Flash Review — Skyrise

Players: 2-4

Works well with just 2: Yes!
Age: 14+
Playtime: 30-90 min
Complexity: 4.5/10

Skyrise is an auction game where three different factors are always at play: currency (what you’re bidding), building (what you’ll put on the board if you win) and location (where you’ll build if you win.)
And wouldn’t you know it? Turns out that in this case, all three of these things are one and the same.

The game is played on a modular board: the more players partake, the larger the playing surface becomes. Each space shows one color and houses a token assigned to it at random. Each player is issued a series of buildings in three sizes, with each building sporting a number on its bottom. One player places a bid, putting a building (upside-down so the number is visible) on a space they want to occupy. The next player can outbid by placing a building with a higher number on an adjacent space, and so on until everyone passes. Then the highest-numbered building gets built on the space where that winning bid was placed, and a new auction starts. When you build a building, you grab the token from that space and add it to your collection; it contributes to the points you’ll score, in one way or another.

The goal here is to accumulate the most points over two scoring rounds—one mid-game and the other at the very end—according to secret and open objectives, plus domination over sections of the board, depending on who’s got the most tall buildings here and there.

The whole thing is over in about 30 minutes, the game looks fantastic (even in its basic wooden-buildings retail edition) and it’s refreshingly different from whatever else you stock your shelves with. (Except maybe Metropolys, the original game Skyrise reimagined.)

Most easily forgotten rule: You can always start a new auction next to a building already on the board or on the central island.

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