Which city will prevail? Recruit citizens and rely on their abilities to gather the most sparks.
What Is Citizens of the Spark?
Citizens of the Spark is a tableau-building card game for 1 to 5 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 45–60 minutes to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $40 for a copy of the game, or $55 to include the optional playmat. I think some kids younger than 14 with some gaming experience should be able to pick up the rules—the iconography on the cards can take a little bit to figure out, but isn’t overwhelming, and there isn’t really anything that would make the game inappropriate thematically.
Citizens of the Spark was designed by Philip duBarry and published by Thunderworks Games, with illustrations by Diego Sá.
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Citizens of the Spark Components
Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality.
Here’s what comes in the box:
- 100 Spark tokens
- 40 1-Spark cubes
- 20 5-Spark cubes
- 20 10-Spark tokens
- 20 25-Spark tokens
- 300 Citizen cards (10 each of 30 types)
- 30 Citizen dividers
- 30 Citizen Randomizer cards
- 4 Player Aid cards
- Start Player token
- Solo Play components:
- 36 Scyntilla cards (for solo play)
- 3 Group tokens
- Solo Player Aid card
The card illustrations are by Diego Sá, depicting a menagerie of anthropomorphic animals, and I really like the style. Sá has illustrated some other titles for Thunderworks Games set in the Cartographers universe (like the recent Kickstarter Emerald Skulls), but these are brighter and more colorful, which gives the game a more cheery look. Don’t be fooled, though: it can still be quite cutthroat depending on which characters are in play!
The majority of the game, as you can see from the first photo, is cards: there are 30 different citizens, and 10 copies of each one, plus a deck of randomizer cards (one of each citizen) that you can use to create a random setup. The game also includes divider cards with tabs to keep the cards organized—the tabs also have icons that indicate the cards with special ability types.
Sparks are your victory points for the game: the 1- and 5-value tokens are small plastic cubes, transparent with glitter embedded in them. The 10- and 25-value tokens are cardboard chits—they have the spark icon behind the number, but are a little disappointingly plain when set next to the cubes.
The game includes two plastic trays used for storing the sparks and for use when playing the game—they stack, and have a clear lid on top.
The box also has a custom plastic insert—a large well to hold all of the cards, and a few smaller wells for the first player marker and the solo components underneath the space where the sparks trays sit. Next to that is another larger open space—this is extra space that would be needed if you sleeve your cards, but is otherwise empty, which does make the box about a third larger than it needs to be.
How to Play Citizens of the Spark
You can download a draft of the rulebook here. It is also available to play on Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator.
The Goal
The goal of the game is to have the most sparks by the time the deck runs out.
Setup
Create the citizens deck by choosing a number of different citizens (based on the player count) and shuffling all of those cards together; for fewer than 4 players randomly discard 15 cards from the deck.
Set up the “assembly,” the central area with cards for players to take: the assembly always has 3 groups of cards, either pairs (for 1 to 3 players) or triples (for 4 or 5 players). Place the sparks nearby as a supply.
Deal 4 citizen cards to each player. Everyone chooses 2 citizens to keep as their starting city (placed face-up), and discards the others.
Give the first player token to the player who was born in the largest city.
Gameplay
On your turn, you must attract citizens, and then you may perform an action. Choose one of the three groups from the assembly, and add those citizens to your city. Citizens of the same type are grouped in a stack so that you can still see all of the icons at the tops of the cards.
Then, you may perform an action: choose any citizen in your city that has an action ability, and move it above your city so everyone can see it. Each ability card has a little question mark icon, which refers to the three levels of the action shown at the bottom of the card. The level you may use is based on how many copies of that citizen you have. For instance, in the photo above, if I use the Merchant, it will only be at level 1, but if I use the Medic, I can use up to level 3. (You may use a lower level than your maximum allowed).
Most cards have a white ability section—that’s a regular action that may be performed. Other colors indicate special abilities: orange attacks will affect other players; purple reactions will trigger if you are attacked; yellow abilities trigger once when you first put the card into your city.
After you perform your action, any players who have the same citizen in their cities may follow you (in turn order): they play the citizen card from their city, use it at the level based on the number of copies they have of the citizen, and then discard the citizen.
After everyone has had a chance to follow, then you discard your played citizen. (Generally, you only discard one copy when you perform an action, though there are some abilities that specify otherwise.)
Add one spark next to each group of cards in the assembly that was not selected, and then refill the assembly from the deck. (If you take a group that has sparks next to it, you collect all of those sparks.) Now it’s the next player’s turn.
Game End
When the deck runs out, it triggers the end of the game. Reshuffle the discard pile to form a new deck, and then finish the round so that all players have had the same number of total turns.
Calculate your scores:
- Gain 1 spark per card in your city
- Gain or lose spark tokens from End of Game scoring abilities (marked with an hourglass icon)
- Add spark tokens you collected during the game
The player with the most sparks has built the greatest city and wins! Ties go to the player with the most citizen cards.
Solo Game
The solo game is set up like a 2-player game and pits you against an automated opponent, Scyntilla. You’ll use the three group tokens to mark the three groups in the market, and then place Scyntilla’s city to the left and below these tokens, forming a backwards L of the various stacks of citizens.
You take your turns as usual, but if Scyntilla follows, it just earns sparks based on how many copies of that citizen it has, and then discards one copy and moves that stack to the end of its line. Scyntilla does not use reaction abilities if you attack.
On Scyntilla’s turn, it flips a card from its deck, which is made up of a few basic cards and then one card for each citizen type that was included in setup.
The group icon in the center of the card indicates which of the three groups Scyntilla attracts (along with any spark tokens as usual). Cards are added to matching stacks as usual, or create a new stack at the end of the line otherwise. Then, Scyntilla performs the action on the Scyntilla card based on the number of cards in the stack next to the matching icon, and then discards the top citizen from that stack and moving the stack to the end of the sequence and sliding everything up to fill in the gap. So Scyntilla doesn’t perform the actions on the citizens themselves, but instead uses the actions on the mini cards.
At the end of the game, scoring is almost the same as usual, but Scyntilla does not get any End of Game abilities. Score more points than Scyntilla to win! You can adjust the difficulty level by increasing the number of sparks Scyntilla gets when it follows your actions.
Why You Should Play Citizens of the Spark
The story of Citizens of the Spark involves a strange signal, the Transmission, that granted intelligence to the animals and allowed them to make technological leaps and create a utopian society—but then they discovered a prophecy that one city would flourish, and that all others would crumble. Now all of the cities are scrambling to recruit citizens, hoping to become the one shining city that earns the Transmission’s blessing. It feels a little like a self-fulfilling prophecy: if the animals didn’t know about it, would they have continued working together and coexisting peacefully instead of falling into this desperate competition for survival? I suppose we’ll never know!
While I didn’t find the story of the game all that compelling, I still really enjoyed the gameplay (and the animalfolk illustrations!). It’s all about card combos, and a little bit of press-your-luck when it comes to the timing of using your abilities.
Each ability has three levels, so ideally you want to get three copies of a citizen before you trigger its effect, because that gives you the biggest results. But how long do you wait? If an opponent uses a citizen and you only have one or two copies of it, should you follow? You can only perform one action per turn, so following another player basically gives you an extra opportunity to play an action, even if it’s not at its most effective yet. If you don’t see any copies of that citizen in the assembly, is it worth waiting to see what comes up in a future round, or should you just go ahead and cash it in now? There’s been many games that have ended with players wishing they’d had a couple more turns to use some citizen abilities.
One special effect that some citizens have is “convert”: you flip a citizen card face-down, and add it to the bottom of any stack. It functions as a wild card and counts as whatever citizen is on that stack—but if you ever play the last face-up card from that stack, then all of the face-down cards in the stack are also discarded. It’s a great way to boost actions to level 3, but it takes careful management to ensure that you don’t lose those converted cards too quickly.
The defense abilities are also interesting: they don’t protect you from attacks, but just give you a bonus if you get attacked. So they’re more like a consolation prize than a defense, but if you have enough of them it may give an opponent pause before they attack you.
Many of the abilities are about gaining sparks—some cards will just give you a flat number based on the level, but there are others that count the various icons at the tops of the cards. The merchant counts up the silver bars you have in your own city; the philosopher looks for the arts icon but you can choose any city. The bandit steals sparks from a player who has more iron bars; the trader swaps cards with a player who has fewer iron bars. Depending on the particular mix of citizens in the deck, players will try to collect or spend icons so that other players can’t benefit from them.
Some card abilities use more cards from the deck, speeding up the game, so if players use those effects often, the game can be over a lot more quickly. The back of the rulebook includes several recommended sets based on the type of experience you’re looking for. Does your gaming group love attacks? Try the High Interaction set. Prefer building your own thing without interference? Low Interaction. Love tracking all of those guild icons? There’s a set for that. And, of course, you can use the randomizer cards to build a huge number of unique sets.
One more thing I want to note: the game is often shorter than you might expect, based on its appearance. The box size (which has that extra space for sleeved cards as I mentioned before) gave me the impression that it would be a heavier game in terms of complexity and game length (because you always assume the printed length on the box is an underestimate), but I’ve found that this is a game that often comes in at about the 45-minute mark, and some of my players were surprised because they were expecting something a little more. Of course, if you didn’t get enough, you can always play again—and it’s typically better for a game to end a little before you were ready than for it to overstay its welcome!
I’ve really enjoyed Citizens of the Spark, and I recommend it particularly for players who enjoy figuring out card combos and interactions. I like the ebb and flow of the cities, and the way that it forces you to choose between building deep and building wide—going for more of the same citizen gives you stronger effects, but amassing a lot of different citizens gives you a better chance of following another player’s actions. You need a lot of citizens to score points, but each time you use an ability, you lose that citizen. Figuring out the timing of when to use an action and when to wait is key to victory.
For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Citizens of the Spark Kickstarter page!
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Disclosure: GeekDad was loaned a prototype of this game for review purposes. Thunderworks Games has purchased banner ads for Citizens of the Spark on our site, but I do not personally get any compensation for this review.
