Hamlet – First Thoughts
I come from a largish town in the Highlands of Scotland. As a centre for trade in the area over the years, it has grown, expanded, and changed. People are proud of the town, its produce, and the community around it. Hamlet asks what would happen if you turned that co-operative pride into a competitive game. Hamlet is designed by David Chircop, illustrated by Yusuf Artun, and published by Mighty Boards.
First Thoughts pieces represent my impressions after an initial play of the game. I will highlight what I enjoyed and any pitfalls to be avoided. It is not to be take as a full review. I believe this perspective is useful as many of us encounter many games only once.
At the core of the game, Hamlet has the idea of building a church together. On completion of the church the game ends and the person with the most points wins. You gain these from expanding the village with new industries, landmarks, and from selling the resources needed to produce these new additions.
You start simply. With only wood, stone, and grain to your name. Using your network of weirdly swole donkeys, and your workers you can move these resources around in order to build new parts of the town. No one owns any of these resources as such. Resources are placed on the board by the actions of workers, and then used by workers.
Over time the town grows and new ‘refined’ resources arrive. Technology accelerates and everyone can benefit. Those who build these new technologies benefit twice. Not only do they get the points from creating these industries, but if they were first to create that industry they get a small bonus of being able to make superior products. The building of new industries makes that technology more widely available and we get some new tile options to buy. The tiles are all weird shapes making the growth of the village feel more organic than in other games.
Why does that matter? Refined resources give points to the player that made them, no matter who uses them up. Of course they must be transported across town to the site of your new building, and consumed in its manufacturing. The superior products some players can make, garner even more points when consumed.
Now without the Church at the centre of town to build, this might be all for nought. However this gives the game focus, and encourages the building of these new industries. Without them, certain parts of the church cannot be built, and the victory point awards for doing so are significant.
The feel of the resource manufacturing and trading is what impressed me most on this first play of Hamlet. It quickly felt to us like there was a real economy going on across the board. Yes I built the first facility to make milk, but you can come and make milk there. I might then use that milk to build something, giving me a boost in points, but bringing you along for the ride. Using my place to make your milk, also blocks me from making a superior product worth more points to me.
There is a cool puzzle at the core of Hamlet that quickly escalates as you get more donkeys and workers to manipulate it. We did play with the intro version of the game, meaning we got the core industries quicker and we started with more workers. I do have a concern that the full game will start too slowly for my tastes. I guess we’ll just have to play to find out!
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