As most regular readers here probably know, city-building games are my jam. Foundations of Rome is one of my top 5 board games of all time, and I love Frostpunk both in digital format and the board game adaptation. So when I found out about Dawnmaker, a city-building and deck-building game set in a smog-filled world, I had to try it.
Dawnmaker is published by Arpentor Studios and is available for Steam, iOS, and Android.
Gameplay Overview:
For this review, I played Dawnmaker on iOS. It’s a campaign game that is divided into a series of increasingly challenging missions. But the basics are that you start out with a small lighthouse, keeping the darkness at bay. Each round, you’ll have 3 actions to play any cards from your hand or activate buildings. The cards will usually grant you one of the game’s four resources: Science, Food, Industry, or Eclairium.
You need food to keep your city running, as each time you cycle your deck or upgrade your lighthouse, your food needs increase. Industry will let you construct buildings, and science lets you activate buildings and (usually) game Eclairium. It’s that last resource that lets you upgrade your lighthouse, which is the goal of the game. Throughout the game, you’ll also be adding cards to your market deck, which gives you a handful of buildings to choose from each round that you can build.
The basic turn structure is that you’ll have a hand of 5 cards, most of which cost 1-2 action points to play. When you have enough industry points, you can construct a building from the market row into your city. The buildings will provide you with resources, new cards for your deck, or special actions. Once you have enough Eclairium, you can upgrade your lighthouse to the next level, revealing more of the map and adding more cards to the market deck.
You’ll take turns in this manner until you’ve upgraded your lighthouse enough times (win) or the darkness has consumed your fledgling city (lose).
Game Experience:
While not perfect, Dawnmaker is an overall solid game. I found that it’s most interesting when you are choosing which buildings to construct and where to put them. There are a lot of different ones to choose from, especially as you progress through the campaign. Some power on adjacency, while others might provide resource income (or storage). Needless to say, there are a lot of decisions that need to be made not only in what buildings you buy, but where you put them.
As for the hand of cards you’ll play, they are, for the most part, pretty mundane. Usually, it’s trade X actions for Y resources. Occasionally, you’ll get a unique one that will let you destroy a building or do something unusual. But the card play is almost a missed opportunity in my opinion. Early in the game, I’m playing them for industry to get some buildings out, and then later in the game, I’m playing them for science or Eclairium. Cards that do interesting things are pretty rare.
After you win a scenario, you are taken to a screen to customize your starting deck. This lets you add new buildings, cards to your hand, starting resources, or remove cards. I really liked this part of the game, but it feels really underutilized. Winning a mission will usually grant you 1-2 purchases on this screen at most. There is a reroll option, but money is so hard to come by that buying a reroll seems like a poor idea. But being able to add a new building that synergizes with your play strategy, or cull some of those starter cards, is fantastic. I just wish this part of the game were expanded to let us customize our deck a lot more as we progress through the campaign.
The campaign can be played in two different modes. Either letting you replay missions you fail, or hardcore mode, where, when you fail a mission, the campaign ends. I’m on record that I love when games let you customize the difficulty level, as some gamers prefer punishing modes, while I tend to like winning.
That being said, the maps you play on are an opportunity for more variety in the game. For the most part, they are pretty static, with just some mountains here or wrecks there. I’d love to see some that are small in size, requiring you to demolish old buildings, or maybe divided into parts. But that could be a cool DLC option for the future.
Final Thoughts:
Dawnmaker is a good game that has a lot of potential to be great. I think with the ability to customize your deck a bit more, and some variety in maps, I could see myself sinking a lot of time into this one. But as it is, it’s still a solid game that you can get hours of entertainment through even just one pass on the campaign.
That being said, be aware that the real excitement comes from building your city with a huge variety of unique buildings, not necessarily the card play from turn to turn. If that sounds interesting to you, be sure to give Dawnmaker a try.
Final Score: 3.5 Stars – A cool theme and lots of unique buildings make for some fun gameplay.
Hits:
• Lots of unique buildings
• Theme is fun
• Difficulty scaling options
Misses:
• Could use more variety in the maps
• Deck customization could be expanded
Source: Board Game Quest
