Flip City: Review

Press your luck to create the best city around! Flip City by Tasty Minstrel Games is a great press-your-luck, deck building game in which players slowly upgrade and grow their deck of cards (their city) to be the first to have a city worth eight points, and become the winner of Flip City.

Flip City (also known as Design Town in some countries) is a 1-4 player, deck-building, press-your-luck card game. The game usually lasts about 40 minutes, give or take. The game begins with all players have the same deck of cards, and a general supply in the center of the table. On their turn, players first choose to press their luck by playing cards from their deck during a phase called the “play cards phase.” Some cards have points on them – these cards are how you win the game. Some cards contain sad faces called “unhappiness.” If a player has played cards that contain more than two unhappiness faces, that player’s turn ends immediately.

Most cards in the deck are optional to play, however, some cards are not optional, and contain unhappiness faces. If a player chooses to press their luck and continues to play cards from their deck during the play phase, they may find that they are forced to play a third unhappiness face, forcing them to end their turn without moving into the next phase. If a player runs out of cards from their deck to play, they may choose to shuffle their discard pile and continue playing cards, or may choose to stop.

If a player is successful in choosing to stop during the play cards phase, they move into the next phase called the building phase. In this phase, any rewards on the cards that they have just played from their deck come into affect. These rewards are either cash or points. The active player may then choose to use their cash to take one of the following actions: 1) buy a card from the general supply and add it to their discard pile, 2) pay the “flip fee” to flip a card over and use it’s other side’s abilities, or 3) if the player may afford to do so, the may buy a card from the general supply, and then also pay it’s flip fee, and add it to their discard pile.

Some cards offer cool abilities. For example, the Church card allows a player to have a max of three unhappiness instead of two. The Convenience Store offers an additional win condition: a player must have played 18 cards, including the Convenience Store, during the play cards phase.

The game plays until a player has successfully chosen to stop during the play cards phase and has played enough cards to show eight points, or has successfully chosen to stop and has played 18 cards, including the Convenience Store.

Why I like Flip City:

1. Press your luck games don’t require a lot of skill, so I find that this game is a great one to share with newer gamers.
2. I love the art. It kind of reminds me of older PC build-a-town games, which I’m sure they were going for.
3. It has a one-player option, which is just as fun as the multi-player.
4. The cards fit back in the box sleeved! They are also standard size, so sleeves are easy to find (TMG even has their own brand of sleeves, which fit the cards perfectly).

Two mentions: what I don’t like about Flip City is the light interaction among players. There are cards, however, which allow a player to put cards with unhappiness into other player’s discard piles, but this is a rarely chosen option, as it is expensive to do in the game. I also have trouble preventing players from cheating a little, as the deck is played face up, and if cards begin to slide a bit, you may be able to see cards coming up in the deck. I suggest to players to hold their deck in their hand, so they can prevent cards from slipping around.

Flip City! Grade of A! Find it at your local FLGS!

Cassie Elle OUT~