At the time of writing this, I was also working on my Knarr review, and in that review I reflected on how my gaming tastes have pulled back from playing really heavy games. Then the opportunity to play Indonesia came up, and I was instantly excited. Splotter’s Food Chain Magnate has been my favourite game for years, yet it’s the only Splotter game I’ve ever played.
I dove into the rule book and was instantly dismayed. A text heavy black and white PDF from 2006. I was reminded of Iberian Gauge that I played recently, and how the rule book is a 2-page leaflet. The nice thing about Indonesia is that, like Food Chain Magnate, the actual rules are only 8 pages long, which is pretty bearable
Let’s set the stage. Indonesia is a game about getting rich. Yes, you’ll acquire companies, produce and ship goods, and even merge companies. But the goal of the game isn’t necessarily to sell the most items, the goal is to get the most money. The game is played over 3 eras, and each era consists of a number of years. Every year goes through 7 steps, which allows players to bid for turn order, merge existing companies, acquire new companies, improve their powers via research & development, operate all the companies they own, and finishing off with some city growth.
Indonesia is a big game, and I’m not going to list all the rules out right here, but the two big parts of the game is the mergers, and the operation phases. In the merging phase, any player can choose to merge any company, provided they have a sufficient merge skill, and have the capacity to take the company on (which is based off the slots’ skill, both skills are able to be improved during the R&D phase). The merge is a fascinating moment, because the minimum bid for a merge is the value of the good the company produces (Rice is 20, spice is 25, rubber is 30, oil is 40) multiplied by the total number of plantations of the two companies being merged. Then, bids must be increased in multiples equalling the number of plantations. As an example, if you’re merging two rice companies, one a size three and one a size 5, the starting big will be 8 times 20, so $160, and all bids must go up in multiples of 8, so $168, $176, $184, etc.
Any player who has an open slot can bid on this merger, which makes it a great way for players to steal opportunity from each other. The real challenge comes from how each player values the company. When someone wins the bid, they pay out the money to the now ex owners of the newly merged companies. In the above example, if the winning bid was $184, the player who had the company consisting of 3 rice plantations would get 3/8ths of the bid, so $69, and the player who owned the company consisting of 5 rice plantations would get the remaining $115. Obviously, winning a bid where you didn’t previously own one of the two companies proves to be a huge expense, but these companies also hold tremendous potential, as you’ll operate the whole thing during the next operation phase. This also has potential to be absolutely brutal, as when you pay out a huge sum of money to acquire a merged company, the next player can call a new merger on a new pair of companies, knowing that you are now cash poor.
The next big phase of the game is the operations phase, where each player chooses to operate one of their companies. Production companies produce one good for every plantation, then must sell as much as possible to cities around the board, earning money for each sale. Goods must travel by boat, and for every boat travel that happens, the owner of the shipping company gets $5 from the sale of that good. This is another potential for aggravating situations, as if a company can sell, it must sell, so if a player manages or orchestrate a lengthy chain of boats connecting a distant city to a plentiful plantation, it’s completely reasonable for the owner of the plantation to lose money on the sale as shipping fees drive the company into the red.
Splotter games are fairly infamous, and for good reason. Now, I’m not an expert on Splotter, I’ve only played 2 of their games, but what Food Chain Magnate and Indonesia share is a robust game system that tasks players with seeing through the opacity of the system to squeeze out a profit, and highly interactive gameplay. Everything every player does affects you in some way, and you need to be paying attention to what the other players can do, as if you’re not careful, someone will eat your lunch right out from under you. And in a game of Indonesia, a skilled player will absolutely steamroll novices.
Indonesia is a remarkable economic game. Published in 2006, playing it felt like a robust experience. Companies shifted ownership, all players had moments of being flush with cash, and being nearly destitute. None of us were experienced with the game, and we all grappled with how to play the game well. I suspect that none of us improving our expansion trait beyond the second level was a mistake, and we all struggled with how to value companies. It was fun to lock eyes with another player and perpetually increase the bid for the companies into nearly unfathomable heights. It was exciting when one player took over most of the shipping on the entire board for the final round, although it wasn’t enough to for that player to win. I can see Indonesia becoming one of our favourite economic games, as there were tones of player agency. Never did any of us feel like the game was being unfair, that something other than our own poor planning stymied our progress. We were the masters of our own destiny, the authors of our own demise.
It’s also surprisingly simple. As I said above, 8 pages of rules, and considering how deep and interesting the economy is in Indonesia, that’s a feat to be lauded. All the phases are pretty simple (except for mergers), and turns generally flow fairly quickly. Once our players had a plan in their heads, we didn’t stall on turns very often.
All that said, Indonesia is rough on the eyes. The cities are glass beads, the cards that tell each player where they can place a city at the start of each age are just little slips of paper. The plantation chits are too big for some of the small provinces, the lines on the map can be unclear in many places, and the font used on the map is nearly unreadable. The production of Indonesia leaves a lot to be desired. I’m no UI/UX designer, but there has to be so many ways that the user experience can be improved with Indonesia. Thankfully, a 3rd edition is on its way, with a fairly massive graphical overhaul. I can’t wait to see what the new edition looks like.
If you’ve played a Splotter game, you should kind of know what you’re getting into when you sit down to another one. A complex game of tight decisions, where mistakes are fatal. If you like Splotter games, you’ll probably like Indonesia. If you dislike what Splotter has done before, I doubt this will change your mind. As for me, I still prefer Food Chain Magnate. Part of that is surely familiarity, and the theme of fast food chains is infinitely more interesting in my estimation. My two gaming partners, on the other hand, said they would hands-down play Indonesia over Food Chain Magnate. Part of it is the novelty of a new system to explore and exploit, but another part of it is that it feels less punishing. The decisions you’re making are smaller in scope. The companies spawn in predetermined locations, you can’t shoot yourself in the foot too terribly, like a dumb restaurant placement in FCM does.
I enjoyed my play of Indonesia, and considering one of our gaming friends was absent during our play, we’ll likely play it again soon. I am curious to how different the game will feel with an extra player, and how our map will develop differently. There’s no scaling for player count, so I expect that we’ll all be poorer throughout the experience. Hopefully I find the replayability interesting, as there is no content discovery here. The only replayability comes from interacting with the game system, and forcing my opponents into less than ideal mergers and executing hostile takeovers.
