WBG Score: 9/10
Player Count: 1-2
You’ll like this if you like: Furnace
Published by: Hobby World
Designed by: Ivan Lashin
This is a free review copy. See our review policy here.
Neodreams is made by Ivan Lashin. He is the genius mind behind Furnace, one of my favourite games of all time. It is engine building distilled down to its purest form. The game is incredibly slick, and it plays so quickly, but offers so much. The downside of that game is its rather drab industrial theme and beige art. I like it, but it doesn't exactly pop. When I saw Mr. Lashin was putting his mind to a new game, and that game was another engine builder, but this time with added worker placement goodness and a bright, colourful futuristic landscape thrown in, I was all in. But does all this juiciness add up to a good game? Yes, it really does. Spoiler alert, this game is fantastic. Let's find out why, if you really need to know.
How To Set Up Neodreams
First, set the Oneirosphere board on the table within reach of all players, ensuring the side corresponding to the number of players is facing up. Place the Cycle marker on the appropriate space in the leftmost corner of the Sleep Cycle track at the top of the Oneirosphere board. Divide the Dream cards into three decks based on their back designs. Shuffle each deck separately, draw two cards from the top of each, and place them face up to the right of the Oneirosphere board to form the Market.
Then, place all Object and Client tokens in the general reserve near the Oneirosphere board; note, the images on these tokens are just for theming, they do not factor into the rules are are all identical mechanically speaking.
Each player sets a Mainframe board in front of them along with a Dream board and places it to the right of their Mainframe board. The Dream boards are double-sided. You can either add some minor asymmetry to the game or play with the same starting powers. They also show two cards that will make up your final total. Each player starts with two cards, not zero. Now, each player places three Oneironaut figures of their chosen colour as set by their Mainframe board in their personal supply. Each player takes three Object tokens and places them near their Mainframe board in their personal supply.
Then, each player takes one knowledge, memory, and fantasy Resource marker and places them to the left of their Mainframe board, aligned with the three indicators. Each player draws one Lucid, Neodream, and Recursive Dream Card from the top of the decks and adds them to their hand. The Active Player token is given to the person who woke up latest today. Then, the Last Player token is given to the person to the right of the Active Player token holder. If all players are familiar with the game, the person with the Last Player token may move the Cycle marker to any position of their choice along the Sleep Cycle track. On your first game, this will mean very little, so just skip this step. You are now ready to play.
How To Play Neodreams
The game plays out over a series of rounds until one player has at least 12 cards in their dreamscape. Players take turns placing one of their Oneironauts onto an available space on the Oneirosphere board. They will then carry out the action of the space onto which they placed their worker. If they have used all their workers, then instead of placing one, you will remove all figures from one of the three columns, also taking the action at the top of that column. Other players can also remove any of their figures in the column too. All players who return a Oneironaut worker in this way can carry out one action matching that row or place one card from their hand. Once a player has either added a worker or removed workers from one column, you will refill any taken cards this round, then it is the other player's turn, checking first to see if anyone has reached 12 cards or more to trigger the end game.
When you place a worker, you will be able to do one of seven actions. Let's take a look at them one-by-one.
Gain Resources: Take the one, two, three, or four resources of the shown colour, adding them to your player board by moving the appropriate marker up the set number of spaces. You can never have more than a maximum of ten.
Draw Card: Take any face up card. With the worker actions, this would be from any three card types. With the worker retrieval action, you will see this is linked to one of the three specifically.
Create Card: This is how you can play cards from your hand into your Dreamscape. There is only one space on the Mainframe board to do this, but all worker retrieval actions allow you to do this as well. To play a card, simply pay the resource cost as shown on the top left of the card. Reduce your resources by the shown amount, then add the card to the right of the player board. The red Fantasy resources are wild and can be used to pay for either of the other resource types. When you add your cards, try to do so so they are in groups of the three different types. This will make activating them later a lot easier.
Gain Object: Simply take one or two object tokens from the supply and add to your own personal supply. The picture on the token is irrelevant.
Place Objects: You can now place as many object tokens as you like onto the cards that require them in your Dreamscape. Cards that require them have a star symbol on the left hand side. Add an object token over this to activate that part of the card. Most cards need more than one object token to fully activate it. This card will now have a stronger power the next time you use it.
Link Client: Each Lucid card has a space on the bottom right to add a Client token onto it. Taking this action allows you to take one Client token from the supply and add it to any one Lucid card in your Dreamscape. You can now take the shown affect on that card. These are one time actions but there are ways you can remove a Client token and do this again.
Broadcast Neodreams: Oneironauts The Neodream cards that you have added to your Dreamscape all have an action shown on the bottom of the card next to the Neodreams icons. When you take this action you can activate every single Neodreams card you have.
When you return workers, this will allow you to move the Cycle marker one space to the right and then take the shown action in the new column. These are to either take resources and objects or to activate your Neodreams cards.
When you have done this, you and all players with Workers in this column will remove them back to their supply, and can either carry out the Draw Card action linked to the row that they were in, or take the Create Card action if they have cards in hand and resources to spend.
When a player reaches 12 or more cards, the game will continue until the player with the Last Player token finishes their next turn. The game then immediately ends and players will tally up their final score.
Scoring works by awarding one point for each unused Object token still in a player's possession, totalling the Dream cards in each player's Dreamscape, and then adding up all unplaced cards, Objects, and unspent resources, and dividing that total by five (rounding down). The player with the most points wins.
Is It Fun? Neodreams Card Game Review
If you enjoy engine builder games and worker placement, then this could well be one of your new favourite games. Games are fast. 30 minutes for a two player. Under an hour for four players. Turns are quick too. Simply place or retrieve a worker and do the linked action. Refill any taken cards and move on. But the tightness of the worker placement spots, and the delicate nature of the cards building up your own powers is incredibly satisfying. This game is almost perfect to me.
I adore everything about this. Setup is a breeze. I can teach the game in about five minutes, and it takes even less time to put away. The art is bright, vibrant, and the card art is wonderfully layered and detailed. The components are good quality, with nice chunky acrylic player pieces, and thick cardboard tokens. The asymmetry is balanced, and easily added or removed during setup. And the rule book is clearly laid out and offers nice thematic touches and examples.
And mechanically speaking, this is an absolute home run for me. There are only 12 worker placement spots. This is the same in any player count. The icons in the spots change for three or four players, but the number available remains constant. So, you will find you will be playing and retrieving your workers at great speed. Timing the placement of the workers onto the right columns, so you get them back on other players' turns, rather than your own, is an interesting part of the game. But of course, the player that activates the retrieval does get to take a bonus action as well, gaining valuable resources and object tokens, or running your Neodream card engine.
And this is the real genius of the game: the cards. You have three types. The Recursive cards give you various powers that activate at certain points in the game. When played, you need to keep in mind when these activate, as they can be easily missed. This is the only thing about the game I do not like. I find new players to the game often miss one or two of their powers here. It is easily done. The Lucid and Neodream cards, however, are a lot simpler to activate and will never be forgotten!
The Lucid cards activate when you take the Link Client action and offer one-time-only powers that can be quite useful, especially when played at the right time. You can reuse these if you use another card's power to remove a previously placed Client token. And herein lies the beauty of the game. Linking relevant cards that work together like this can be very rewarding. Having a Neodream card that lets you remove a Client token and a Lucid card with a powerful client power is a wonderful combo that you could re-enact three or four times, or more, in a game. What other great combos can you build?!
The Neodream cards will often be the most commonly collected and played cards. When you run your Neodream cards, which can be done at various points in the game, you will be able to run through and activate every Neodream card you have. This can sometimes be five, six, seven, or even more cards, depending on your strategy. They are not as powerful as the Lucid or Recursive cards, but can be re-used a lot more often. And running them in high numbers like that can massively advance your position in the game, and feels great when you do it. I can do to this, take this, add this, play this, run this... Wonderful! And it all happens fast, so it is not like other players are waiting ages for you to complete this.
All the cards offer interesting options, look gorgeous, and often chain very well together. It will be your job to find the right combination of cards to take and play. You will be able to build a big hand of cards fairly simply in this game, and gaining resources is relatively in your control and quick to do. There is some scarcity here in terms of the worker placement spots, but they are freed up almost as quickly as they are taken. So, this game is less about acting fast, or taking things away from your fellow players, and more about building a strategy of cards that work well together. If you like the idea of that wonderfully delicious, rewarding, and oh so satisfying game experience, then this could well be one of your new favourite games.
I absolutely adore this game. I would go as far to say that it is better than Furnace, which I am shocked to see myself type. I love Furnace so much and it sits in my top ten of all time. But this game is better. It adds a little bit more, without making the game complex, and looks far better, with a more interesting theme to me. Does that make it top ten of all time as well, or instead? Yes. Yes it does. Welcome to the top ten Neodreams. Long may you reign.
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