River Tiles is a small, web-based game of trying to control the flow of water, making sure it reaches the ocean while saving as many villages as you can. To do this, you place new tiles one-at-a-time until you happen to draw 4 "water" tiles which starts the flow. Tree and grass tiles help with water flow and partitioning off villages, which need nearby villages and sources of corn to survive post-flood.
I'll start by saying I really like this idea. Getting a mess of a
board and slowly working through the water flow, eventually turning it
into a flawless system, is very satisfying. The tiles themselves are
simple enough to understand, and the requirements for villager survival
make planning things out more complicated than first glance. That being
said, there are some obvious problems that a few rounds of iteration
could iron out.
First, while I like the villager survival system, the instructions (which could use some extra work too) aren't very clear. So, allow me to hopefully explain: You need 1 corn per village, and at least 2 villages, and by "connected", the guide means within the same isolated region of land - completely enclosed by trees or the game boundary. If you have too few corn, all the villages die. If you look at the screenshot here, I actually prevented all the villages from flooding... but because I only had 5 corn to 7 villages, all 7 villages died out and I lose. Also, what the guide says about corn mostly translates to that water flows through it like it does grass and villages.
The water flowing on the condition of drawing four water tiles feels a bit inane, as you can't see when those cards are going to happen. In fact, the entire deck concept is maybe a bit underutilized or could be rethought. I'd like to be able to see the full sequence of squares I get to place before the flow, or at least a preview, to better plan out my moves. Or maybe that would make things too straightforward, since not being certain of exactly when the flood happens adds urgency. I don't know, I'm not a game designer.
Anyway, grievances on clarity and how to iterate on the concept aside, River Tiles was a nice enough way to spend a bit of time, and once I got the hang of it was a solid dose of puzzling. It's free and it's browser, so, hey, why not.
I enjoyed it. River Tiles is a good game.