by Aimee Wielechowski
Two city planners race to co-design a bikeable, sustainable city. But it’s not that easy: the City Council keeps blocking your plans (think car lobbyists and climate change deniers). Collaborate when it benefits you, but score points by making the smartest bike path connections. Only one player wins and is named Most Sustainable City Planner.
Presentation
- Duration: 30-45 minutes
- Player count: 2
- Language: English
20-Minute City is a semi-cooperative light strategy game for two players, where rival city planners compete to design the most sustainable—and bikeable—city.
Together, you build a shared city. Cooperation is essential: only by developing districts can players earn limited special bike permits, the key to scoring points. But while the city is shared, victory is personal.
Points are earned by connecting districts using your special bike permits. Each successful connection lets you place a bike meeple monument within a district—a proud testament to your planning brilliance. The more effectively you connect the city, the more monuments (and points) you’ll claim.
But special bike permits are scarce, so to keep expanding the network you’ll also need “normal” bike path permits. These are earned by overcoming City Council bureaucracy. Clearing these obstacles helps both players, and the planner who resolves them gains the greater advantage. Normal permits allow you to extend bike paths into new districts, setting up future scoring opportunities.
Additional points come from completing your personal planning brief and fulfilling the Mayor’s Goal, a public objective that changes every game based on the whims of the latest election.
Plan poorly, and the City Council will intervene—flooding a building zone and leaving one of your bike meeples stranded in the new city lake as a lasting monument to poor planning.
When the last special bike path is placed, the game ends. The player with the most points wins and is crowned Most Sustainable City Planner.
About the designer
I’m a new board game designer who has lived in some amazing cities: New York, Chicago, Geneva and Copenhagen. I love people-centred urban spaces, and my professional work has exposed me to the delightful chaos of planning things with other humans. I try to make games about systems that almost work, cooperation that never quite lasts, and the joy of solving problems while everything is on fire. 20-Minute City was inspired by my passion for marrying sustainability and urban planning reality, and the very real possibility that the City Council will ruin your plans. This is my first time at Fastaval.
Niko Otani created the art for 20-Minute City. Niko is a student currently studying design at university in London. She specializes in creating illustrations inspired by her childhood experiences living in areas full of nature. She enjoys depicting animals and botanicals. She works with multiple media, including both traditional and digital techniques.
