Shake That City has players shake a box to build a city.

Just hope everything fits.

Welcome, city planners! Design the best city block using patterns from the new and exciting “Cube Shaker”. You’ll place a mix of tiles to help grow the thriving city. The best design wins the game!

Shake the City Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

Players each have a city surrounded by scoring tiles each orientated the same way. A player shakes the cube shaker and presses the release button to put a pattern of 9 cubes on the table.

That player picks a colour of cubes and puts the matching colour tiles in the exact layout in to their city. The other players do the same but can not pick the same colour the lead player picked.

It’s important to note that they must be placed in the exact patterns they come out of the shaker. You can’t rotate, flip or otherwise manipulate the way the colour cubes you picked came out.

How do you win?

At the end of the game, you’ll score your city. The different colour tiles score depending on where they are…

Grey roads for connecting to the edge of the board. Black factories next to other factories and roads. Red homes in multiple small clusters but not next to a factory. Green parks next to homes and factories. Blue shops score more the closer they are placed to the city centre but must also be connected to a road that is connected to the board’s edge.

You also score for the randomised tiles around the city. These score either a flat point value for filling every space in that row or will score depending on whether you meet the goal for that row.

Most points wins.

Main Mechanisms

Pattern building is the main mechanism. The whole goal is to get the tiles onto your board, try to build out the city, and get the tiles in a decent scoring position.

USP

The big USP is the cube shaker. It works really well. You drop the cubes in the top, shake it by sliding it around the table, press the button, release the button and lift it.

It leaves behind 9 cubes in a perfect 3×3 grid. I don’t remember a time when it didn’t work as it should. It reminds me of the pyramid from Camel Up.

Theme

Well, just city building a generic city. The ways the different tiles score are thematic, like a simplistic Suburbia.

Setup

The only tricky part is that each player needs to have their city set up exactly the same, but orientated facing them. So, one player has to put the scoring tiles around their city and everyone else has to copy it. That’s not easy to do when looking upside down and mirrored!

Components & Artwork

Everything there is pretty good. The graphic design is very clean and easy to read.

The simple art is also very clean and pleasing.

Ease of Teaching

The game itself is really easy to teach. The hard part is to remember how scoring works for the different tiles.

Similar Games

I was thinking while playing “This is reminding me of Quadropolis“, then someone at the table said, “This is reminding me of Quadropolis”.

Shake the City Review

Positives

The cube shaker works well and is a useful tool for gameplay, not a pointless gimmick.

The pattern building is fun.

Getting tiles into scoring positions gets harder and harder which is a cool challenge.

That gap between the cubes being revealed and the start player picking their colour is tense when you see a colour that’s perfect for you.

Negatives

I worry about long-term replayability as the only thing that changes is the scoring on the outside of the city.

I lost on a tiebreaker, putting it here as I’m still bitter. 🙂

Summary

A very fun game with a cool gimmick.

Jesta ThaRogue