Skyrise Board Game Review

There is a growing trend with my board game group, and that trend is easy to learn games with some deep strategy. Listen, there are a few in the group who are always down to play whatever, including super complex and strategic games. But when the whole group is together, we love a game that can be taught in 15 minutes or less, with easy turn structure, but that still has some strategy. Skyrise from Roxley Games seems to fit this exact desire, and it’s why we’ve played it so much over the past week or so!

In Skyrise, players will use small, medium, and large buildings with unique numbers printed on them to bid on neighborhoods on a central board. These neighborhoods are assigned a specific faction (and colour, which ultimately is the most important feature) and when you win a bid, you get to build your building on that location. Where your buildings reside on the board will matter for final scoring, so paying attention to which faction disks you are picking up, and which neighborhoods you are built on is key to success.

Generally (although not always), the more tokens you have of a certain faction, the more those buildings are worth at the end of the game. But there is more to take into account here. How will you score the landmark cards after each of the two eras? You might need to have 3 buildings adjacent to each other, or two buildings connected by a bridge. You also need to take into account the wonder card you pick after Era 1 is complete, as that will also influence how you score and what strategy you might utilize.

There is a deep strategy here, and it’s a lot of fun figuring it out. I love that Skyrise allows you to take your time crafting your strategy, instead of forcing your hand at the beginning of the game. Each player only gets one secret objective card, and that is worth 10 points and will influence how you play. But each player is also given three wonder cards that give them specific scoring bonuses when their wonder is played in Era 2.

What I like about this, though, is that you don’t need to decide between your three cards until Era 1 ends, which means you’ll have a lot of information available to you before you are required to make a choice. This needs to happen more often in games, I think – more choice and allowing players to make decisions with more information will always make a game more strategic and fun. There is nothing worse than being stuck in one area, when you need to be in another area to score bonus points, all because you were dealt a bad card or made a bad pregame decision with no information.

Ultimately, I think that is what has made Skryise so popular with our group – we love games that put more of the decision making power in the hands of the players. And while you can look around and see what other players are doing, and attempt to sabotage them in one way or another, there is too much information secret around the table that wasting a turn to “screw” with someone else is probably a bad idea.

So often in my first few games I outbid others simply to get a building onto the board, and perhaps a free building as well if the place I bid was closed off (you’ll need to read the rules to understand this!). But I quickly realized that while that is an easy play to make, it’s not always the best one, and letting someone else take it might be the best option.

This is what I love – I love making those strategic decisions. If I see someone is racking up buildings on brown spaces, then yes, if my strategy allows it I might outbid them for a brown space. But ultimately, there are other players and cards in my hand that dictate how I will be playing Skyrise that session, and it does feel different and unique each time.

I do think that the game could have benefited from more secret objective cards – you quickly realize that the 4 included in the game just required you to build on certain colours, and that’s it. From a balancing perspective, I see why the decision was made, but I would have loved more choice here.

Overall, though, this is a really strong game that provides a great experience for everyone. The game flows so nicely, and after a few games it can be finished pretty quickly as well. A wonderfully written rulebook makes getting to this table and playing a breeze, so for that reason, amongst many others, it’s one that will stay in the collection for a long while – and that’s some pretty big praise considering dozens of games flow through our office each month! We cannot keep them all!