Acreage by pomb 2018-09-01T19:50:08Z
I can only get 119 on 5X5 (After about 6 tries).
I tried a mass boot and flower run, but it seems not as effective on the 5X5 as building houses and chopping trees. Maybe flower runs are effective on the larger levels?
But the fact that I could see multiple strategies towards scoring makes me think this game design has great potential.
The reason I gravitated towards boots and flowers is that I really like strategies that involve feedback loops, like building machines that generate more resources over time. When I saw that the flowers returned each turn I wanted to try exploit that. I wonder whether it'd be possible to do make more of the tiles exhibit this behaviour (so as the level gets filled, a sort of machine emerges, with, for instance, ways to make the trees renewable and renewable ways to spend that wood etc). Something like a really stripped down version of Stardew Valley.
I've played a bit more now... I've tried the 15 X 7 map placing a lot of boots and flowers, I got 804 points, but played far from perfectly. I think houses still are the best earners, certainly after 18 turns from the end, but flowers and boots are very useful in other ways (and some of the flowers placed near the beginning do earn better than houses).
Like others have said, it feels like the player is a bit at the whim of the random tiles provided. I think providing some way to overcome that might be a good addition. Some way to be able to affect your deck would help. I don't think this needs to go as far as a deck builder, but perhaps some elements of that?
Like if there was a building that could be built that allows for a hand to be discarded in favour of another one.
And if that sort of thing is possible, maybe some buildings add future tiles to your deck. Like building a house adds the possibility of a marketplace tile (for instance). i.e. as you play you trigger certain conditions for more complicated cards to be available.... I guess I am suggesting a kind of deck builder :)
In any case, I think this is a strong design! Love to see this taken further.