At the beginning of the game, there is only a small fragment of the village in the center of the board, consisting of sections of an unfinished church, town hall, market, farm, quarry, and woodcutter's cabin. The village sections are tokens of various shapes depicting a road and a building that produces a specific resource. On their turn, each player can perform 2 actions in any order:
- Move the donkey
- Activate a worker
At the start, each player has one worker token and one donkey at their disposal. By activating a worker, you can move them to any number of sections connected by a road. Upon reaching the destination, the worker can build a new section of the village, build a road between sections, or activate a building. Resource sources such as sawmill, quarry, or farm provide a specific type of resource. Production buildings (for example, a windmill) allow you to process raw materials into goods. In the town hall, you can buy a blueprint for constructing a new section of the village or hire a new worker, and at the market, you can sell or purchase resources.
Donkeys are an important part of the game. Unlike workers, they can only move to one section per turn, but they are the ones who transport resources from one place to another. For example, you need to deliver boards to start building the church. Your worker moves to the woodcutter to activate them and obtain wood, but to get boards, the wood needs to be delivered to the sawmill. Raw materials can be moved to any adjacent section, but for them to go further, there must be your donkey on the adjacent section. Then you will be able to move the resources again.
The game ends when the church is built. After all, a village with a church can no longer be called "Hamlet." After that, the scoring phase begins, where victory points obtained for building village sections and producing resources are counted. The player with the most points is declared the winner!
Number of players: 1–4.
Game duration: from 60 to 90 minutes.
