World Wonders board game review

Earlier this year, I had my first chance to play World Wonders – a fun new tile-laying board game published by Arcane Wonders in 2023.

I played it at one of the Hot Games tables at SaltCon Spring 2024 and immediately wanted to play it again.

I couldn’t get it out of my mind and was still thinking about it a month later.

That’s when you know you’ve found another great family board game.

Even though I’d categorize World Wonders as a tile-laying game, it’s packed with much more than that. The game also includes economic, turn-order, and resource elements that keep players considering many choices throughout the whole game.

How to play World Wonders

The goal in World Wonders is to get the most victory points from building the best city filled with wondrous monuments and stately neighborhoods that produce resources and attract more residents.

World Wonders board game — Which famous monuments will you build in your city?

Set up

In the game, each player builds their own city. As such, they each get a Map Board for placing their tiles and a Resource Board where they keep track of the Gold they spend, the Resources they collect, and the growth of their Population. The Map Boards are doubled-side and players must use the same side of the board during the game. Side A has a lake in the middle of the map and side B has a differently shaped river running through it.

Each player also gets 1 Long Road tile that they’ll place on their first turn.

Players separate the differently shaped Building tiles and place them face down in stacks on the Main Board in the center of play. The top tile of each stack is placed face up and will be available for purchase. The Main Board also has spaces for the player markers to designate player order as well as a space for Towers. Next to this board, players set out sets of Road tiles according to player count.

Lastly, the Monument cards are shuffled and 3 are randomly drawn and placed face up. Each Monument card shows the monument, the reward for building it, the spaces and types of terrain it must be built on as well as the features and/or neighborhoods it must be built adjacent to.

Playing

To begin a round, all players set their Gold marker at 7. During the round, players will take turns according to player order.

On a player’s turn, they’ll spend Gold to take 1 action in the form of a purchase.

They may purchase a long road, a set of short roads, a building tile, the Tower, the 1st or 2nd turn order pedestal, or 1 Monument.

The Main Board, as well as a reference tile, shows the cost of each of these actions.

Roads cost 1 gold
Turn order pedestals cost 1 gold
The Tower costs 2 gold
Building tiles show their cost on the back of the tile (2-5 gold)
Monument costs the rest of a player’s gold.

Essentially, a Monument is the last thing a player may spend money on during a round. Because once the get a monument, they deplete the rest of their gold and sit out the rest of the round. For example, if I have 3 gold left and want to purchase a Monument before another player does, then I spend all 3 gold to do so. Or if I only have 1 gold left when I purchase a monument, then it costs me just 1 gold.

However, a player may only purchase a monument if they meet all the placement requirements for it. When purchased, a new monument card is immediately revealed.

Whenever a player purchases tiles or a monument, they immediately place them in their city following the placement requirements. These requirements are also noted on a handy reference tile.

A Road tile must always be placed adjacent to another Road tile, the Sidewalk (at the bottom of the Map), or a Tower.
A Tower must always be placed adjacent to something the player already has on their map.
A Building tile must always be placed adjacent to a Road tile or to a Building tile of the same color.
Each Monument has its own unique placement rules.
The Natural Resources spaces on the map may be covered when placing tiles. However, if uncovered, they may provide extra points at the end of the game.

When a player purchases and places a Building tile, they also gain the resources indicated on the tile. They move their corresponding resource markers forward on their personal board tracks. When a resource marker lands on or passes a Population icon on their track, the player moves their Population marker forward one space.

In addition to their 1 action on their turn, a player may take out a loan as a free action. A loan grants them 2 additional gold for that round. Paying back a loan costs 3 gold and must be done before taking another loan. If a player doesn’t pay off a loan by the end of the game, they lose 2 victory points.

After a player has taken their 1 purchase action, play goes to the next player in turn order. Once all players have spent all their gold, the round ends.

To start a new round, all the building tiles not purchased are removed from play and the top tile of each stack is placed face up for purchase during the new round. If the Tower was purchased, a new Tower is placed on the Main Board. Likewise, the Road tile sets are refilled according to player count. Lastly, turn order is determined. If players purchased the 1st or 2nd Turn Order pedestals, they’re placed in those locations for turn order. The rest of turn order is determined by Population from lowest to highest.

Scoring

As each stack of building tiles has 10 tiles, there are 10 rounds in a game of World Wonders. However, if a player reaches the last purple space on their Population track, the game will end at the end of that round.

Once the final round ends, players total their scores.

Victory points for the lowest value of their three resource markers.
Victory points for each Ring on their monument cards.
1 victory point for each Ring their Population marker reached on the population track.
1 victory point for every visible Natural Resources adjacent to at least one placed piece on their map.
1 victory point for each Building tile completely surrounded by anything other than open green space.
Minus 2 victory points for an unpaid loan.

The player with the most points wins!

Advanced and Solo Play in World Wonders

If all that’s not enough for you, you can dive into Advanced Play mode with World Wonders.

The game comes with 15 Public Objective cards that give players additional options to score points by configuring their city in various ways. When playing with these cards, during setup players shuffle the deck and place 3 cards face up next to the Main Board.

These objectives may include building tiles of certain types or in certain locations or even the most of certain resources.

Each of these cards have a picture of the objective and the quantity of victory points players get by completing it. Points are awarded at the end of the game to players who do the best job at fulfilling it.

Or if you’d rather build an awesome city on your own, you can play World Wonders in Solo Play.

In a single-player game, use the Solo Play cards included in the game. The game is set up like a 2-player game vs the Automaton but with only 2 monument cards in play at a time.

On the Automaton’s turn, reveal 1 card from the Solo Play deck. Each card is divided into sections and starting at the top indicate which item available for purchase is immediately discarded. When the player’s round comes to an end (spent all their gold), a new round begins.

At the end of the game, the player sums their victory points as normal and compares to the Automaton’s score as listed in the rulebook to see if they win.

Can the whole family enjoy World Wonders?

As we’ve said in many reviews before, we enjoy tile-laying games. And those that let you build your own map are so fun because at the end of the game you get to admire what you built. There’s a feeling of accomplishment whether you win or lose.

World Wonders is a tile-laying board game Plus!

For starters, the way you get tiles for your city is awesome. The basics are that the larger the building shape, the more it costs. But there’s also a mix of randomness on which building tiles are available each round. So you not only have to figure out which building tile will help you the most, you’ll also have to get it before someone else does.

Plus, the building tiles grant different resources. So sometimes you may want to take a specific tile not just for its placement, but also for the resources it provides.

And the building tiles don’t refill after a purchase. Instead, they only refill at the start of the next round. So watching the options dwindle between your turns can be tough to see.

Then add to that choice the tile placement requirements. Since building tiles can only be placed next to other buildings of the same color or a road, you’ll need to purchase and place roads along the way as well. Plus, the Towers can be powerful to let you extend your city in tight spots. But there’s only 1 Tower available for purchase each round. So if you desperately need one, don’t let it slip away.

And of course, you shouldn’t forget about the monuments available to add to your city. The requirements of each monument are clearly depicted on the cards so it’s easy to see how you need to build your city to accommodate each monument. But your opponents are doing the same. So you’ll need to also keep an eye on how their cities are progressing and which monuments they may be aiming for.

Sometimes, based on which building tiles you’ve been able to get, you’ll know in advance that you won’t have a chance for. So do you build for the future and hope that when a monument gets replaced that the next one drawn will be just what you need?

Or do you make a jump and buy the 1st Turn Order marker so you’ll get the best choice of buildings when they’re set out in the next round?

There’s so many things to think about with each turn that there’s hardly any down time. Because between your turns, you’ll be considering all your options.

Whew.

So even though we love tile-laying board games, not everyone in the family enjoys that many layers of decisions in a game. It’s a lot more than just spatial awareness of laying tiles on a map.

Players have to balance how much they have to spend with what they really want to accomplish and make tradeoffs. And even though players don’t directly mess with each other’s city, they do impact each other by the building tiles they purchase and the monuments they construct. Because once a tile, monument, tower, road, or player order marker is gone that round, it’s gone and you’ll have to adjust. It will impact what you were planning to do with your city.

Yet, these are also all the reasons why I thoroughly enjoy the game and think World Wonders is a fantastically designed game. All these elements work very well with each other to make an enjoyable game with a great mix of luck and strategy.

Plus, I really like that up to 5 players can play. A lot of games of this type are limited to 4 players. But World Wonders adjusts the set up very well for different player counts.

And the components are fantastic as well!

The tiles and cards are nice and sturdy. The iconography is clear and easy to understand. And the monuments are so cool to look at when places among your tiles on a map.

At the end of each game, we hesitate to tear down our cities because they’re fun to admire. We love seeing not only what we’ve built, but how everyone else’s cities have turned about as well.

How does World Wonders score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

As you might have guessed from my intro, World Wonders scores very high on my “let’s play again” game meter. I was immediately stuck with it on my first play and I could hardly wait to play it again.