Mondo

Create your own world in this creative tile placement game

On each turn players use one hand to draw tiles from a central pile and place them, either side up, on their world board. Each tile drawn and played, must be placed against a tile already in place on the board. Players will be scoring points for creating mistake free landscapes – so a forest will score points only if it is fully enclosed and doesn’t include any mistakes. Players also score points for animals present on the board, and for the order in which they opt out of a turn. Players also need to be mindful of the ways in which they can lose points: any landscape tile placed that doesn’t match up with those next to it will score minus 1 point, and the player with the most active volcanos will also score minus points! After three turns the game is finished and the player with the highest points wins the day.

Mondo includes three different levels of play, the advanced game adds in scoring modifiers – allowing things like: the player with the most landscapes scores bonus points, the player with the largest lake scores bonus points and so on. The expert game adds another layer of difficulty with the addition of ‘tasks’ which a player may take. Tasks provide bonus points if their condition is satisfied at the end of a turn.

The real-time aspect of the game adds tension, as a timer will be ticking down on each turn. Players must be mindful of filling out their board, scoring as many points as they can through landscapes created and animals placed, be wary of not scoring too many negative points, but must also remember that the earlier they opt out of a turn the more points they will score for that as well. With each difficulty level the time allotted grows ever smaller. Mondo is easily modified to create an easier or harder game experience. It also includes rules for a solo game.