Sleighwell

Sleighwell is a cooperative game about delivering Christmas presents to the right houses.

Each turn, you either play a tile (from your hand), or move the sleigh.

Tiles must be played in numerical order. For example, if the row already has 2 and 5, you can’t play something between those numbers.

When you move the sleigh, it removes all tiles that it passes. But if you land on a house … and you removed all the right presents … you score the house!

This very simple mechanic really gives the feeling of flying around in a sleigh and racing to deliver everything, together. This being a cooperative game, I’d say it’s perfect to play with your family at Christmas.

What’s special?

To my own surprise, this is my first pure tile-laying game, and one of the first cooperative games. Somehow, all my ideas for such games previously didn’t work or weren’t finished.

Perhaps the holiday theme—and my race to finish it before Christmas—helped bring it home. (I published the game a full year later, so I had time to properly test and polish it further.)

It showed me why I should make more tile-based games. They require fewer material, fewer code/design on my end, while opening a world of possibilities. (If you add the right ruleset on top.)

I think the game works so well because its core rules are inherently balanced.

• The “play” action adds tiles, the “sleigh” action removes them.
• You need more tiles to maneuver the sleigh and get enough presents, but more tiles also restricts the numbers you can play.

Of course, the cooperative nature quickly turns into cheating as players strongly hint towards which numbers they hold, but that’s just part of the fun ;)