Skyrise board game review

In 2016, I played a fun board game at SaltCon that left me thinking about it long after – Metropolys.

The only problem was that the game was first published in 2008 and was out of print, and I couldn’t find a copy anywhere. I’ve kept an eye out for it ever since.

That’s why I got super excited a few years ago when I heard the board game was being reimplemented as Skyrise!

And I was even more excited when I learned it was being designed by Adam Wyse (a game designer I’ve met, played some games with, and reviewed a couple of his games, Head of Mousehold and Gorilla Marketing) and published by Roxley Games (a publishing company that produces fantastic games and that we’ve also reviewed a bunch of).

But the real questions you’re asking are, “What’s the Skyrise board game all about?”, “Why did you find it so fun?”, and “Is the reimplementation any good?”

How to play Skyrise

At first glance, Skyrise looks like a city-building board game. After all, the game board is a cityscape in the sky and players are placing buildings all over it. However, it’s really a spatial auction game with territory control and resource collection.

The goal in Skyrise is to get the most points by winning building sites, earning favors across islands and factions, and accomplishing public and secret objectives.

Set up

Each player begins with a player board and gets the 12 buildings and Wonder matching the color of the player board. Each of the buildings has a number on the bottom. And the distribution of the numbers various depending on the color set. Those numbers with a dot plus the Wonder building are set to the side for Era 2. The rest are placed face up by the player board so all players can see the number on the buildings remaining in player areas.

The central board is composed of island boards. The number of islands equals the number of players. So in a 3-player game, 3 island boards are connected to make the game board. Players then randomly draw and place a resource disc in every neighborhood section on the board.

The Island Control card is placed by the board as well as 2 Panorama cards (randomly drawn from the 5 cards). These cards list some ways to gain points for this game. The Patron Value tiles are randomly placed face down on each Patron spaces (A, B, C, and D).

Lastly, the 20 Wonder cards are shuffled and each player draws 3 Wonder cards. They don’t have to choose which one to use until Era 2 of the game. The also draw 1 random Secret Objective card.

Playing

The game is split into 2 Eras and players tally points at the end of each Era. Each Era is played over a series of auctions for building territories – which are the heart of the game.

So let’s talk about the auctions!

The player who won the last auction begins the next. The first auction in Era 1 is started by a randomly chosen player and the first auction of Era 2 is started by the player with the lowest Wonder card.

To start an auction, the player chooses one of their unconstructed buildings and places it on an unoccupied neighborhood on the central connecting board or next to an existing constructed building.

The number on the bottom of the buildings indicates their bid value. So during an auction, players place their building bids number-side up. Going clockwise around the table, the next player can choose to increase the bid or pass. If they choose to increase the bid, they take one of their buildings with a higher number and place it in an unoccupied neighborhood adjacent to the most recent bid.

The auction ends when one of the following occurs:

All players except the most recent bidder passes.
There are no unoccupied neighborhoods next to the most recent bid.
A player places their Wonder building (which can’t be outbid).

Once the auction ends, the winning bidder flips their winning building over to construct it. All other bidding buildings are returned to their owners. If a Wonder was constructed, the player enacts it’s effect.

That player also collects the resource disc in that neighborhood and places it on their player board. If it’s a Patron disc (A, B, C or D), the player also gets to peek at the corresponding Patron Tile to know it’s secret value.

Play continues with the next auction.

Once a player has built their last Era 1 building, the Era ends and players tally points. The Island Control card and Panorama cards next to the board indicate the points to score.

For Island Control, the player who controls each island will score 5 points. Control is determined by the height and quantity of buildings on each island. For each Panorama card, the players get points for each instance they fulfill of that objective.

To begin Era 2, players choose 1 of their 3 Wonder cards and reveal them. The other 2 Wonder cards are discarded. Players now have access to their Era 2 buildings (added to any they have left over from Era 1) plus their Wonder building.

The player with the lowest number on their Wonder card begins the first auction of Era 2. Auctions are done just like during Era 1.

Game end

Play continues until all players have built all their buildings. The first player to build all their buildings gets the large Key to the City token. The second player gets the small Key to the City token.

Similar to the end of Era 1, at the end of Era 2, players tally points for Island Control and the Panorama cards in play.

In addition, they gain points for:

Scoring structures: Starting at the color at the top of a player board (yellow), players remove their buildings from matching color neighborhoods. For each removed, players score points equal to the amount shown at the top of the column of the right-most token in that row. Repeat this for each neighborhood color.
Excess neighborhood discs: For each disc in excess past the end of the row on their player board, they score 10 points.
Patron discs: Score points equal to the hidden values of the Patron Tiles for each matching Patron disc on their board.
Commission discs: Score 1 points for each disc on the illustration on their player board.
Key to the City: The large key is worth 10 points and the small key is worth 4 points.
Fulfilling their secret objective: Score the points indicated on the card.

The player with the most points wins!

Can the whole family enjoy Skyrise?

Skyrise is a fantastic family board game even though not everyone in the family may enjoy playing it. But that’s mostly because it best for teenagers and above.

While the game play is super smooth and the basics are easy to understand, there’s a fair amount of things to think about the whole time. And that’s best suited for older players.

And I love it!

To get back to the question I posed at the start of the review, this reimplementation of Metropolys as Skyrise is terrific.

The things I loved about the game when I first played it are still at the core of the game. And the elements that have been tweaked and/or added, bring even more enjoyment to the game.

For starters, I absolutely love the spatial auction mechanic that drives the game. Players can clearly see the value of their own buildings as well as those of their opponents throughout the whole game. So when you start an auction or continue and auction, you can try to figure out how others will respond and what you’ll need to outbid them. Or you can mess with them and drive the values up as you bid to tempt them to outbid you and use up their high-value building early.

But that’s not all there is to think about during the auction. Because the auction takes place in the city neighborhoods, where you place your building bid will determine the neighborhood options the next player will have. And you can curtail how long the auction will go if you move into a limited section of the city – which may or may not be a good option.

In addition, each neighborhood has a token on it that plays into mid- and end-game scoring. So not only are you looking to get certain neighborhood placements, but you’re also looking to get the right tokens for more points. Likewise, you can always see what your opponents are going for too. And there’s a point on the player boards where an additional token will actually drop in points. So if you force an opponent to take a token that pushes them to that point, you can pat yourself on the back.

Yet, there’s even more to consider during auctions and where you want to place your buildings because the player in control of each island also gets points at mid- and end-game scoring. Oh, and don’t forget the Panorama objectives and your secret objective.

Yep, there’s plenty to think about. And I love it!

The Wonder cards in the game are also a nice addition with this reimplementation.

Each player starts with 3 Wonder cards, but they don’t have to choose which one they want to keep until the start of Era 2. By then you’re in a better position to make the choice because much of the city has been built out. At this stage you can figure which Wonder power will be more beneficial to you. And the variety of Wonder cards in the game is great. There are so many that every game will play out differently.

Another thing I love about the Skyrise board game is that there isn’t much downtime. Each player’s turn is just deciding whether to bid or pass. And if they want to bid, which building and where to place it. Which goes rather quickly in succession. (Unless you’re playing with those who tend to have analysis paralysis. Then every bid may be agonizing for them.)

Skyrise also scales very nicely for different numbers of players. If you have less than 4 players, you simply leave out islands so there are an equal number of islands per player and remove a certain number of each type of token.

Lastly, the game looks awesome on the table. While Roxley Games has also published a Deluxe version of the game with sweet-looking components, even the standard game looks and feels great. All the components are high quality and I really like the chosen color palette for a game with lots of things to look at along the way.

The only visually challenge we’ve run into is with the blimps between neighborhoods. Both the blimps and windmills are used for scoring with some objective cards. It’s easy to see which neighborhood have Windmills. But it can be a bit tricker to notice the blimp borders. It’s not a big issue, but just something we encountered when first playing.

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

Skyrise scores very high on my “let’s play again” game meter. It’s a solid strategy board game when you’re looking for something that’s quite engaging and has a lot of player interaction.

Everything you do will be influenced by your opponents. And in return, your choices will greatly influence their options as well.

I haven’t played any games back-to-back yet because a single play feels like a nice meal. And I don’t want to overdo it. Plus, it’s great to sit back afterward and enjoy the city you’ve built while talking through how it all played out. (And how so-and-so blocked you from what you wanted to do.)

It’s definitely earned an easy-to-reach spot in our game closet because I’ll happily pull it out to play on any game night.

I totally recommend grabbing a copy of the Skyrise board game for playing with your family and friends.

The Board Game Family would like to thank Roxley Games for a review copy of Skyrise.