Flamecraft from Monster Couch is a 1-5 player cozy strategy game set in a magical land in which you’ll become a Flamekeeper. Check out our Flamecraft review!
Flamecraft from Monster Couch is a 1-5 player cozy strategy game set in a magical land in which you’ll become a Flamekeeper. You’ll be tasked with placing and helping Dragon Artisans and shopkeepers to delight the townfolk with their craft. As you gather resources, you’ll have to help upgrade and improve shops. There are different ways for you to claim victory, so you’ll have to outplay and outsmart other Flamekeepers as you make the most of your skills. There are 80+ Dragon Artisans as well as 30 unique shops to visit. You can play on your own, join others locally, or play against gamers from around the world… as long as you have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription!
This video game is based on the Flamecraft board game from Cardboard Alchemy, designed by Manny Vega and with art from Sandara Tang. Cardboard Alchemy took Flamecraft to Kickstarter back in 2021, seeking $25,000 in funding. Once the crowdfunding campaign was over, and thanks to the support of more than 29,000 backers, they ended up with over $2,000,000. Yes, you read that right. The board game was shipped to backers in 2002, and four years later we get to take this video game for a spin on Nintendo’s hybrid console.
Once you begin to play, you’ll be using the right analog stick to move the camera around to check out the town and each area. You can press the – button to get an overview of each spot, as you zoom in and out as needed with the ZL and ZR buttons. Since Dragon Artisans must be guided to each ship to aid in the creation of wonderful items, you’ll need to gather from the shops and then enchant them. Performing these actions will allow you to gain Reputation Points. Reputation Points are very important, since the player with the most Reputation Points at the end of the game is the one who wins!
At the start of each turn, you’ll have to pick a shop to visit, and you will need to visit a different shop each turn in order to maximize your coverage. Use the left analog stick to cycle between the available shops, and pick the one that best suits your current plan. As mentioned before, when you visit a shop, you can either gather goods (basically resources) or enchant the shop.
Goods are needed for you to be able to cast an enchantment in the first place, and they need to be part of your personal supply so that you can use an enchantment. When you gather at a shop, you’ll first collect the goods. After that, you’ll gain goods not only from the shop itself, but also from the Dragon Artisans that are there from enchantments that have been cast. Say you visit the Critical Rolls shop. If there’s a Dragon Artisan there, you’ll gain one piece of bread from the shop itself, and another one from the Dragon Artisan who is helping at Critical Rolls.
While you could call it a day and move on, you should definitely consider completing the extra optional steps. The second step is playing matching from your hand. Dragon Artisans can be played into an empty slot if their icon matches the one shown in the bottom half of the slot. The icons on the top of the slots will show the reward that you’ll receive if you place an Artisan Dragon there. Just press the R button and then press the A button to select the slot where you can match a Dragon Artisan. You can collect a coin from this. Coins can be used as a wildcard resource that you can use when you need to pay with a good. Another option is saving up your coins, since each one will be worth one Reputation Point at the end of the game.
The last thing you can do is use the ability of a Dragon Artisan to aid you. An option could be activating a Dragon Artisan’s skill to draw an extra card. You will then get to pick one of the five face-up Dragon Artisan cards, or draw a random one from the Dragon Artisan deck. There are different Dragon Artisan types, and each one will have its own special ability for you to activate. Having more Dragon Artisan cards will allow you to gather more goods in the future.
The fourth and final optional step in the gathering process is only available for some shops that have a special ability. An example would be paying 2 bread to draw 2 Dragon Artisan cards from the Dragon Park. New shops will pop up at the end of a turn in which all three slots in another shop in town have been filled up with Dragon Artisans. Oh, and if you visit a shop that has other players inside, you’ll need to give each one of them one good from your personal supply as a gift.
How do you enchant a shop? Check the enchantment overview on the left side of the screen by pressing in on the left analog stick. During each turn, you or one of the other players can use one of the five revealed enchantments from the deck. Each enchantment will have a goods-type icon that lets you know which shops it can enchant. In the center of each card, you’ll see which goods need to be used to pay the casting cost of that enchantment.
At the bottom of the card, you can review the rewards granted by that enchantment. Each enchantment is unique and can only be cast once, and once you do this for a shop, it will be permanently upgraded! This means that any player who gathers from the shop will be able to collect more goods… and it will also allow you to fire up all of the Dragon Artisans at the shop in one go! You can cast up to three enchantments at the same shop.
There are also Fancy Dragons to consider. Fancy Dragons have abilities and activation methods that are going to be different from those for Artisan Dragons. Attracting Fancy Dragons will allow you to earn additional Reputation Points. Each Fancy Dragon will have a specific goal for you to work on so that you can receive their rewards. There are Sun Fancy Dragons and Moon Fancy Dragons. Sun Fancy Dragons must be played during your turn to score them. Moon Fancy Dragons are scored automatically at the end of the game as long as their goals are met. You can pick one of two Fancy Dragons at the start of the game.
Something else to consider while playing is your end-of-turn limits. There’s one for the resources in your personal supply. If you end your turn with more than 7 resources of one type in your personal supply, the extras will be discarded, with the one exception to this rule being coins, for which you can keep any amount. The second limit applies to the Dragon Artisans in your hand. You can have up to six Artisan Dragons in hand, a limit that does not apply to Fancy Dragons. If you have more than six Artisan Dragons in your hand at the end of your turn, you’ll be asked to discard two.
How will a game end? The game can end when the last card in either the dragon park ot the enchantment park is drawn or revealed. It is then that each player will get one final turn before all of the Reputation Points are tallied up to see who’s the winner. Once the Reputation Points are tallied up, you’ll get to see how many Reputation Points were earned by each player during the game, how many are earned from saved coins, and how many are obtained from Moon Fancy Dragons. And what happens if two players tie? Then the player who has more Dragon Artisans in hand wins. If there’s still a tie, then the player who has the most leftover goods wins. And if there’s still a tie by then, well… both players will share the victory!
Flamecraft is a 1-5 player cozy strategy game set in a magical land in which you’ll become a Flamekeeper. You’ll be tasked with placing and helping Dragon Artisans and shopkeepers to delight the townfolk with their craft. As you gather resources, you’ll have to help upgrade and improve shops. There are different ways for you to claim victory, so you’ll have to outplay and outsmart other Flamekeepers as you make the most of your skills. There are 80+ Dragon Artisans as well as 30 unique shops to visit. You can play on your own, join others locally, or play against gamers from around the world… as long as you have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription!
You’ll be working on collecting goods such as bread, iron, potions, meat, and more, so that you can use them to pay for activating the special abilities of each shop, to bring additional Dragon Artisans into play, or to cover the cost of enchantments. You can also collect coins, which are very important for the gameplay loop, since they can either be used to cover the cost of any type of good, as well as be saved until the end of the game, which will make them count as additional Reputation Points so that you can hopefully win a match.
Along with the original board game design of Manny Vega and the art from Sandara Tang, we’re also getting a soundtrack from Paweł Górniak, who previously worked on Wingspan, a game which I had a chance to review on Nintendo Switch in 2021. Flamecraft is out on Nintendo Switch with a $19.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This Flamecraft review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Monster Couch.
