2010-5: Indonesia (new)
After some hiatus, we're finally up to my top 5, just in time to finish the list out before my April 1 “year-end” deadline.
Let's start with a new entry: Indonesia. Indonesia is a 3-4 hour, 2-5 player economic game, in which the players are developing the economy of Indonesia, producing, transporting, and selling goods (rice, spices, rubber, oil, etc.), all while creating and aggressively merging fledgling production/transportation corporations.
Narrative Theme: 6. The description on the box only serves to confuse, but reading the first page of the instructions, and glancing at the gorgeous board, quickly gets across the essential narrative theme: you are about to develop the hell out of beautiful, pristine Indonesia, and make as much money as possible in the process.
Mechanical Theme: 9. Of all the games in my collection (with the possible exception of Napoleon's Triumph, which I've yet to talk about), Indonesia feels the most mechanically true-to-life. You're setting up and enlarging plantations, developing a transportation network, and providing resources to an ever-growing (in both size and number) collection of cities. But the heart of the game lies in your ability to buy successful plantations and transportation networks out from under other players (or drive up the price and sell your own companies at a premium). You really feel like a tycoon, and you'll run the gamut of emotions as your companies grow, fail, merge, or are stolen by the bastards next door.
Price vs. Component Quality: 2. This is a boutique Eurogame, by a boutique European company (Splotter Spellen - www.splotter.nl), with a price to match: $75 for a failry small box. Nor are the components of the highest quality. The unvarnished black box looks very elegant, but just looking at it is also almost enough to scratch it. The long, thin board/map of Indonesia is very pretty, but the regions where you are placing tokens are oddly shaped (for geographical accuracy's sake, I presume) and generally smaller than the tokens you're supposed to be placing there. (I call this “War of the Ring syndrome.”) Combine this with a very difficult-to-read cursive script and hard-to-pronounce locations (e.g. Sulawesi Tenggara), and playability is seriously impacted. The tokens themselves are small and thin, more paper-like than cardboard. The paper money is pretty, but small and tissue-thin. And the city counters are simply glass beads, like you'd find in a fish tank. All in all, this one tied with Through the Ages for the worst price-to-component quality of any game in my collection (but Indonesia wins out in that fight by having the better art).
Rule Complexity: 8. This is about as complicated as Euros get. It's not a simulation-style war-game (which is a whole different world of complexity)... but I still made all my players watch an hour-long how-to-play video before we started [by Scott Nicholson, whose videos I heartily recommend in general]. This is not a game for new players.
Depth/Replayability: 8. The flip-side of the rule complexity issue is that there's a lot going on here, it's all interesting, and it will take you many many plays to figure it all out. This would probably be a 9.5 game for me in this regard, were it not for the borderline-prohibitive length keeping it off the table more than I'd like.
Mechanical Elegance: 7.5. All the pieces here mesh, and they mesh well. In essence, Indonesia is the child of a pick-up-and deliver game like Steam, and a simplified 18xx-series network-building/stock manipulation game. Somehow the designers make this work in a very intuitive way. Nevertheless, this is still a game where you need a chart in front of you to see what you're allowed to bid at auction, and we sometimes even bring calculators. That, and the clunkiness created by the less-than-perfect components discussed above pull this down from a 9ish score to a 7.5. If only Days of Wonder had produced it...
Length vs. Enjoyment: 7.5. The game feels like its shorter than it actually is, because you're so involved. Nevertheless, 3-5 hours makes it an “event game” that you need to plan your day around (and get a baby-sitter). That pulls it down a full 2 points.
Other indefinables: It's hard to put into words, but there's an emotional realism going on here that I just don't get in a game very often, outside the occasional RPG. When I'm done playing, I fell like I just finished a long novel. Maybe a James Clavell tome. Tai-Pan?
Best for: If you're looking for an economic game, and have the time and money to spare, I've never played a better game than Indonesia.
Avoid if: One or more of the above three caveats are true. This is a niche game. A brilliant one, admittedly, but it's certainly not for everyone. Try before you buy.