SiliconVania Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review SiliconVania, a tile laying and auction game published by WizKids Games. In SiliconVania, Each player is an applicant for the City Planner position for Transylvania and the player that turns the city into the world's newest tech haven wins the job (and the game).

If you have ever read a review by me, you know I love a good pun, a bad pun, or any play on words. So, SiliconVania and its longline: “Help the Vampires of Transylvania build the next century’s tech hub” had me inspired. A card drafting, city building, multiplayer solitaire game with a cartoony Vampire theme on top of that had my neck tilted to the side like Sookie Stackhouse begging to be bit. But could WizKids redeem themselves from my last reviewed game, Shapers of Gaia? (Spoiler Alert: They did.)

SiliconVania is a tile-laying and auction game for 2-5 players that takes about 60 minutes to play.

Each player is an applicant for the City Planner position for Transylvania and the player that turns the city into the world’s newest tech haven wins the job (and the game).

The game is played over 8 rounds and there are four steps per round:

The game ends after round 8 and scoring is based on tile diversity, how many vampires you have housed in coffins throughout your city, ladder scoring for how many types of animals are in your city, the largest cluster of buildings with blood to feed your vampires, special council contracts you acquired, and the score of the City Objectives that you activated.

This game is fun. WizKids redeemed themselves big time. J.B. Howell made a really fun change to normal auction games by having the higher numbers of your silent bids have negative effects and the lower numbers have positive effects. So even if you lose the