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I played the prototype of Quadropolis, then called City Mania, at Spielwarenmesse in early 2015 and wrote about the gameplay and its background in April 2015. Phoebe Wild also recorded a video overview of the game at BGG.CON 2015 in case you don't care to read the summary below:
The game lasts four rounds, and in each round players first lay out tiles for the appropriate round at random on a 5x5 grid. Each player has four architects numbered 1-4 and on a turn, a player places an architect next to a row or column in the grid, claims the tile that's as far in as the number of the architect placed (e.g., the fourth tile in for architect #4), places that tile in the appropriately numbered row or column on the player's 4x4 city board, then claims any resources associated with the tile (inhabitants or energy).
When a player takes a tile, a figure is placed in this now-empty space and the next player cannot place an architect in the same row or column where this tile was located. In addition, you can't place one architect on top of another, so each placement cuts off play options for you and everyone else later in the round. After all players have placed all four architects, the round ends, all remaining tiles are removed, and the tiles for the next round laid out.
After four rounds, the game ends. Players can move the inhabitants and energy among their tiles at any point during the game to see how to maximize their score. At game end, they then score for each of the six types of buildings depending on how well they build their city — as long as they have activated the buildings with inhabitants or energy as required.
Wait a minute — a Chudyk game in fifteen minutes for players ages eight and up? I can't imagine it, but perhaps this design doesn't fit the Innovation/Impulse/Glory to Rome model of Chudyks past. Here's an overview of the gameplay:
The map of trails and challenges is built by the players as they explore the wilderness. These wilderness cards feature beautifully illustrated realistic art and have between three and six exit points along with a variety of features, both made-made and natural in origin. No two games will ever play the same.
Gameplay is structured around a clever movement mechanism in which the first player moves one card, the second player moves up to two cards, the third player three, and so on. Each of the six player characters has both advantages and disadvantages that can be used across a variety of play options — short or long play, regular or advanced.
Dive into caves, row canoes, cross bridges, climb mountains, and cut through treacherous underbrush as you stop at nothing — except bears — to be the first to reach base camp. Can you survive and escape Bear Valley?
Brettspiel Easter Basket 2016, due out in March 2016 with rules in English and German, consists of eight new expansions for eight games from eight publishers, with the games being Antarctica, Colt Express, Dream Islands, Haleakala, My Village, Imperial Settlers, Snowdonia, and T.I.M.E Stories. (T.I.M.E Stories? Really? I'm curious as to what this item might possibly be.) Brettspiel Easter Basket 2016 also contains the microgame WH1CH GAM3 from Jürgen Karla and Oliver Grimm that can be played in order to determine which game should be played next.
Notes Frosted Games in its press release: "It can easily be hidden in the garden as a whole. Or it can be opened and each of the included nine bags can be hidden separately." The publisher notes that this item will be distributed in Europe by Spiel Direkt and in the U.S. by Funagain Games and BoardGameGeek, which is news to me.