It’s been a while since we’ve seen such a thorough explication of why setting matters than J.B. Howell’s SiliconVania. Set in a future Transylvania where vampires have gone public and decided to transform their ancestral homeland into the next Silicon Valley, Howell has crafted a game that riffs on blood-boy slurping techbros and venture capital excess, all without necessarily cluing its players in on the satire. It surprises with some devious bidding and tile-laying. If only the setting weren’t such a damp spitball to the ear.

Transylvania, the year 2000.

Not unlike a much-hyped tech startup, SiliconVania knows how to generate momentum. It isn’t properly simultaneous, but it’s near enough, centering on blind bids that see players combining two types of cards in order to draft tiles and employees. It’s a game with almost zero downtime, always offering something to tinker or adjust or consider.

It’s hard to identify the core of this experience. There’s your personal tableau, an ostensible blueprint proposal for your version of Silicon Transylvania. A humble four-by-four grid, it isn’t long before it bristles with malls, metro stations, parks, tech campuses, residential neighborhoods, and blood banks and crypts. If those last inclusions landed with a discordant note, that’s SiliconVania in a nutshell. There’s also the market, a functional array of paired tiles and employees. Third, your hand of cards, both the bidding and employee variety, requires its own dedicated bandwidth.

Despite the fragmentary nature of its attention, these elements are quickly drawn together. The glue is those employee cards. These serve multiple purposes. Right away, they’re crucial to your bid, their unique digit serving as a tiebreaker when everybody inevitably wagers the same number. There’s a clever trick here reminiscent of Peer Sylvester’s Brian Boru where lower cards offer greater material advantages, drawing in additional vampiric residents, moving you along one of two bonus tracks, or perhaps attracting a feline or canine companion to your city. To wit, higher numbers will give you an earlier drafting advantage while lower ones spill out better perks. It’s a clever piece of balancing that demands consideration, but not so much that it will pop a blood vessel.

The bidding system is surprisingly good.

The final function of those employees is scoring. After a few unburdened opening rounds, SiliconVania ramps up its intensity by requiring everybody to dedicate one of their employees to their scoring pile. There are seven types in all, each connected to a different flavor of tile. Although there’s some particularity to how many of a type you can play and how many points each one can score, this is where most of your final tally will be gained. The categories read like a checklist of tile-laying best hits. Metro stations score when they’re in a column with three different tiles; malls hit rows but require a certain number of housed vampires. Neighborhoods like being adjacent to variety, while plopping mausoleums next to blood banks will lessen the commute for hangry vampires, their blood mugs declaring “NOT AN EVENING PERSON” or somesuch.

It’s solid stuff, as far as gameplay goes. The entire structure is sturdier than it might first seem. Bidding for the right combo of tiles is tense, especially in later rounds as you lock into scoring opportunities and start chasing particular structures. There are other scoring categories to pursue, some worthwhile and others ancillary, and special structures like trains or a castle that can be attached to the edge of your board, and ancient artifacts that modify the traits of the tiles they’re placed on. It might sound like a lot, but it sits squarely in that Goldilocks zone of complexity, offering just enough to chew on without choking on a clot. It’s a pleasant surprise.

In terms of gameplay, that is. “It’s better than I thought it would be” seems to be the game’s defining catchphrase, at least every time I’ve introduced it. A positive sentiment, but one that also betrays something less appealing about the game. There’s a reason everybody’s expectations start out in the basement, and it has everything to do with the game’s unappealing setting.

The market is another highlight.

On one level, I appreciate the game’s jab at tech companies. Look at these bloodsucking techbros, am I right? Solving the problems they created in the first place, all for the low, low cost of a monthly sub? Centralizing every platform and website and then squeezing them until they have all the color and moisture of pumice? I’m being generous. In practice, SiliconVania doesn’t cough up satire so much as a line of complaint. “Bloodsucking techbros, am I right?” That’s all it has to offer. There’s no displacement going on, for one thing. You’ll ostensibly bulldoze old-town Transylvania (beautiful this time of year) to build all those blood banks and tech startups, but that isn’t a stage you’ll witness. If anything, all these parks and public transit hubs might do the region good. If there’s a statement in SiliconVania, it’s been delicately concealed beneath a drop cloth.

To be fair, it doesn’t need satire or a statement. But when it comes to its exsanguinatory setting, I’m not sure what’s left. My pet theory about these destination-making games is that they function best when they’re places one might actually want to visit. Silicon Valley is already a stretch, especially if we subtract the destinations it inherited from San Jose and Palo Alto. A midnight city ruled by vampires with blood banks standing in for Starbucks? No thanks. It isn’t only that the setting isn’t visually appealing, although titles like Santa Monica and the recent Beacon Patrol do their best to put the taste of salt-spray on your tongue. It’s more that the space we’re tasked with creating simply isn’t all that interesting. If “It’s better than I thought it would be” is the game’s first catchphrase, vocal dissatisfaction with the setting would be the second.

Also, the scoring system. Clever all around.

I’ve written before about how the systems/setting divide is a false dichotomy. SiliconVania is an example of that. As a purely systematic game, there’s plenty to be pleased with here. The bidding is clever, the tile arrangement is tight, and the employee cards hit the right notes. But its dingy setting lands amiss. It’s grim but not gothic, full of thematic hints it doesn’t bother to explore, and thin on the satire. Even its vampires are overly sallow, corporate goons who exhibit neither menace nor sexiness. Like poison in the blood, these errant steps circulate into the rest of the design. When there are so many supernal tile-layers out there that transport us to vivid destinations, there’s little reason to visit smog-choked Transylvania.

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A complimentary copy was provided.