TILE SYNERGY
Adjacency bonus
It’s time to finally put the deck of cards to one side: tiles are the foundation of a burgeoning new genre
There’s a new videogame genre emerging: the tile-synergy game. Think of 2022’s Dorfromantik, in which your primary goal is to place tiles so that they synergise with the tiles surrounding them. As you line up matching edges correctly, spawning neighbourhoods, forests, rivers and fields, you’re rewarded with points and more tiles. Blunted edges and incomplete quests will see you run out of tiles, and reach game over. This is the essence of the tile synergy game.
Positional bonuses are a familiar element of map-based strategy or management games such as Civilization, and they’re a core mechanic in many boardgames, but in videogames this consideration hasn’t typically been the central activity. So, what brought about the change?