Tropicalia

• Designer: Phil Walker-Harding
• Publisher: Mojito Studios
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 45-60 mins
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• Played with review copy provided by publisher

 Even this morning, the sky is clear and the sun is high over Tropicalia Island. It is time to collect mangoes, sugar apples and coconuts and to sell them at the various markets: your little island won’t build itself! In Tropicalia, you and your opponents will send your workers to the different tiles that make up the ever-changing island of Tropicalia to collect and sell fruit. Then, you will use your earnings to purchase various elements, such as buildings and events, to add to your personal board, which will grant you bonuses and points. At the end of the game, whoever has the most valuable island wins!

To form the board, assemble the outer frame and around the 16 island tiles (organized randomly in a 4×4 grid) – flipping over tiles as directed for player count.  The village tiles are shuffled and 5 of them are placed face up as a market on the Construction board.  Each player gets a board, 4 workers in their color, and places their Shell counter on the 0 space of the track found on their own board.  A start player is determined, and players then get a starting tile as well as some starting shell income based on position.  Finally, the board is seeded with random fruits on each field tile and random Item tiles on each plaza tile.

The game is played over 5 rounds, and at the start of each round, the Field tiles get 3 fruits and the plaza tiles get 2 Items on each.  After this setup, each round has a Morning phase, where players plan their actions, and a Day Phase, when those actions are executed.

In the Morning phase, starting with the current start player and then going clockwise, each player places one of their Workers on an empty space on the board’s frame.  Continue until all players have placed all 4 of their Workers.

In the Day phase, the players now take turns moving their Workers onto tiles in the Island.  Again starting with the current start player and then going clockwise, each player chooses one of their Workers and moves it onto an uninhabited tile in the row/column from its starting place.  Once placed, execute the action shown on the Island tile that you placed your worker on.  The general types of actions are:

• Field Tile – take all the Fruits on the tile and place one per empty basket space on your player board.  You are initially limited to the 5 pre-printed baskets, but you can gain more capacity by gaining basket tiles

• Plaza Tile – take the 2 Item tiles on the Plaza (extra Baskets, Surfboards, Carts)
• Market Tile – sell any number of the depicted Fruit for the price shown (2-4 shells per Fruit).

If you choose not or can not move your worker, you can simply return home and take a random fruit from the bag.  Note that you could use a Surfboard tile to place your worker anywhere and/or use a Cart tile to place your worker on an already occupied tile.

After taking the Island action, the player can then build 1 Village tile from the market – the cost (in shells) being the sum of the cost on the tile added to the cost from its space in the market.  You pay the cost and then place the tile onto your player board – not rotating it.  If it is a Field tile, you gain the Fruits shown on it.  As you place the tile, if you complete a fountain (always at the junction of 2 tiles), you gain one random fruit for each Fountain.  Slide the market tiles to the left and place a new tile in the +4 space.

At the end of the round, remove any unchosen Fruits and Item tiles.  The start player for the next round is the player who placed their worker on the Plaza tile with a brown board on it.  If no one chose that tile, the Start Player does not change.  All workers are retrieved from the board to ready for the next round.

After the 5th round, players calculate their scores:

• Each Village tile they have built onto their board; each type has a different scoring rule
• 1 point per fruit left over
• 1 point per 2 Shells left over
• 1 point per unused Cart and Surfboard tile
• -4 points for each of the 4 Village tile types you have not built

The player with the most points wins, ties broken in favor of the player with the most Shells.  

My thoughts on the game

This game felt really familiar to me after reading the rules, but my initial investigations through my records and BGG show this to be a new design.  Maybe I’d played a prototype before?  In any event, the game is a fun tactical game about collecting fruits and selling them for the right price.

The worker placement resolution is the key to the game.  Given that each action space can be accessed by four different workers, it is a fun challenge to try to discern what players are trying to do each round.  Or, trying to figure out what the best order of activation is for your own workers to give you the flexibility that you need to get things done.

Turn order is pretty important as obviously the first player will always get their first choice of action spot as well as have the first mover advantage in every go-round.  Rather than simply rotate the start player (which might end up giving some more equality), the start player is passed to whomever takes a certain plaza tile action – the one with a brown board on it.  In my games thus far, the start player has remained fairly static…  

All the players are trying to get the best they can out of their starting action or two, and if the items on offer at that plaza aren’t enticing, the player who had the start often took it for the next round as well.   That being said, the player who drafted last in most of the rounds actually ended up being quite competitive score-wise, so maybe it’s not as big of an advantage as I think it is?!  Or maybe our start player was just really bad at Tropicalia… :)

The action tiles are all very useful, though the baskets seem to have the most effect when taken early in the game as you have more chances to actually use them.  The surfboard and cart give you a lot of flexibility, and this can be key in the later rounds when you really need to make a big delivery.

So the first challenge is getting the fruits and then selling them for profit – but there’s a second level to the game, and that is figuring out what VP tiles to buy from the market and where to place them.  This other puzzle is also a nice challenge.  Lots of mathematical calculations to figure out which tiles give you the best payoff for your shells, and then a bonus thrown in if you’re able to complete some fountains.

Further, the penalty of 4VP for each VP tile type not acquired adds another layer to the calculations on which tile is best for you.  Many of the tiles also score based on your end-game state, and these tiles can either give you motivation to do certain things during the game OR you might even want to pick one up if only to block an opponent from getting a huge payout.

For a game that can be explained in ten minutes or less, there is a lot to like about Tropicalia. The designer is one of my favorites, and this game only adds to the load of Phil Walker-Harding games that I enjoy… 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! 
• I like it. Dale, John P 
• Neutral.
• Not for me…