In Reiner Knizia's Sunrise Lane, the 2-4 players are property developers building houses in a town divided into the four residential neighbourhoods (ie: quarters of the board) used to reckon end-game bonuses. In terms of mechanics, Sunrise Lane is a thematic reworking of Reiner Knizia's 2012 abstract game Rondo (Schmidt Spiele) but boosted with an added theme and some tweaks to the rules.
The board for Sunrise Lane is made up of a squares, each of which shows its points value (1-5) and colour. The players will have hands of up to five cards. To build you need to play a card from your hand that matches the colour of the square on which you are building. You then score the number of points indicated on that square. If you play two or more cards of the same colour to place a building, you place out the number of storeys equal to the number of cards, and the points scored is that multiple of the value indicated on the square.
You can place buildings on the board anywhere adjacent to the centre square or to any buildings already in place, regardless of who owns them. It's up to you how many cards you play on your turn. You can also play (discard) any card to place out a park tile. This doesn't score you any points but you can build adjacent to the park, so potentially giving you access to high-scoring squares you wouldn't otherwise be able to reach on your turn.
If you built, you draw one card at the end of your turn, but if you don't build on your turn then you get to draw two cards, up to your hand limit of five cards.
The game ends when any player is down to their last two houses and then there are valuable end-game bonuses to score for the most buildings in the two red neighbourhoods (quarters of the board), the highest buildings in the two blue neighbourhoods, and for the longest run of contiguous buildings on the board.
Sunrise Lane is a tactical game where you are trying to balance your desire to build out towards the high points-scoring squares against the fear of opening up high scoring opportunities for your opponents. You'll want to keep an eye on how many cards other players are holding; tho' you won't know what colours they'll have access to, you'll know how far they might be able to reach on their turn. And this is also a game about delayed gratification: do you maximise the points you earn this turn for the cards you play or do you accept a lower immediate score, playing fewer or even no cards on a turn for the longer term benefit of potentially higher scores on a future turn? This dovetails rather well with the theme because it's not that dissimilar to the real-world options considered by property developers: fast turnaround for quick bucks or sitting on your land bank hoping for higher property prices in the future.
Horrible Guild have done a great job with the production of Sunrise Lane: with art by Francesco de Benedittis and different house designs for each player, this is an easy-to-play family-friendly game with great table presence. It takes 2-4 players but works especially well with three. With two players, the end-game goals are likely to balance out more often than not and so prove less important; with four players it's hard for players to plan ahead because the board position can change so much before your turn comes around. At Board's Eye View, we've added Sunrise Lane to our list of go-to gateway games for those coming new to modern board games, but there's enough scope for tactical play and push-your-luck gambles too to satisfy more seasoned gamers.