From Small Beginnings to Bustling Cities of Tiles with NEOM
Create a bustling city of the future filled with everything from homes and businesses to commercial enterprises in NEOM.
I’ve always enjoyed games about building something great, whether that be a tangible city or something a little more abstract. NEOM provides the opportunity to plan a city of the future! Maybe my skills aren’t exactly up to par in terms of scoring well, but I love the challenge of choosing and placing different tiles. Off to build a spectacular little city!
Game Overview
Game Name: NEOM
Publication Year: 2018
Designer: Paul Sottosanti
Artists: Klemens Franz and Christian Opperer
Publisher: Lookout Games
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
With tile drafting and placement considerations, creating a city comes down to many small choices that add up. Goods might be produced, yet it’s important to think about neighborhoods, pollution, power, and much more! Each play feels different as a unique city takes shape.
First Play
February 1, 2020
Complexity
2
Latest Play
September 23, 2023
Expansions
0
Setup Time
5 Minutes
Lifetime Plays
26
Play Time
20 Minutes
High Score
129
Game Area
16" x 16"
Low Score
81
Ice Cream in the City
Between the food court and grocery store, was it any surprise that ice cream was in the area? Only this was a special Calico Critter dressed up in an ice cream costume!
This does sort of mimic gameplay, though, since every turn comes with many surprises. The available tiles to choose from change, and there might even be a disaster!
It’s a fun and interesting premise, though, where it’s often difficult to completely ruin a city with a single tile.
The decision space is interesting yet also relaxing… Kind of unusual for a city-building game, of course!
Cornerstone Tiles
Before play begins, a set of 3 cornerstone tiles are chosen from a mini-draft. These often provide the basis for scoring extra victory points with goals to work towards.
Sometimes, it makes sense not to place these tiles based on what happens over the course of play. But it’s never clear until the city starts to take shape in the first era.
Cornerstone tiles are often a hit-or-miss situation, especially since synergies can be tricky to come by.
Yet every now and then, the right sorts of bonuses show up to reward some of the best planning and building.
A Complete City
Since gameplay is so quick and lasts around 20 minutes, I rarely stop to take photos in the midst of play. In the end, though, I had a very impressive little city to look at!
Color-coded tiles also feature unique iconography in the upper right for better accessibility. All of the icons are actually fairly easy to understand once the rules are read.
Resources were fairly scarce, so I focused on a lot of public buildings and their unique bonuses to help out.
Fire departments and police departments not only provide victory points, but help protect tiles against disasters.
Postal Packaging
From afar, the final city always looks a little busy and chaotic. Yet taking a closer look at each individual tile makes it easy to understand what’s going on.
Take the postal service, for instance. Its upper left section is empty, meaning it may be placed for free. It’s a public building worth 0 victory points. So what does it do?
It provides 2 coins of income during each era but also reduces the requirements when placing any other tile.
My favorite part, though? Take a look at the delivery vehicles. They look like actual packages!
Ice Cream Flooding
Uh-oh! As I set out to build another city, I was quickly reminded of the possible disasters. During the first era, a flood might occur with costs or even lost tiles.
In this case, it wasn’t an ordinary flood but an ice cream flood! My city streets were extra sticky but colorful. Ha ha!
Actually, disasters are never guaranteed to happen and can be avoided early in the era if the tile is chosen.
Preparing for disasters is a subtle yet important part of the strategy. Having enough coins on hand might be enough, or it might come down to carefully choosing each tile.
Good Job with Goods
Whereas I didn’t focus on resources and industrial buildings in my first play, the tiles clearly wanted me to go all-in with production the next time. So many goods!
These often form a rough supply chain, with raw resources helping to produce intermediate goods. In the end, luxury goods offer lots of victory points. So shiny!
What’s the best strategy? The answer is perfect: There isn’t one! It all comes down to the tiles and city.
Had I shown the progression, it would have showed how production slowly turned into the deciding factor.
Session Overview
Play Number: 21 and 22
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Play Details: Played with the 1+, 4+, and 5-Player Tiles
Outcome: 121 and 93 (1 Win and 1 Loss)
Alas, my second outing didn’t go so well since the cornerstone tiles didn’t align. Not a problem! It gave me a moment to find out what went wrong… Do you see the name of the electronics factory? SkyeNet. Well, well. I probably wanted this city to fail so we didn’t have any dangerous, sentient robots waltzing about. Ha! This is such a great game that I always enjoy playing.
%
20 Plays
Affordability
Price & Value
10
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
10
Originality
Design & Theme
5
Quality
Components & Rules
9
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
10
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
8
+ Pros (Positives)
- Each city takes shape in different ways and rarely follows a similar building pattern throughout the eras.
- Play time is rather quick, usually clocking in around 20 minutes, and feels like a fun and satisfying experience.
- Deciding which tile to choose from each stack is very important and there are often tricky choices to make.
- Victory points may be earned in a variety of ways that differ based on the available tiles and placements.
- Small details in the artwork often reference popular movies in subtle and entertaining ways, like SkyeNet.
- Although disasters may happen and the right tiles may not show up, there is still a very relaxing atmosphere.
– Cons (Negatives)
- Some of the artwork and graphic design feel a little unpolished, especially when all of the tiles are laid out.
- Disasters are rather static with no variability, although there is an official variant to play without them in play.
- A custom storage solution is a necessity to keep all of the different era tiles separated and organized.
- Shuffling all of the tiles can be a little unruly at times, although custom draw bags might help solve this issue.
Victory Conditions
Score 120+ Points
- Overall Goal Progress 67%
Goals and Milestones
Score at least 100 points.
Score at least 120 points.
Score at least 130 points.
Continue the Conversation
What are your thoughts about NEOM? Are there other city-building board games you also enjoy? I’m always surprised by how much depth is crammed into about 20 minutes of play. The final city arrangement feels like such an amazing accomplishment! I may not have the strategy mastered yet, but I definitely plan to keep on planning and building!
Now this is a game that might interest me. I mentioned in your Sprawlopolis entry, that I like building nice cities. I liked SimCity and SimCity2000 is one of my favourite pc games. Looking a a the photos, I can say that I would have to strecht the ‘nice looking’ part. But otherwise this seems to check off lot my ‘looking for in games’-boxes.
I didn’t even knew, this game existed.
The aesthetics are definitely subjective! Up close I love the little details but there is a sort of unfinished feeling to everything. I guess I enjoy it for what it is, though! Definitely reminds me of the good ol’ days of SimCity 2000 when I was really good at just destroying my cities. Ha ha! Here, I feel like I have a little more hope.
Definitely intrigues me as well for adding a city builder to my collection. Not high on my list of themes to add, but this one does have a nice price point and I traded away Subdivision. Not willing to take the Suburbia plunge and I feel my collection only has space for one (other than Sprawlopolis).
Thanks, Jessica. Always enjoy reading your reviews.
You’re very welcome, and thanks so much for the kind words! I’m in a similar boat where I don’t feel like I need that many city builders, although I like the concept. Very happy I picked this up on a whim way back when! It’s not perfect, but for 20 minutes of fun decisions, it’s a lot more enjoyable than I expected it to be.
I didn’t really get on with NEOM but I think that is mainly because I was expecting something more challenging and variable. It seemed to have a lot of randomness on the surface but ended up about the same every time. A better multiplayer game than solo game, in my opinion. I guess there was nothing I particularly disliked but not was there anything that I thought made it stand out from the crowd.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I can see why it didn’t quite work out for you. It’s definitely a bit on the lighter side and had I been looking for a very challenging city-builder, this would have fallen short. Perhaps it’s the nostalgia it reminds me of, although it does have its positives. Nice to hear it works well multiplayer, though!