West Story: A Town Building Game

I first noticed it on a shelf and, led astray by the title, assumed it might be a successor to Town Builder: Coveorden. It is nothing of the sort, either in play or in outlook. What it is, though, is a game comfortable in its own skin, building a tableau across the table like a small town trying to put a Tuesday after work back into order.

At its centre is that growing tableau, tied to a dice system with the familiar pull of Space Base. The dice roll, you scan the little engine you have assembled, and there is always the quiet hope that the next trigger will be the one that makes everything click.

The game stays tight and its mechanisms are sound, but the relationship between scoring and pace does not develop as smoothly as I wanted it to. The rulebook also took more out of me than it should have; not because the game is incomprehensible, but because getting to a clear picture of the table is less effortless than it ought to be.

Overall, West Story: A Town Building Game is a middling experience with a mechanism interesting enough to draw me back. Nothing in it actively spoiled the evening; it simply never gives its scoring and pacing the same assurance it shows when it is building its tableau.