Compania (2026)

⭐ 3/5 ⭐

🧑‍🧒 10 +

👥 1 - 6 Player

⏳ 60 - 90 Mins

A game I backed for the beautiful art and to support Level99 Games, one of my favourite publishers. They specialise in anime-style games and have branched off to localising games from Japan like this one. Compania proved it was more than just pretty to look at with really slick gameplay and a great balance between strategic thinking and risk-taking.

Compania is a worker-placement game set in a fantasy steampunk city. As a director of your own development company, you’ll be trying to make the most money by deploying workers across different action spots to gather resources, develop buildings, and train up more workers for later turns.

The twist in Compania is that allocating your workers happens simultaneously, and completely in secret. You’ll use dice to represent where to place your workers, and how many to send. This is nothing new for board games, but in Compania you have to plan out where you’re sending your workers in secret, and only the player with the most workers on each spot will get to take the action. This is great for players who can handle suspense and change their plans on the fly. There’s nothing like taking a gamble and frantically looking around the table to see if you managed to get the resources you needed for your plans.

Compania isn’t completely cutthroat though. Each player who doesn’t have enough workers to carry out an action will get to keep them between rounds, making it easier for you to claim that spot later. Between rounds you’ll also have the chance to trade some of your hard-earned money for investments that give you more options. These investments, along with secret objectives and unique player powers, means that everyone will be playing a slightly different game each time.

The game’s theme is quite light (all the buildings and investments have thematic names but are mostly about gaining or spending resources), but the art is absolutely stunning. It strikes a balance between really evoking a beautiful anime setting, while still making sure everything is easy to read at a glance. There are quite a few symbols you’ll have to reference throughout the game, but each player’s shield, which you use to hide your worker deployments, has a handy reference with the most common ones and everything you can do on your turn. 

The only complaint I had about this game is that so many of your points can depend on the buildings you draw randomly from the deck. Buildings of the same type let you create expansions that allow you to score much higher points. There’s always at least one action on the board to draw more cards, so it is somewhat in your control, but it still feels unfair to have to dig and dig for the right cards when other players might just luck into matching buildings.

The worker placement genre is packed with hits, from beginner friendly titles like Flamecraft to heavy-hitters like Argent: The Consortium, from the same publisher as Compania. This one though is a great choice for any players who really care about beautiful art, for those trying to get new players into the genre, or for when you want a thinky game that won’t overstay its welcome.

Review by Nicky

Last Played: 03/05/26 / 3 Player / 90 minutes