Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
Do you have what it takes to grow a city from a humble market to a thriving mini-metropolis? Collect 10 buildings and make sure your citizens are happy with the place they live in!
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Deck / Bag Building
Add new pieces during play to improve the cards, tokens, or dice drawn later.
Income
Receive recurring resources according to your position, assets, or development.
Market
Buy and sell through a shared supply whose availability or prices can change.
Open Drafting
Select cards or items from a shared face-up display.
Read the full game description
Do you have what it takes to grow a city from a humble market to a thriving mini-metropolis? Collect 10 buildings and make sure your citizens are happy with the place they live in! Gameplay 1. Income Phase — At the start of each round, every player receives coins equal to the sum of the income symbols shown on the bottom of their cards. 2. Action Phase — Resolved in turn order: a. (optional) Discard 1 of the available Buildings from the market. b. Reveal up to 3 cards from any of the three Building decks and add them to the supply. c. Then, you have a choice: either purchase a card from the supply or purchase nothing and take a coin from the bank. Note: your city may not contain any duplicate cards. d. (optional) If your city meets the conditions for an available Bonus Building, you may claim it. Once any player adds a 10th card to their city, the game-end is triggered and every player multiplies the number of citizens by the total number of hearts on their cards, and whoever has the highest result wins the game! Happy City includes rules for two ways to play: a family version and an "expert version" that features more interaction and strategy.