Mercado de Lisboa is live (King of the market)
Update: Mercado de Lisboa has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 14 days. You may pledge for a copy of the game, available in different languages. A mini expansion for Lacerda's Lisboa is included with every order.
Our preview post below was published on August 31.
Mercado de Lisboa is a 1-4 player tile laying and area control game, co-designed by Vital Lacerda. It will launch on Kickstarter on September 3.
In the solo mode of Mercado de Lisboa, you will go through a campaign consisting of 9 chapters ('challenges'). Each chapter will give you fame points when you finish it. At the end of the campaign, you will add up your points from all the chapters and check how good a merchant you are.
At the beginning of the game, you will receive 1 coin and 8 wooden stands. Each chapter may have different setup instructions and restrictions (e.g. in the first chapter, you can only earn money from a single type of stand). You start with 3 stand tiles. On your turn, you can take one of three available actions: Open a Stand, Bring Customers, or Open a Restaurant.
If you choose to open a stand, you take one of the tiles you have and place it together with a wooden stand somewhere in the market. Placement costs 1 coin for each stand in the row or column you are choosing, including the one you are placing. After you place your tile, you refill with a new one from those available on the board.
If your stand was placed on a space with a restaurant tile, you take that tile so that you can do the 'open a restaurant' action in a future turn. This action earns you a coin, and you can place the tile next to a matching stand so that you can later earn more money from it.
Customer tiles show specific goods that the customers are looking to buy. The number of customers you can attract depends on the number of stands there are in the row or column that you place them (e.g. if there is only one stand, you can't bring in 4 customers). To bring a customer in, you must place them next to at least one of the goods they want. Customers give coins for each stand with the goods they are after in the same row/column.