Welcome to “Board with Myself,” a feature in which I talk about solo board games and board games with solo modes. Sometimes you don’t have a lot of friends. Sometimes you don’t have many friends at all. That’s when you have to be board with yourself.
The box of this damn game says “Welcome To… Your Perfect Home” but since every other website seems to say the game is just called “Welcome To…” I’m going to leave it that way. Including the ellipses. It’s just - why not use the full title? It’s right there on the box. I mean, shit, man. Why? Why would… It’s fine.
Welcome to Welcome To…!
Jesus.
Despite me hating everything about its naming conventions, Welcome To… is a nice little neighborhood-building game. It’s also one of the most perfect solo board games I’ve ever played. It’s simple. It’s easy to set up. It moves fast without being too random. It requires thinking without too much frustration. Even with dozens of games in, I still hit “aha” moments, which is rare since I’m incredible dumb.
In this game, you have a map of a neighborhood. Actually, you have an entire stack of maps of the same neighborhood because you’re gonna be writing on this baby with pencil! Don’t worry, you’ve got a hundred sheets and you can always print more if you run out. You won’t run out. When have you ever run out of sheets from a board game?
Along with the map, there is a stack of cards with numbers and symbols on them. Each turn, you get a few of these babies and have to choose one number and one symbol to use. The numbers help you put the houses in order so you can group them together. The symbols to do things such as build fences, improve public parks, and create swimming pools. This all sounds more complicated than it is, but you’re essentially managing some minor resources and drawing lines on a sheet of paper.
At the end of the game, you score based on a number of different criteria (again, pools, parks, groups of houses fenced together, etc.) as well as a couple bonus goal cards. If you’re playing with people, you see who got the highest score. If you’re playing alone, you see if you got a higher score than you from earlier. Easy.
There’s something lovely about games where you build cities or towns or neighborhoods or villages. I like to imagine the reality of the situation. Or at least, a version of reality. If I ran a town in actual reality, everyone would be dead in a bad way. So I prefer to imagine I’m a productive person who makes the lives of others better without actually trying to do so.
Outside of its name, Welcome To… is a pretty relaxing ride. There was about a month I was even using it as a sort of meditative warm-up to the day. That shit ended real fast, but I’m still in love with this game. The gameplay dovetails with the theme and the whole look and design of the game is lovely.
That’s what this fucking game is: Lovely. It’s a lovely fucking game.
I hate that title, though.