Curators

In Curators, you take on the role of the Chief Curator for a museum. Allocate your staff to collect exhibitions, expand your museum, and attract visitors. Throughout the course of the game, you will be adding “wings” to your museum in the form of tiles. In these wings, you place matching coloured tokens to attract more visitors. Contracts will be available to complete by creating matching coloured patterns.

Spiralling Down

Curators is a one to four-player tile-laying, pattern building, and contract fulfilment game. Designed by Tove Jomer, Pablo Jomer, and Jacob Westerlund, and published by Worldshapers. In Curators, players will select employee tokens and have them perform relevant actions. The employee tokens are double-sided. When you perform an action with a specific token, it is then flipped to its other side. Actions include:   – Carpenter. Allows you to select a wing and add it to your museum. – Archaeologist. Gain an object of any colour. Add another object of the same colour to the auction house. – Collection Manager. Buy objects from the auction house. – Restorer. Place objects in your museum to gain visitors. – Financial Manager. Gain money equal to your visitors.   You can perform double actions if you have two of the same employee token visible.   Players will also have contracts. These require different coloured wings containing objects in various orientations and patterns. You score these at the end of the game. The game ends when someone obtains the last wing. Players get points for money collected, completed contracts, completed wings, and displayed objects. The player with the most points is the winner. At the beginning of the game, all the wings are randomly set out in a spiral. When selecting a wing to build, you can in essence purchase any tile from those available. However, the cost of the tile will depend on its location in the spiral. The outermost wing is always free to take and then every subsequent tile is an additional $1000. There is an interesting balance between wanting the wing that would help you complete your goal, and not wanting to spend a lot of money   The rules are very easy to understand and the game is very accessible. Curators is a great next step game for someone. You could use this game to introduce gameplay mechanisms such as contract fulfilment, tile laying, and action selection. It is very well presented, components are solid and the gameplay length is spot on for this type, and weight, of game.

Seeing Double

The action selection mechanism is an absolute blast. I love the decision space that having a double-sided action token creates. Trying to puzzle out multiple turns in advance is great fun and very enjoyable. Doing those double employee actions is where you can create some really great turns. This puzzle, and the order in which to perform the corresponding actions, is where the meat of the game comes from for me. The actions are straightforward and the turns go quickly. But trying to figure out how best to optimise those actions is a big part of the game.

Curating Alone

Curators also has a very good solo mode. The solo mode lasts a total of 18 turns. All the wings are available to you and the size of the wing will determine its cost. There is also a selection of missions at the back of the book specific for solo play. You have a certain point threshold to hit and certain objectives to achieve. Depending on your final score will determine how many stars you get. The solo mode keeps the action selection mechanism but removes the contract fulfilment. It still feels like Curators but has its own unique feel as well. I really like the solo mode, it offers an interesting and challenging puzzle. The missions add variety to what you are trying to achieve. The solo game is also very quick.

Final Thoughts

Curators has a very interesting setting, one that is not represented a lot in board gaming circles. I find the setting to be very enjoyable. I enjoy building my museum and filling it with different objects for my loyal visiting customers to come and see.

Curators is a solid game. I have been having a lot of fun with this both multiplayer and solo. There is minimal interaction in a multiplayer mode, but I would not have it any other way. Both multiplayer and solo modes are fun and engaging puzzles. The rules are light, accessible and the game length is spot on. I highly recommend that you check this game out if anything that I have said sounds interesting.