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High Rise Deep Dive
What the Community Thinks About High Rise
Reviewers agree that High Rise, from Formal Ferret Games, pairs a city-building action track with a corruption twist that lets players trade a little dirty dealing for a real edge on the board. Where the community splits is on who the game is really for. Watch It Played comes away enthusiastic, calling the finished product "fantastic" and praising how interactive and tightly scored it feels once it hits the table. Our Family Plays Games is more measured: they liked looking at the buildings and enjoyed their session, but landed on it being "okay" and "solid" rather than a new favorite, and they pegged it as a game for hobby enthusiasts rather than a family night pick.
Game Night Picks - Pair Of Dice Paradise covers the game from a different angle entirely, tracking the business side of High Rise rather than a play session. The host explains that the Kickstarter campaign for the premium, plastic-heavy version was canceled after CEO Gil Hova heard from gamers who wanted to back it but found the price too high, and that a leaner version with cheaper components was being planned to replace it. That thread ties back into what the two play-focused channels experienced: an ambitious, component-forward city builder that reviewers wanted to see reach more tables, one way or another.
Core Mechanics That Define High Rise
A One-Way Action Track With No Do-Overs
Every action in High Rise happens by moving forward along a single track that only goes one direction. Players can travel as far as they want on their turn, collecting resources, constructing buildings, or repaying favors along the way, but they will not get another turn until every other player has passed their position. Watch It Played frames this directly as a one-way track "where you can go as far as you'd like, but you'll only get another turn when everyone else passes you," which turns simple movement into a constant judgment call about how much ground to cover before yielding the turn order back to the table.
Corruption as a Double-Edged Bonus
The mechanic that most defines High Rise is corruption. Players can rack up corruption to unlock bonuses on their actions, but the game periodically penalizes whoever is currently the most corrupt, and everyone loses victory points for corruption they are still holding when the game ends. Watch It Played summarizes the tension well: scoring stays tight because a player has to keep choosing whether to take on corruption to get ahead, knowing it will cost points later if it is not cleaned up. Our Family Plays Games saw the same push and pull play out at their table, noting that the youngest player at the session actively tried to steer clear of corruption rather than lean into it.
The High Rise Experience
Racing for the Best Spot on the Track
Because everyone shares the same track and the same limited set of building spaces, a large part of playing High Rise is reading where opponents are likely to land next. Watch It Played describes constantly weighing all the open spaces in front of a player, then settling for the next best spot rather than the ideal one, hoping the player coming up behind wants that same spot rather than the one just taken. That shared pressure over a small number of good options is what keeps turns feeling active even though the track itself only moves in one direction.
Watching a Skyline Take Shape
The physical growth of the city is a big part of what stuck with reviewers. Our Family Plays Games singled out the buildings themselves, calling out the different heights and the three-dimensional look of the growing skyline as a highlight of their session, and noted that even buildings pushed out to the less desirable suburb spaces still keep table presence once they are built. Watch It Played echoes that same sense of scale, describing players stacking up "huge buildings" and putting smaller pieces on top as the game goes on.
What Makes High Rise Stand Out
Tenant Powers That Bend the Rules
High Rise hands out special tenant powers by landing on a tenant's space or building on its card, and reviewers pointed to those powers as one of the game's sharpest ideas. Watch It Played calls them "all really cool," explaining that they help players pull extra resources and, in some cases, essentially break the normal rules of the game outright, which keeps every playthrough feeling a little different depending on which tenants come into play.
A Rondelle and Area Control Hybrid With Teeth
Watch It Played frames the design as clever and highly interactive, built by combining a rondelle-style track like the one in Tokaido with area control pressure over building spots. That combination is what the channel credits for keeping scoring incredibly tight: every choice to chase a bonus through corruption is a choice made in view of the whole table, and the mechanisms stay simple even while the competition for space stays fierce.
Potential Drawbacks
A Two-Player Mode That Feels Like an Afterthought
Our Family Plays Games came away convinced High Rise wants three or more players at the table. They found the two-player variant, which has each person also controlling a dummy AI player, more of a workaround than a real mode, and said they needed a third person to sit down before the game clicked. They also felt the board itself did not have enough distinct zones, especially once the two-player rules were in play, and wished for more room to spread out.
A Box and Rulebook That Undersell How It Plays
Two channels flagged the same disconnect between presentation and play from opposite directions. Watch It Played warns that the box size and art style make High Rise look like a heavier game than it actually is, something closer to a dense Eagle-Gryphon or Lacerda-style title, when the actual play is smooth and sharp. Our Family Plays Games ran into the opposite friction getting there: they called the rulebook rough going and said it needed to be summarized down, which they felt made the game less approachable for a newcomer to the hobby even though the actual turns are not complicated once learned.
If You Enjoy High Rise
Watch It Played draws a direct line from High Rise to Tokaido, pointing to the shared rondelle-style movement around a shared track as the connective tissue between the two games, even as High Rise layers area control and corruption on top of that base.
What Reviewers Are Saying
"It's clever and highly interactive, combining a rondelle like the one in Tokaido, mixing it with area control games. Scoring is always incredibly tight because you have to make a choice: accept corruption to get ahead. But if you don't clean up your act, it will cost you points at the end and that can cost you the game."
— Watch It Played
"I like the buildings, I like the kind of 3D effect because the buildings, the different heights and stuff they have on that. It's it's okay though, it's it's solid, I liked it."
— Our Family Plays Games
"The playing of this game is smooth and sweet and sharp and corrupt, and it's so satisfying. You see the all these huge buildings that you're building."
— Watch It Played