Hamlet Review - Brilliant Board Game or Shallow Table Decoration?

Hamlet: The Village Building Game has raised nearly $400,000 dollars on Kickstarter and can be played on Tabletopia. Mike (from Boardgames for One) and I gave it a shot! In this video, I will provide a brief rules overview, my thoughts on the game and the breakdown by theme, mechanics, components, strategy, and complexity.
RULE CHANGES:
Roads can be built ANYWHERE, as long as the connected segments match and the two tiles aren't already connected.
Check out the Kickstarter. It is set to close by the end of March:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/...
Watch Mike and I play our first game:
• Hamlet Review & Playth...
Play on Tabletopia:
tabletopia.com/games/hamlet
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
0:00 - Introduction
0:53 - How to play Hamlet - The Village Building Game
4:34 - My review of Hamlet Board Game
8:05 - Game Attributes
My name is Ben and I am a board game loving software developer. You can check out my app at theperfectboardgame.com, which games are organized by theme, mechanics, components, strategy, and complexity and Amazon deals are sent out daily. You can sign up for email alerts at theperfectboardgame.com

[@DeeperBoy]

Dude, I stumbled upon your channel by mistake and I feel like these kind of reviews are exactly what I've been missing. Honest, with actual content and caveats, rather than 90% hot air hype. You've earned a subscription 💚

[@theperfectboardgame]

What a compliment. Thank you so much. I hope the rest of my content is just as satisfying.

[@mat-ventures]

I subscribed too for honest non-biased review

[@mat-ventures]

Thanks for the detailed review and I particularly love the score chart

[@wendyisgrowinginwisdom6350]

Thank you - loved your explanation and review of Hamlet. Another comment made that I agree with was that the game would benefit from larger tiles to appreciate the artwork.

[@wendyisgrowinginwisdom6350]

Is there any way the game could be adapted to cooperative play? What incentive/game end conditions could you have?

[@neverbenbetter8225]

A great example of a game that is ended by a player action but also has a definite end (whenever players fail to or choose not to trigger the game end) is Imperial Steam.

[@chillionaire7114]

Any thoughts on player count? Viticulture is one of my favorite worker placement games, but feels limited at just 2 players. I can get a group of 4 together for games but skill level is all over the place. Can get a similar skill level going at 2 players though, so if this plays great at 2, will need to consider it.

[@theperfectboardgame]

I actually really enjoyed this at two players, but my sense is that the game differs greatly between two and four. At two players, you can deliberately interfere with/take advantage of your one opponent. For example, I would deliberately delete all available resources just to force Mike to produce resources on his turn (which I would try to use again on my turn!) At three or four players, it is clear that there will be many more tiles played and that will make a much more expansive board. It also means there will be more that can change between your two turns. I think the designers wanted an “expansive” city, so I think 4 players is truer to the intent, but I loved two-player nonetheless.

[@umfuhrerrichard]

It was very usefull the "My review of Hamlet Board Game" part of the video. I had the same feelings about this game but I was unable to word it properly :)

[@theperfectboardgame]

About the game end condition? Yeah, lately I’ve really gotten into games that have a strict limit on the number of turns.

[@umfuhrerrichard]

@@theperfectboardgame yes, and no catch-up mechanic.

[@diamondmeeple]

I believe luck needs four levels. Perfect information abstracts have no random...

[@theperfectboardgame]

There are four levels. I also use “none”. This game has one random element: the tiles that are drawn, so I rated it “low”. It usually wouldn’t have a major impact, but there is a chance that right before a player’s turn, the absolute PERFECT tile could be exposed.

[@diamondmeeple]

@@theperfectboardgame Yes.

[@KXC42069]

Wait, so you played it once online and gave it such high attributes? Score become useless if everything gets an A.