EVERDAWN

Nice little puzzler by a solo dev. Congratulations! Not difficult to learn, but multiple point scoring options give it a good amount of depths. You can develop a strategy for maximizing points ... or you can just build pretty landscapes. Unlike in Dorfromantik, in which the rules are more straight to the point and less forgiving in regards of running out of tiles, Everdawn's tile count is hard to run down to zero. You'd really have to try to not succeed here. In this regard, the game is more like Panorama, although Panorama looks more polished. In addition to the classic mode, there's also an adventure mode where every now and then a catastrophe strikes your board and tiles that you already laid are wiped out and you can rebuild. There's a challenge mode where you play against set difficulties, quick mode for those that don't have much time, hard mode for those that want a real challenge, and sandbox mode for those that want to be creative (although the only difference between sandbox and classic mode seems to be that sandbox has no tile count, and as I've said, it's not hard to keep your tile count well stocked). And FYI, at the time of writing this I have only played adventure and classic mode so far. Like all puzzlers this one can become a little stale after some time, because the game kind of forces you to grow huge areas of the same type of tile. You need to set yourself your own challenges in classic mode, or focus on building a more diverse map on purpose. But then again, the same is true for Dorfromantik if you can grow your map to the point where you'll never run out of tiles again and all that's left is chasing highscores. And I have literally 100s of hours of playtime for Dorfromantik, so I really shouldn't complain. Also, the music, while alright, can be a bit much sometimes. It's just too ... present for my liking. But you can always turn it off, of course. My suggestion is, if you don't have any of these three games: - get Dorfromantik if you want the game that defined the genre and you enjoy a bit of a puzzle challenge. - get Panorama if you want a game with no fuss and no challenge that just looks really pretty, because you enjoy building beautiful landscapes. - get Everdawn if you enjoy a variety of game modes and you like to be challenged one day and take it easy another day. If you have already played either Panorama or Dorfromantik, chances are you will like Everdawn as well. And if you're still on the fence, there's a free demo you can check out. (Why is it not mentioned on the full game page, by the way? Or am I just blind?)