Old Town

About this board game

Old Town is a problem-solving board game for 1–4 players, with a playing time of approximately 45 minutes. The goal is to recreate an old ghost town as it looked in the late 19th Century.

Remnants of the town remain visible, but the locations of its buildings are no longer certain. Players must investigate the available information and work out where each building site belonged, including the position of the Saloon.

The puzzle centers on 19 building sites. To complete the reconstruction, players try to collect all the available information and use it to determine the town’s original layout. The surviving gold diggers can contribute useful details, but their memories are not always reliable.

• Recreate a ghost town from the late 19th Century
• Determine the locations of 19 building sites
• Search through available information to complete the puzzle
• Assess testimony from gold diggers whose memories may be unreliable

This uncertainty makes Old Town a game about careful reasoning and piecing together incomplete historical knowledge. The challenge is not simply to find information, but to decide how it fits into the larger reconstruction of the town.

Originally designed as a desktop-published game by Stephan Riedel, Old Town is aimed at players who enjoy problem-solving games. Its central question is straightforward but intriguing: where exactly did each part of the old town stand?