Game Preview: Metropolys

By W. Eric Martin
January 30, 2008

Publisher: Ystari Games / Rio Grande Games / HUCH & friends
Designer: Sébastien Pauchon
Players: 2-4
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 45-60 minutes
Languages: French / German / English
Price: €36.00
Release Date: March 2008 (from Ystari)

Swiss designer Sébastien Pauchon has had only three games published to date: Animalia and Jamaica, both co-designed with Bruno Cathala and Malcolm Braff, and Yspahan, which won the Concours International de Créateurs de Jeux de Société (International Competition of Boardgame Creators) in 2005 and a Spiel des Jahres nomination in 2007.

With Animalia and Jamaica having received only minimal distribution, Pauchon’s résumé doesn’t give gamers much to go on. But Yspahan’s good reputation and strong reviews—along with the Ystari name—will undoubtedly be enough to get gamers to try Metropolys, Pauchon’s newest solo design that’s due out in Spring 2008.

The prototype for Metropolys won Pauchon his second Concours International in 2006 under the title of Oklahoma (shown at top). In a September 2007 interview with Patrick Korner, published on BGN, Pauchon called Oklahoma the “game I’m most satisfied with at the moment.” Ystari decided to publish the game and development continued on the design. Said Pauchon in the interview, “Over the last versions, Oklahoma has become a very tense bidding game, and I must say (as humbly as I can…) that I love it. The rules are super simple, but the depth is there. I think it’s kind of a slow-motion Ricochet Robots, in a way…”

Pauchon showed the revised game, now bearing the title Parys (shown at left), at Spiel 07 in October 2007. I had a chance to play the game, and although some of the details have been tweaked since that time, the bulk of the game play remains the same.

Fritz Lang and Superman Find a New Home

One of these tweaked details is the title: Metropolys.

Metropolys is a bidding game with a geographical component on a fixed gameboard. Each player has a set of bidding tokens numbered 1-13 in three different heights. The start player of the round places one token in some region of the board; a subsequent player can raise the bid by placing a higher numbered token in an adjacent space. Anyone wanting to beat this raised bid must place adjacent to this new token, which means the bids blaze a path across the board each round.

Once all players but one pass, the winner flips his winning token face-down (to keep the number out of sight during future bidding rounds) and all other tokens are returned to their owners. This area is now off-limits, and the winning bidder starts another bidding round.

There’s no simultaneous play, as in Ricochet Robots, but players do have to keep the possible paths for movement and higher bids in mind each turn. As you might expect, the gameboard divides the city into districts with walls, bridges and cul-de-sacs creating potential traps for both you and other players. Start a bid an isolated area, for example, and you win automatically. The trick is creating that isolated area and being able to place first in order to take advantage of it.

The game ends once a player runs out of bidding tokens. These tokens aren’t hidden, so there’s no need to track what people have played, but you can still run into trouble if you blow all your high tokens early.

While the districts on the gameboard are fixed, the board is randomly seeded each game with three types of tokens. Those tokens, claimed by the players winning those districts, provide points and penalties at game’s end, so they provide a spur to kick players in certain directions. The only hidden element of the game are the bonus cards, two of which are dealt to each player at the start of the game. The location of a player’s bids—that is, where he’s taking the action on the gameboard—can give you a clue as to his bonus cards, thus telling you how to crush his hopes and build toward victory.

A View of the Skyline

In general, Metropolys feels more abstract and refined than other Ystari releases; it’s less busy in terms of possible actions—boiling everything down to series of auctions—although players still have many choices to make during the game. After a couple of my moves, I could immediately see how poor they were as my opponents took the bidding in directions I hadn’t anticipated, benefitting them far more than me. Additional plays and full knowledge of the bonus cards will help overcome that problem in the future.

A second Spiel des Jahres nomination isn’t out of the question, given the simplicity of the rules and potential depth of play for those who want to apply a little more brain juice to the game. And I certainly wouldn’t object to seeing Mathieu Leysenne’s gorgeous cover plastered all over the game world!

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Comments:

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The board is a little busy, reminiscent of Utopia, Inkognito, and maybe a bit of San Marco. It could work, though. Posted by Jim Cote on Jan 30, 2008 at 04:35 PM | #

I’m assuming the board art shown isn’t final, and that some tweaks to improve scannability (is that a word?) are yet to come.  Possibly something that makes the regions and the paths connecting them more distinct (maybe reducing the colour saturation for the paths or emphasizing their borders)? I’ve seen enough of Mathieu Leysenne’s work to be pretty confident things will both look and function great once all is said and done. :) pk Posted by Patrick Korner on Jan 30, 2008 at 07:26 PM | #

Different strokes, PK, but I like the board as is: dark and rich. Naturally I reserve the right to change my mind after playing on it… Posted by W. Eric Martin on Jan 30, 2008 at 07:34 PM | #

I agree with Eric. The board looks awesome to me. Is there a purpose to the three different heights of the bidding tokens, other than to help players identify the range of the token after it has been flipped? Posted by Tim Harrison on Jan 30, 2008 at 08:29 PM | #

Oh, I like the board colours, but I had a bit of trouble picking up the water canals at first - they seemed to blend a little more than I’d have liked. I’ve now seen the board in its entirety (don’t ask how), and thankfully the issue is a non-issue - the board is MUCH easier to survey than I first thought. Hooray for Mathieu! +add to buylist+ pk Posted by Patrick Korner on Jan 30, 2008 at 09:02 PM | #

Tim, the heights of the buildings come into play for the bonuses. I believe these bonuses have changed somewhat since I played, so I didn’t go into detail on them—but since I mentioned the heights, I should have said something! Eric Posted by W. Eric Martin on Jan 30, 2008 at 11:49 PM | #

The artwork reminds me of the retro-future/alternate-past settings of Miyazaki films. The box cover is fantastic! Posted by Roger Yim on Jan 31, 2008 at 11:26 AM | #

Man, this game is so insanely good looking! Posted by Surya Van Lierde on Feb 3, 2008 at 11:45 AM | #

What a gorgeous looking game! You could even frame those cards. Posted by Melissa Rogerson on Feb 5, 2008 at 07:09 PM | #

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