that this deficiency can be filled with different background music to be added in the future.

Pricing and playtime

It is not possible to give an exact gameplay time for Cardboard Town because it offers a gameplay that is in a constant loop, where you experience different activities in each of your games. Anyone can play in 100 hours, 10 hours, but you definitely need to give at least 10 hours to see all the cards and events of the game.

Pricing, on the other hand, Stratera Games has made the best pricing it can do here. Especially if the producer company also makes a profit, prices like 40-50 TL are unfortunately a dream, but Stratera Games did not upset us here and they chose the most suitable price with a price tag of 100 TL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ6ebk4oWts

Evaluation

Cardboard Town, with its unusual gameplay, nice cardboard graphics and card game mechanics, really brought a different flavor to the city-building genre. I recommend this game, which has won our sympathy even more with its Turkish production and its pleasant word jokes, to anyone who is looking for a different taste in the city-building genre. Certainly Cardboard Town has more to go when it comes to content. I think Cardboard Town will come to a much better place in the future due to the interest of Dora Özsoy and Stratera Games team in their games.

Thanks to Dora Özsoy and Stratera Games for giving us early access to the game.

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Author: Ege Muslu
Translator: Hilal Kopuz

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