Really Little Board Game Review: Tiny Towns

I used to have a regular board game night. Every Thursday I would put the kids to bed, climb into my car, and drive to my best friends’ house where my friends and then we would heckle each other for three hours while we would also play board games. Then there was a pandemic and I found myself without a board game group.

For Christmas I asked for a few solid two player games (and a one player game) so that I could play more with my wife, and kids, and…myself. One of the games I got was Tiny Towns and the night before New Year’s Eve (is there a special name for that night?), my wife asked me to bust it out.

For starters, Tiny Towns has really nice game pieces. The buildings are nice and the resource cubes use a really nice colour scheme that is just different enough from existing games to create a certain uniqueness. The cards are decent enough. The one thing that doesn’t seem to match the aesthetic of the rest is the player boards which are kind of boring. There’s nothing wrong with them, they’re just not that interesting compared to the rest of the really well-designed components.

Now let’s talk gameplay.

First, at the two-player level it’s really easy to lose track of whose turn it is.
Second, I don’t love when you need to use a scoring pad for a game.

Those might be the only bad things I have to say about this game. It offers a REALLY unique way of collecting and distributing resources. The theme and gameplay tie in very well together. The rulebook and rules in general are incredibly easy to comprehend. As you move on in the game you face much more complex choices and obstacles, and it moves quickly (and very effectively) from a simple light game into a significantly more complex and heavy game.

I really enjoy how fast the game moves. It’s light and fun but adds enough complexity to keep it entertaining for the grownups. I haven’t played the solo version yet (I’m waiting for my wife to go back to work and my kids to go back to school and I’ll use a lunch break to give it a run-through) but at least at the two-player level, Tiny Towns is a legitimate fun time and I would definitely recommend it.