Riviera Rivals

What is Riviera Rivals?

Riviera Rivals is a strategy card game built around a single ambition: assembling the most irresistible resort on the riviera. It borrows the rhythm of a tabletop board game rather than a deck-builder, with quick turns, one shared market and scoring that punishes a player who only stares at their own engine.

A match runs sixteen rounds and takes roughly fifteen minutes. The opening decision shapes everything after it: a brand that grants a lasting edge, such as cheaper rooms or stronger nightly rates, and one of six locations, each drawn in its own 3D scenery and each carrying its own catch. From there the resort grows in 3D as cards are drafted, with guests arriving to fill it.

Play works against one to three bots set to Easy, Normal or Hard, or online against a friend through a four-letter room code. There is no account to create, no advertising, and the game is free to play in the browser. A guided tutorial, a full rulebook and hover tooltips sit alongside an autosave that fires after every move.

How to play

Every round follows the same three-beat structure. It opens with the Riviera News: the season determines which guests are travelling, weather and random events shift what pays, and every fourth round announces a fresh milestone goal. Reading that bulletin before touching the market is the difference between a plan and a pile of cards.

Then comes the draft. Room, amenity and special cards sit face up in one shared row, and players pick in snake order with last place choosing first, taking up to four cards each. Unbought cards drop in price, so holding back is a genuine gamble, and every card taken is a card denied to everyone else at the table.

Check-out closes the round. A single pool of guests arrives and, for each guest type, the best-reviewed resort fills first, which is why half a star of separation matters. Cheap rooms chase the Most Guests race, premium rooms chase Most Revenue, and both pay out every round. Amenity sets, Landmarks and milestone goals supply the remaining points.

Specials bend the rules: promoting the resort, taking a loan, poaching staff from a rival or sending a food critic to a competitor's door. After sixteen rounds, the highest victory point total wins.

Controls

Riviera Rivals runs inside a browser window, and decisions are made by choosing from the cards on offer rather than steering anything in real time. The guided tutorial walks through a first round step by step, and a full rulebook covers the rest for players who would rather learn the rules before the first draw.

Hover tooltips explain individual cards without leaving the table, which keeps the shared market readable once amenity sets and specials start to pile up. Because the resort is rendered in 3D as it grows, the board itself doubles as a status report on rooms, amenities and the guests checking in.

Autosave fires after every move, so an interrupted sixteen-round match does not cost the progress already banked. The rulebook and the tutorial can be revisited whenever a scoring wrinkle needs clearing up, and the tooltips mean no card has to be memorised before it is drafted.

Tips for your first run

The opening sixteen rounds are mostly about reading the table rather than hoarding cards. A few habits make the first matches noticeably smoother.

• Treat the brand as a direction rather than a bonus: cheaper rooms point toward the Most Guests race, better nightly rates toward Most Revenue.
• Check the Riviera News before drafting, because the season decides which guest types are coming and therefore which rooms are worth taking.
• Denial is a real play. In snake order the last-place player picks first, so a card grabbed early is a card a rival cannot use.
• Watch the price row. Unbought cards get cheaper, but the card may be gone by the time it drops.
• Keep amenity sets and Landmarks in view, since they carry scoring beyond the two per-round races.
• Bank a milestone goal when it appears every four rounds instead of chasing it on the final turn.
• Specials are tempo: a food critic or a poached staff member can shake a rival's review lead.

Content and replayability

Riviera Rivals ships with eight room types, forty-four amenities of which eight are Landmarks, twenty specials and eleven guest types, spread across eight brands and six locations. The locations are Main Beach, Seaside Village, Private Cove, Volcano Island, the Boardwalk and the Marina, each with distinct 3D scenery and a distinct catch.

Variety comes from the round itself rather than a campaign: seasons, weather and random events change what pays every round, and a new milestone goal lands every four rounds. Because drafting is contested in snake order with last place picking first, the same deck plays differently depending on where a player sits at the table.

Opponents cover a wide range. One to three bots can be set to Easy, Normal or Hard, and those difficulty tiers were tuned across tens of thousands of simulated games. Online play connects two friends through a four-letter room code. A full match is sixteen rounds and about fifteen minutes, which makes it easy to fit several into one sitting.

Presentation and performance

Each of the six locations is built as its own 3D scenery, so the setting changes more than the name on the screen. The resort itself assembles in 3D while the match runs, and guests appear as they check in, giving a visual read on which rooms are filling and where the review score stands.

The project was made by one developer using React and three.js, and it runs as an HTML5 game inside the browser. Hover tooltips and the guided tutorial keep the card text legible while the 3D board stays in view, which matters once the market row fills with amenities and specials.

Autosave after every move means the state of a sixteen-round match survives a reload. No account and no advertising stand between a new player and the Play button, and the same build is playable solo against bots or online with a friend.

Who should play it

Riviera Rivals suits players who like a board game's tension more than a card game's combo building. The whole design is about contested choices: one shared market, snake-order drafting with last place picking first, and a guest pool that fills by review ranking, so being half a star ahead of a neighbour is worth more than a clever engine nobody else is competing for.

The fifteen-minute match length makes it a good fit for short sessions, and the Easy, Normal and Hard bots give a solo player a ladder to climb without needing a second person online. Two friends who want a private match can use a four-letter room code.

Fans of tycoon themes will find the resort fantasy in the 3D build-out, with rooms, amenities and guests accumulating visibly. Players who prefer relaxing, low-pressure drafting still get the scoring races for Most Guests and Most Revenue every round, and the milestone goals keep each four-round block pointed somewhere.