Steam Donkey

About this board game

Steam Donkey is a strategic card game for 2–4 players, played in around 45 minutes, in which architects race to complete the grandest Victorian seaside resort.

The year is 1897, and four resorts are competing to become worthy of a Royal visit from Queen Victoria. As an architect, you will develop three distinct areas: the Park, the Beach, and the Town. Build amusements, lodgings, monuments, and transport to make your resort magnificent and claim the title of Chief Architect, by Royal Appointment.

Steam Donkey’s central card mechanism gives both sides of every card an important role. The reverse shows holiday-makers arriving at a railway station, with color-coded suitcases indicating their destination. You decide when to take these Visitors into your hand; once collected, the card fronts become the focus as you construct your resort.

• Choose when to take cards from the resort into your hand.
• Decide whether to build in the Park, Beach, or Town.
• Discard the prescribed number of cards matching the type of the project you want to build.
• Use character cards whose assistance can help you, but may also aid your opponents.

Four enigmatic characters—Donkey-boy, Lord Admiral, Princess Royal, and Madame Ice-cream—are swapped between players to enhance card play. Their fickle support adds another layer of decision-making as you choose which characters are most useful each turn and which projects they should help construct.

In the advanced game, four Kick-on cards—the Castle, Mechanical Dog, Bank, and Feral Donkey—provide particular advantages to their owners and remain in play throughout the game. With its unusual double-sided cards and changing character assistance, Steam Donkey combines accessible card play with meaningful strategic choices.