App Army Assemble: Reiner Knizia's My City - "Should you take a trip to Reiner Knizia's My City?"

There are plenty of excellent board games on mobile for good reason. It streamlines the whole experience and removes the burden of remembering the rules for everyone involved. Reiner Knizia's My City is the latest adaptation to arrive in our pockets, so we handed it over to our App Army to readers to see if they thought it was a good adaptation.

Here's what they said:

Nominally a city builder, this is really a tile placement game with rules and restrictions enough to give you a solid challenge. There are different game modes (I like the daily challenge most), including online multiplayer, and as you progress through the campaign, rules change and evolve, and the level of technology evolves. I like the simplicity of this that comes along with a challenging AI opponent. Simple controls that do what they’re supposed to, pleasant graphics, and a leaderboard to climb. There’s nothing not to like about this one.

Reiner Knizia's My City! is a conversion of a tile-laying board game, where you lay down polyomino pieces to cover as much land as possible. You lose points for covering up trees and gain points for covering up rocks. As you progress, rules are added that increase the complexity of the game.

This is a simple game that at first seems easy but is more complex than it looks. At first, I was constantly losing to the other AI opponents until I got the hang of it. If you sign up for an account, you can play online with other players. This is a well-done board game conversion that takes away a lot of the hassle of actually playing board games, with the computer stopping you from making illegal moves and finding enough people to play against.

I went in blind with this one, but the Settlers fan in me was already getting curious. I’d never played the board game, and came out pleasantly surprised. The tutorial does a great job of taking you by the hand for the first few placements, and then quietly steps back while the game starts layering in new rules, level after level. I like the evolving mechanics: one chapter you’re just fitting cosy polyomino houses like a neat little Tetris suburb, the next you’re juggling new tiles, and suddenly you go into a “ooops, did I just block that perfect spot?” moment.

Very engaging. It works very well on mobile. You get quick levels, snappy touch controls to drag/rotate, and a readable UI. I only played against the AI, and it was a good sparring partner, unless I sped through my decisions, but it was enough to make me rethink sloppy placements. All in all, we got a clean, clever city-builder puzzler that kept me saying “just one more chapter.” I didn’t know the original, now I want to try it on the table. I strongly recommend it for bite-sized puzzle fans and board game curios alike.

A video game adaptation of a great board game by the one and only Reiner Knizia. It's a Tetris-style game with a few terrain-based twists that gets more complicated as you progress through the campaign. I don't have any complaints, really. Frankly, it'd be difficult to mess up something this simple. If anything, I'm slightly disappointed that they didn't spiff up the visuals at all for the digital version, but I guess I've just been spoiled by the digital editions of Root and Yellow & Yangtze published by Dire Wolf. I'd certainly say it's still worth the money, though.

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My City is a board game with a lot of ways to play. Offline or online. Placing buildings on the map with different rules might sound simple, but it grows increasingly difficult.
The presentation suits the game well. A perfect puzzler in the vein of Carcassonne. Highly recommended as My City is speedier.

Reiner Knizia's My City is a tile-placement game. Players act as city developers, building personalised cities on their own polyomino-based boards over 24 "episodes" (games), evolving from pre-industrial villages to industrialised metropolises. In the game, players have to strategically place the polyominos to cover the light green tile and rocks as many as possible, and trees as few as possible.

Also trying to group buildings of the same colour as much as possible. Trees also need to be strategically planted after the first few episodes. In the later game, you have to try to cover both gold veins and train tracks first. Every episode, new rules would be introduced and sometimes erased. These evolving rules over the course of 24 episodes keep strategic tension high without narrative overload.

Strong AI makes it great for on-the-go play, while online multiplayer revives group sessions. The tutorial is interactive and gentle, easing newcomers into Knizia's tight mechanics. Daily Challenges and Randomised mode extend life beyond the campaign.
Reiner Knizia's My City is a standout, addictive tile-laying game that evolves just enough to hook you through the campaign and beyond.

Reiner Knizia's My City is a video game adaptation of the board game, and I feel like they did a pretty good job at accomplishing the feel of it. You place tetromino pieces on a map, and the goal is to use up all the land pieces, do not block any trees, but do cover up rocks, and so on. Each goal you accomplish gives you points, and each goal you don't accomplish will cost you points.

The person with the most points wins. It sounds simple, but do not let it fool you. It's challenging to master. There is a campaign mode that adds more challenges as you progress, and there is a daily challenge mode. It's a great adaptation of the board game; the only gripe I have is that it doesn't have pass-and-play (like some other video game/board game adaptations). It's required that all players own a copy of the game.

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Reiner Knizia's My City