Santorini is a board game in which players control workers building a city on Santorini Island in Greece. I am extremely uncultured and thought the architecture was invented by the maker of the game, but it turns out the architecture in the game is very closely based on the real architecture present on Santorini Island.
By moving and building with these workers, players attempt to reach the third story with one of their workers without at any point being unable to do either of these things. Although this game is for 2-3 players, I only played this game with 2 players and will only consider the gameplay in that case.
The basic game is very simple. Player 1 places their two workers anywhere on the 5×5 game board, then Player 2 does the same. The game then proceeds in turns. On each player’s turn, they must move one of their workers one space in any direction then build one story on any adjacent tile. A worker may only move at most one story up in any given move, but other than that there are no restrictions on movement. After three stories are built on a single space, the next built story is a dome that does not allow pieces to move onto the tower. If at any point a player cannot both move and build with one of their workers, they lose the game. If at any point a player’s worker reaches the third story of a tower, that player wins the game.
Although the rules are quite simple, the tactics present in the basic game are deceptively complicated. My friend and I played many games which were no longer than 5 minutes each, and slowly we began to realize when positions were completely lost despite a player’s victory not being immediately obvious. In this way, the basic game reminds me a lot of chess. The details of the pieces being workers and the buildings being a city in Greece were not all that important, and the game seems like it could be simplified to stones for workers and cubes for building stories. As I found out afterwards, the original version of the game was exactly this!
Although we had yet to master the strategy of the basic game (which is very nuanced and not at all obvious), we decided to start using the god power cards. The game suggests adding these only after we had played the basic game, which certainly was a smart design choice for the game’s learnability: although the simple god powers aren’t too complicated, they greatly alter the chess-like basic game into one where players have unbalanced powers that make for double-edged gameplay. I believe it was a wise design choice to have players understand how the symmetrical gameplay works first.
I believe the god powers worked in some ways and failed in some ways. The first time we used them, I had the ability to swap my character with my friend’s character when moving mine (Apollo’s power) and my friend had the ability to move two spaces instead of one with his workers (Artemis’ power). Although these abilities are not very complicated, our strategies drastically changed. I tried using my swapping ability to remove him from important locations and he used his speed to run far away from me and build there. This game I felt was well-balanced and made for an enjoyable and strategic experience.
We played another game with more complicated god powers, but in this case the game was severely unbalanced. My friend’s power was to vault my workers over his workers before they moved (Charon’s power), and I had no additional powers but had the additional win condition of having both my workers on adjacent 1-story spaces (Eros’ power). It became immediately clear that I did not stand a chance of getting my two pieces together so long as my friend kept his workers somewhat central, making my God power useless while his power remained strong. In this case, I think Charon’s power gave my friend far too much of an advantage and made for an unenjoyable game.
Overall, I think the game is well-designed and strategically satisfying to play in most cases. The game is also good for beginners due to its built-in strategy for learning the game. I think the game could benefit from a bit more balancing in the case of counters, whether that be through changing the actual god powers or through altering the way players come by these powers.