4 Gods

4 Gods

Four Gods is a real-time tile-laying game in which players create a world — one tile at a time — before laying claim to one of the four gods of their world and attempting to win followers by sending prophets into that world.

In more detail, players sit outside of a cardboard frame that represents the limits of the world. Each player starts with two randomly-drawn tiles in hand, with each double-sided tile depicting 1-3 types of landscape out of the four types present in the world.

When play begins, each player simultaneously starts laying tiles into the frame; each tile must be adjacent to two sides to be placed, so initially tiles can be placed only in the corners of the frames, with players building inward from there. Players can place tiles anywhere that they can legally be placed (two sides are adjacent to the frame or previously placed tiles and all landscapes match across tile borders.

Instead of placing a tile, a player can place it in their personal discard area, which can hold at most ten tiles. When a player has both hands free, they can draw two new tiles from the bag; alternatively, any player with a free hand can pick up any tile in any discard area and place it in the world.