CENTURY - Golem Edition

The Century trilogy of games from designer Emerson Matsuuchi and Plan B Games are something of an enigma. Starting life as a planned trilogy of games with two different themes, spice trading and um... Golems. After retail pre-orders overwhelmingly favoured the spice theme, the Golems were dropped. But you can’t keep a good Golem down and eventually, after much fan pressure and many official denials, the Golems Edition was reborn. It now appears, again after many denials, that it will indeed be a complete trilogy too.

If you have played Spice Road you know exactly what to expect. The gameplay is literally the same. For those who don’t, the essence of the game is obtaining resources and then manipulating and exchanging them into other resources to fulfil orders. How this relates to Golems is unclear, but it’s certainly more interesting than spice trading!

You will use hand management to gain and use cards that let you turn lots of less valuable resources into a few precious resources and vice versa. Each turn, you will fulfil orders, gain new exchange cards, play a card or recover all played cards into your hand. The key is to get cards into your hand that give you flexibility to change resources at will. Easier said than done when each time you play a card it stays on the table until you pick up all your cards.

As per Spice Road, the components are great. In fact, we’d argue they are better in this version, with plastic gemstones replacing the wooden cubes and an art style reminiscent of manga replacing the rather uninspired trading scenes from Spice Road. Originally, the thing that stopped many buying Golem Edition was the uncertainty that there would be a ‘Golem trilogy’ but with the release of Golem Eastern Mountains this looks to be a non-issue.

Game Information