Saloon Tycoon Review

The engine-building genre is a large one, but its list of potential settings grows smaller each time a designer spins their globe, throws a dart and names a resource-optimizing game after wherever it sticks. Into this shrinking world steps Van Ryder Games with Saloon Tycoon, an offering by Robert Couch that ventures into the American West - a relatively dart-free zone to date- bringing along humor, interaction and bling to keep players’ Euro homework from being as dry as the desert.

Sure, the usual boxes are checked. Though this town is big enough for 2-4 saloon owners due to each player having their own board, the Wild West’s ancestors have limited the amount of unique buildings in the game, thematically mirroring the limited timber in the desert while mechanically introducing the Euro-required longing for what could have been. Plus, Saloon Tycoon’s end is always in doubt, thanks to each player’s hidden objectives, a victory-point tracker that’s harder to decipher than a palsied outlaw’s treasure map and a third mechanic that combines interaction, uncertainty and humor: characters. Each game begins with citizens and outlaws on the board, roaming free until players’ actions draw them to their side. Some are attracted by certain buildings. Others seek riches or reputation, and the outlaws can even arrive due to other townsfolk’s presence. Characters bring victory points and rewards, or take them away, and can move freely, or be moved forcefully, between players. This interaction is a twist on typical passive aggression befitting the Old West, a land whose biggest regret was lack of a gun that fired seven bullets.

Even in the Old West, never trust the English

Characters and action cards provide a healthy dose of western flavor and humor, drawing players into the period as they carve their holdings out of the sand, and Saloon Tycoon’s bling adds to the fun through its art and its building methods, allowing players to nail together their mesa mansions in two dimensions. Buildings come in two sizes, as do lots in a player’s corner of the town, forcing shrewd landowners to optimize their planning to fit available space and characters. Saloon Tycoon provides plenty of basic building types for players’ use, some that Carrie Nation would smile on and some that’d cause her to look like, well, everyone in the 1800s looked in front of a camera. Using cubes, structures can rise to a maximum of two floors above ground level and be capped with a roof, a feature that’s not only aesthetic but sturdy, its low, wide tiles a bonus for players who decide to mimic 78% of the Old West and play the game not-sober.

Jenga? Pardner, them’s fightin’…word

Saloon Tycoon’s artwork is fantastic, evoking theme, enhancing humor and enabling an almost-language independent game, except for the victory-point tracker, which reads like the Rosetta Stone covered with spaghetti. This map-to-lost-Spanish-gold aside, most of what players need is on the table, requiring few game-derailing rules consultations and contributing to the game’s short playtime. Each turn checks another Euro box, with budding entrepreneurs choosing one of a few major actions and an unlimited number of minor ones before passing the oil lamp to the next land baron. More buildings mean more well-made gold nuggets, which can buy cubes to build upward, tiles to build in either direction or as the means to enact a Tycoon Card ability or lure a citizen.

There’s not much downtime, with the usual AP disclaimer, and many strategies to victory, though a player’s secret goals will typically set them upon a particular path from the start, since they’re the only way to radically swing the game without drawing unwanted attention, adding suspense at the cost of freedom. Lots of sand in the American West, but a small sandbox, though this rarely becomes an issue, since carving a name for oneself isn’t the goal of Saloon Tycoon and a new town can spring up to replace the old in a little over an hour’s time.

After a few games, the combination of secret goals and unique citizens can offer another strategic challenge for veterans, forcing them to keep their cards close to their vests until the end, since characters in play can determine which bonuses are available, dictating which buildings to pursue and telegraphing would-be robber barons’ intentions to their fellow rustlers. This narrowing of players’ paths increases strategy at the sandbox’s expense, heralding a Euro encroachment into the frontier, but if gamers keep their focus on the cards’ clever sayings, the tight game mechanics and enticing element of construction, Saloon Tycoon provides a mother lode of entertainment.