Notes / Elvenar
Fantasy city builder · InnoGames · since 2015
Elvenar
Elves or humans, a city grown from a clearing, and nobody who can take it from you.
- Per visit
- 15 min
- Visits
- 2 a day
- Round
- Open-ended
- Shop
- Diamonds: expansions, speed
- Where
- Browser, app shares the account
Rowan
- Time9.5
- Fairness8
- Depth8.5
- Polish9
- Weighted8.8
This is the game I keep open the longest. Research moves through chapters, the fellowship trades goods back and forth, and the city grid rewards someone who likes fitting shapes together. Fights only happen against computer-held provinces, and you can negotiate instead of fighting, which I did for most of three weeks.
Two short sessions a day is plenty. The events come often and look like obligations if you let them; I stopped chasing them in week two and lost nothing I cared about. Diamonds buy expansions and speed, and I will say plainly that the later chapters lean on them harder than the game admits.
Tess
- Time8.5
- Fairness8
- Depth7.5
- Polish9
- Weighted8.2
It is the prettiest thing on this site and I never once felt urgency, which is both the compliment and the complaint. There is no round, no winner, no moment where the city is finished. If you need a game to end, this one will outlast you.
What I did like was the fellowship. Quiet cooperation, no raiding, a chat that is mostly people swapping goods. The shop is polite for the first month and insistent afterwards; I would want new players to know that before they fall for the art.
Where the fold closes
A calm, beautifully made builder with no player-versus-player combat at all, best for someone who wants a city to tend rather than a race to win. The late chapters take days and nudge towards the shop.
- Time9
- Fairness8
- Depth8
- Polish9
- Weighted8.5
Opens the publisher's site in a new tab. Affiliate link; see about.
- Nothing you build can be taken from you
- Best art on the site
- Fellowships reward quiet cooperation
- Late-chapter research takes days
- Events can feel like obligations
