Golem Board Game | Renaissance Fantasy Strategy | Engine-Building for Adults and Teens | Ages 14+ | 1-4 Players | 90-120 Minutes Playtime | Made by Cranio Creations

Love this game, many play possibilities.

Ever since I heard about Golem I’ve been curious. It’s designed by the same team behind “The Voyages of Marco Polo”, “Grand Austria Hotel”, “Tzolkin” and “Coimbra”; it uses marbles and it has a unique theme.The game is based on the 16th century Jewish legend of the Golem of Prague, an anthropomorphic creature made out of clay and brought to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel to protect his people and their heritage from anti-Semitic attacks and pogroms.In Golem you take the role of scholars recreating the famous clay automas to work for you. But like every brainless creature they can grow out of control and will rampage the neighborhoods if you don’t keep them at bay. And so you will have to put your precious creatures to rest…Sorta… This is what the game tries to simulate but not everything comes thru thematically. At its core is an engine-building complex point salad.On your turn you pick up marbles or use a Rabbi to take actions that will provide you resources and knowledge, improve your engine, and let you build new artifacts or Golems. Your Golems represent workers that you can activate to gain more stuff. Every turn they will move forward to better places. But if they move too far you risk losing VPs. Your scholars also move along the different tracks and provide you with income of resources and will help you control Golems so you don’t lose VPs.On to my thoughts. Woah! this is a very AP prone game. EVERYTHING gives you a benefit and deciding what’s best can be a task. There is so much going on, from deciding what marble to pick, what upgrade to do next and how much resources you need by the end of the round. This is a heavy game! Easy to learn but hard to play. All systems work fine but the iconography to communicate these strategies is complex and ambiguous and the set-up is long. There is a lot of components and many things could have been simplified.Mechanically Golem is a solid heavy euro, but I found it too complex for a less than rewarding experience. If you like heavy euros a la Vital Lacerda, or Uwe Rosenberg you might find some joy in this.

This is a great game for those who love games with multiple dimensions and layers in game play.