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Rise & Fall is a full control strategic game. Each player controls a civilization trying to expand and progress in a fantasy world. This world displays a unique landscape where glaciers live on islands and huge cliffs are common barriers and challenges to overcome.
In this gorgeous land each player starts with a small tribe including a village, a citizen and a ship and will grow to a full civilization with more of the pre-mentioned units but also temples, merchants and the precious highlanders, the only ones able to pass those astonishing cliffs.
Rise & Fall is a very immersive and addictive game, easy to understand, with no luck or randomness involved. The initial creation of the world by itself is a real pleasure and each game brings a different map to the table.
The new players will enjoy the game for its “easy access” aspect. Since all the actions you can do are displayed on the six cards of a player’s deck, this makes the game really accessible right from the start.
The more exigent strategist players will love the game for its full control aspect and the fact that the learning curve seems to be a constant line of progression.
—description from publisher
- Deep strategy and planning with relatively low luck
- High interactivity and a strong central board presence
- Modularity and guilds add variability and replayability
- Solid solo mode with pirate AI and scalable difficulty
- Rules are easy to teach and learn
- Potential for player elimination and early loss
- Base game can feel repetitive without expansions or mods
- Early turns can be slow and tediously strategic
- Production/ Kickstarter issues with publisher impacting access
- civilization/empire-building with resource management and area control
- abstracted civilization-building on a modular board
- simulation/abstract
- Roads and Boats
- Hansa Teutonica
- Concordia
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- asymmetric player powers — Optional guilds provide asymmetric powers and scoring variations.
- Asymmetry and guild powers — Optional guilds provide asymmetric powers and scoring variations.
- end game bonuses — Endgame is triggered by collecting a number of trophies; end scoring includes area control and resource-based bonuses.
- Endgame trophy race and area control — Endgame is triggered by collecting a number of trophies; end scoring includes area control and resource-based bonuses.
- hand management — Acquired cards go to hand and are played for unit-specific actions.
- Hand management and card play — Acquired cards go to hand and are played for unit-specific actions.
- Modular board — The board is assembled from modular pieces and can be drafted or randomly arranged.
- Modular board setup — The board is assembled from modular pieces and can be drafted or randomly arranged.
- Resource/territory scoring — Scoring includes majority control and resource dominance.
- Unit activation via cards — Players activate units by playing cards that grant multiple actions per unit.
- Unit type transformation — Units can transform into other types (e.g., Nomads to cities or ships).
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Rise and Fall is a game by Kristoff Bolinger
- 2024 release that was kickstarted in 2023
- the goal of this game is to go around moving these characters activating them once at a time
- the goal of this game is to get out as many of one type of unit as possible to claim a trophy
- this game can be further modulated with different guilds or asymmetric player powers
- The rules of this game are really easy to learn
- I think this is worth a try