Some games have been around for so long and spawned so many versions, expansions and sequels that you think they've been around for more than half your own life. But in reality, they're quite modern and they were just massive successes upon which the developers capitalised. Such is the example we're going to view today.

Welcome To... released first in 2018 and it was an immediate hit. It was accessible, every game was different than the one before, you could play solo or with tons of friends (they say 10 players is the maximum recommended, but you could play 100 if you so wished)... It surely had all the ingredients to success.



Here we see the display of the game. The three cards above are the objectives of the game, which are always picked randomly. The middle board is the players board, with the lower part to write down your score and apply some of the game's effects. All that's left is a pen to write on your board, and we're ready to go.

The objectives are called City Plans, and they revolve around creating Housing Estates of a determined size from 1 to 6 houses. The first player to complete one of them writes down the score on the lower left corner and then flips the card. Now the rest of players can only score the points on the lower right corner, which will always be less. Once a player completes all three City Plans, the game ends and we start counting points.

Gameplay is simultaneous, which speeds up the game and allows you to follow more closely what's happening around you. This is done via the Construction Deck, which will be distributed in three stacks of equal size and face up. The first card of each stack is then flipped over, and we can start our first turn.



These are the Construction cards, face up above and face down below. They're numbered between 1 and 15, though the most common numbers are between 3 and 12. As you can see, they may have differing back sides, which is hinted on the face up side in the upper right corner. Pay attention, because here lies the key to the game and the reason why this game has bingo mechanics.

Players will have to choose one of the numbers and write it down on their board in any of the three streets anywhere they want. However, numbers in a street can only go ascending from left to right, so be careful where you put certain numbers. You can write on any street and on any building, no need to be adjacent or whatever, simply follow the ascending rule and that's all. The important thing is that each number is associated to its stack's face down card, in which it gives the number different effects when chosen.



Here are the six different effects. In the top left is Surveyor, which allows you to write a fence between two houses. This one is crucial because it allows you to create the Housing Estates needed for the City Plans, so pay attention whenever one is drawn. Right to it is Landscaper, when writing down the number the player can build a park, which means crossing off the lowest tree atop the street where the number was written down. We then have the Pool Manufacturer, if the number is written down in a parcel that has a planned pool, you can opt to circle it and cross off the lowest number in the pool column in your board.

In the lower row we start on the left with the Temp Agency. This effect allows you to alter the number up to +2 or -2, meaning you can now write a 0 or a 16 or 17 if needed, and you also cross one of the boxes in the Temp Agency Column. In the middle we have the Real Estate Agent, when writing down the number we can cross the topmost space in any the Real Estate column. Finally, we have the Bis, which allows you to duplicate a house number by writing it as Xb or Xbis as long as the new house is adjacent to an already existing one, but you must cross the lowest numbered space in the Bis column.

This is maybe too much information to explain, so allow me to repost the first image so we can now delve into the details of the scoreboard on a completed sheet.



From left to right, we have the space to write the score of the City Plans, the Parks of each street (you can see in the board where the crosses are), the Pool column and the encircled pools signalling how many were constructed, the Temp Agency column with a cross every time one if its effects was chosen even if not applied, the Real Estate column, the Bis column and in the lower side the Building Permit Refusal (the upper part, with the star symbol, shows it's part of an advanced mode I won't explain here). The refusal column is for when a player cannot write down any of the three numbers, because writing down a number is mandatory. The two on the right are in red because they substract points instead of adding, so even this game can be quite unforgiving.

This is basically how the game works. Three cards are revealed with the effects of the previous one, you write one of them down wherever you want, new cards are drawn which you can foresee which effects will have though not what number will have that effect, and when the stacks are emptied the whole deck is reshuffled and three new stacks created to continue the game. Until one of the three possible endings is achieved, and yes, I said three.

In the above example, the game finished because the player had completed all three City Plans, but there are two other ways. One of them is to cross the last of the three squares of the Building Permit Refusal, and the other one is if a player has already built all the houses on its board (this can happen when they did not create enough fences, or some combinations of City Plans may not actually allow to complete all three). Either way, when one of the possible endings is reached, we go to counting points and the highest score is the winner.

The advanced rules are an interesting twist, though I personally prefer not to play with them. There are also expansions to this game like Christmas Lights, Icecream and so on, but personally the original game is so good I don't think it needs any change. Sequels have been released as well, and I've tried two of them that I'll bring on a later time. A Collector's Edition is also available with all the expansions and the box says it even includes brand new things, so it definitely adds several twists to the game if you so want.

I definitely recommend this game to anyone. After reading all of this you may think it's complicated, but I can tell you that after a couple turns you'll quickly get how the game works and you'll be asking for more. In part to make it more accessible there's a Solo mode which simplifies a bit the gameplay as well as shortening it so owners can get to grips with the game without needing to play against anybody. Yet another positive point for this game, I don't know what else would you need.