Hamlet: The Village Building Game Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Hamlet: The Village Building Game from Mighty Boards. In Hamlet, players are building out a communal village with the hope of scoring the most points.

This is a review of the game Hamlet and I already know what you’re thinking, Dear Readers: “This clown is going to be making a ton of Shakespeare jokes in this review.” And you’re right.

To be (a good game) or not to be (a good game). That is the question. The answer, I’m afraid, is not what I had hoped. But, as is the case with any trustworthy critic, to its own self this review must be true. (That one was a paraphrase of the actual quote, but it still counts.)

Hamlet: The Village Building Game is a tile-laying game for 1-4 players designed by David Chircop. The box says it takes just 25 minutes per player to play (insert hilarious sarcastic laughing gif here—more on that later).

In Hamlet, players are going to have access to a pile of components that they can either unlock (like extra workers) or utilize (like roads and bridges) throughout the game. Most turns will involve moving and then triggering one of their workers in the village. Workers can move as many tiles as possible around the village so long as there is a connected path for them to travel.

Once at a location, these workers can use the tile’s ability; these can be anything from acquiring or producing resources or using them to gain other items or build things around the village. There are a lot of permutations of this concept, and most of the tiles in the game offer a slight variation on this.

Players also have donkeys stationed around town. These donkeys can move, but only one tile at a time. Their main function is to create a route by which goods can be moved across tiles. Each good can travel