Shake That City Review

Did the Earth move for you? No? Well it did for me! I’m playing Shake That City and buildings are dropping everywhere!

If you haven’t seen it, Shake That City by AEG is a super fun, puzzly, placement optimisation game for 1-4 players. It uses an uber cool cube shaker to determine what can be built in players’ cities each round. And whilst I was sceptical of a cardboard box and rubber band construction, the shaker actually works really well! To be honest, Spatial City wouldn’t be far off as a suitable alternative name for it!

A little bit like Tiny Towns, this game is all about placing different building types in a way that satisfies their own scoring criteria. For example, roads want to reach the edge of the board, factories like buddying up nest to themselves and to roads, whilst houses want to avoid large estates as much as possible. Plus there are also bonus scoring objectives on each row and column along the edge of your board.

Perspective is a key element of Shake That City. Boards are oriented according to how the first player places their board. This means that the bonus tiles around the edge of each board will be in the same position in relation to the shaker regardless of where players sit around the table. It sounds strange but there’s a handy diagram for folks like me who might need some help working that out (I definitely did!).

The shaker itself produces a 3 x 3 grid of cubes which represent the building type options for the round. On each of the 15 rounds, a player must take the all cubes of one type. First player gets a free choice and then everyone else must pick from what is left (choosing the same if desired). They must they lay the corresponding building tiles in the exact same formation on their board (no flipping, rotating, or changing!). The boards have different terrain types too which become relevant to some building types e.g. shops score more or less depending on what they are laid on).

In the final few rounds, players have a free choice from what the shaker produces. Then it’s scoring time! Around the edge of each player board you will get points for completed bonus tiles achieved during the game for filled rows/columns or those that feature a minimum number of buildings of a given colour. In the corner there is also a bonus if you have been able to place 2 buildings of each type somewhere on your board.

There are two board options which influence decision making, and there is a construction zone advanced variant which is also the basis of the solo mode. I really like the solo mode because not only do I have to target removing the construction tiles by placing orthogonally adjacent scoring pairs of 2 building types, but I am also prevented from picking the most prolific colour building type each round. No AI to manage. No other board to populate -

Final Thoughts

I really enjoy Shake That City. Solo or multiplayer, it plays really fast and 15 rounds never feels like enough! Each round gives interesting decision dilemmas because you are trying to score for the building types as well as the bonus VPs available if you satisfy the column/row requirements. The rules are easy to pick up and using the shaker to determine building shapes and types feels like a fun twist in the genre. The shaker does result in a random mix of buildings each time – we played one game where roads only seem to come out in singular form every round – but that’s the way the shaker erm…shakes!

What’s cool is that as player boards fill up, the early freedom of collecting and placing tiles anywhere starts to bite. Trying to fit specific shapes into the gaps left on your board can be tricky and often results in neighbours who would rather not be in such close proximity! Likewise, passing (only allowed if you cannot place tiles) will result in lower potential scores from both the bonuses and the building type criterion.

We play this with our 8 year old and he grasped the rules just fine. His favourite part is of course shaking the shaker and pressing the button to release the cubes for the round! But to be fair, it is pretty satisfying to do it! Oh wait. Maybe THAT’S why I like the solo mode so much! Haha

And whilst I mentioned Tiny Towns at the beginning of this review, I don’t think it replaces that game for us. We love each of them for sure and there are similarities. Both become increasingly restrictive over subsequent rounds. Similarly, both have first player choices that influence placement. And neither feel like there is enough time to do what we want. But in Shake That City you get to select a building type from a number of alternatives which feels more flexible than the building material being determined for all by first player as it does in Tiny Towns.

Overall we really enjoy Shake that City and would recommend it to anyone looking for a fin, puzzly, tile laying city builder!