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This copy of Skyrise is my own rather than a review copy, and is the Collectors Edition with the enhanced buildings (without the wash), and the 3D islands.
Rules & Setup:
The set up of the game takes very little time, I did a 4 player set up in around 10 minutes, and once set out the game looks very impressive even without the buildings placed on the islands.
The rules are quick and easy to learn, and take up only a handful of pages in what is an extremely well put together rulebook. I had sent my players the Rodney Smith video on How to Play Skyrise, but as 2 of them didn’t get the chance to watch it I had to do a quick teach myself, which again was extremely easy and quick, coming in between 5 to 10 minutes max. We only had one instance to check the rulebook during the whole game, which again shows just how good the rules are, and how easy it is to play.
Theme and Mechanics:
The theme is you are an architect trying to build a city in the clouds, and you are auction bidding via numbered buildings to secure their place in different coloured neighbourhoods on the islands. Each building is uniquely numbered, and you use the ones without a dot under their number in the first era, and then add in your buildings that have a dot under the number in the second era, along with your own Wonder building, to any you have left over, once era one has been scored.
Gameplay:
Each auction starts with a player placing a building of their colour into a neighbourhood, following the placement rule of starting next to any other building on any of the islands, or one of the central island neighbourhoods. Each player in clockwise order then choose to either outbid the previous buildings number by placing their own building in an adjacent neighbourhood to the last building placed in the current auction, or passing. Once passed you cannot re-enter that auction and must wait until the next auction to possibly bid again. Once everyone else has passed leaving only the last persons bid as a ‘live’ bid, the person turns their building number side down, and this building is now locked into that neighbourhood, and will score you points during the scoring phases. You also claim the randomly laid disc present in that area, and add it to your own player board, based on the type of disc it is, and again these will add to your score at the end of the game.
You keep doing this until one player has won an auction with their last available bid in era one, and then you do end of era scoring.
Era 2 begins, and you continue bidding on neighbourhoods until every player has placed all of their buildings and their wonder onto the islands and then you do end of era 2 / end of game scoring. The player with the most points wins, and if there is a tie, the player who placed their last building first is the winner.
Artwork and Components:
The artwork on the islands and cards whilst not the best I’ve seen in a game, is more than adequate and fits in nicely with the games theme, but where the game and the copy I have comes to life is how it is elevated by the beautiful buildings in the collectors edition (wooden shapes in the retail version), and once the islands start to fill up the game looks absolutely stunning on the table, and we all commented on just how much it ‘popped’ the more buildings you added.
The Good:
The simple rules, the ease of teaching / learning how to play and the components make this game an absolute triumph, along with a well thought out storage system within the game box.
The Other:
The only gripe for me is the personal objective cards are the same in every game, in that you get dealt one of the four available, and it simply says if you have a building on a set number of coloured areas on the islands you score X number of points, and I do think new objective cards would make the game even better, as we all achieved the goals and just got the same points each. Keeping these but also perhaps adding in another one from a different deck would certainly be another thing to think about in the game.
Final Thoughts:
For me SKYRISE is one of the best auction bidding games I have played, and instantly goes into the top 10 of games in my collection, and the ease of learning the game means you could easily teach non gamers this without too much trouble, and most would pick it up after one or two bids had been made.
SKYRISE, a game where you need to keep your head out of the clouds, so you can build your city there instead. 9.5/10
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