Carpe Diem Game

Do you want to play the role of a wealthy patrician in ancient Rome, building your city with villas and lush gardens that produce varied crops such as grapes and vegetables? – well seize this game!! There are so many different ways to strategize throughout this amazing tile-laying game as you compete with other players to choose the optimum building and landscape tiles in order to construct your city to earn the most victory points.

This game is played over four rounds, with each round consisting of two phases per round. During phase one, players choose tiles to place on their individual city district boards. As they choose tiles and place them on their boards, a new city area emerges containing villas, bakeries, and other buildings. The villa building rewards a player with victory points at the end of the game as well as possibly qualifying for bonuses. The bakery provides bread that may help score victory points. There are also landscape tiles that create ponds, gardens, vineyards and farmyards – each of which produces goods such as fish, grapes, chicken and herbs. Players trade these goods during phase two of this game to score victory points. In addition, each player’s city district board has a unique frame built around it. This frame varies from game to game and depicts different buildings and landscapes around its edge, which gives players additional opportunities to position specific buildings and landscapes in directions and locations that yield victory points at the end of the game.

During phase two of this game, players visit an area consisting of cards that depict different crops, building features, or building traits. Each player must place one “marker” between two of these cards that illustrate items that were built or harvested. If a player has the items shown on their chosen cards, they score victory points. If a player cannot fulfill a card or items on the cards, they can use coins and bread, which they collected in phase 1, as substitutes in order to complete their cards.

At the completion of the fourth round of this game, the player with the most victory points will win the game. Unused resources, victory points earned during the game, completed villas, goals achieved through a player’s district board frame and bonus point cards earned by building fountains all count towards each player’s score. With clear instructions and illustrations, this is an easy-to-learn game that families can play together and it is interesting enough to keep everyone engaged. For 2-4 players, with a playtime of 45 to 75 minutes.