Blog Archives
The New Dog-Ears
Storyfold: Wildwoods isn’t the game I was expecting. It isn’t the story I was expecting. If we want to be a little more crass, it isn’t the product I was expecting, either.
Fetch-Building
To quote the Holy Bible, John D. Clair keeps trying to make fetch happen. That isn’t an insult. If anything, I admire the guy’s persistence. Unstoppable is his latest attempt to master the “deck-building but also you’re building the cards by sticking other cards into increasingly overstuffed sleeves” system that he kinda-sorted invented (provided we ignore Keith Baker’s Gloom), following up on Mystic Vale, Edge of Darkness, and Dead Reckoning. This one is a solitaire outing, and it’s the most expansive expression of Clair’s approach to card-layering yet.
Which isn’t to say it doesn’t have some pretty big hangups, unfortunately.
All Workworkwork and No Play
By the time my brain was being compressed like fine pasta out through my ears, my self-confidence had taken more than one impact and, although this may reveal too much about the ailing functions of my inner ear, I had suffered a few vertiginous moments that bordered on nausea.
This is Workworkwork, the latest effort from Blaž Gracar, the madman who gave us LOK and Abdec and All Is Bomb. Like the first pair of those titles, Workworkwork is a puzzle book, comb-bound and packaged with a transparent plastic sheet for doodling on with a dry-erase marker. Unlike your average sudoku or crossword, this is a necessity. There is no solving these puzzles on your first go. Instead, it takes practice, experimentation, and failure. So much failure.
How Was the Gameplay, Mrs. Lincoln?
I know it’s far removed from today, but the assassination of Abraham Lincoln makes me sad in a way that most historical events do not. Thanks to my father’s interest in the topic, the Civil War was my first real foray into both history and wargames, and the Gettysburg Address was the first speech I ever memorized. Not original for an American schoolkid, I know, but still.
There is some small upside: playing Wes Crawford and Ryan Heilman’s The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth, I had that extra motivation to nail the bastard. Some part of me approaches the subject reluctantly. It’s a game about the early history of American policing more than anything, staffed with military detectives and Pinkerton agents and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton pulling strings to put more federal cavalry under my command. Like the Civil War that had ended only five days before the traitor’s bullet found its mark, this is America’s Old Testament period, its belly fired with vengeance and fury. I know the problems. I have my hangups. And yet there is nothing I want more than to catch the assassin before he crosses some remote frontier.
Manifest Sudoku
Manifest Destiny, the sprawling, brutal comic by Chris Dingess, is a tough read. Pitched as an alt-history version of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, one where minotaurs and head-snatching pterodactyls pose as much of a threat to the survival of its battered Corps of Discovery as starvation or the weather, it’s both a rollicking adventure and a mouth-covering gasp at the westward roll of genocide. And if those elements don’t sound like they blend as smoothly as chocolate and peanut butter, you’d be right on the money.
But I’m not here to review the comic. Corps of Discovery: A Game Set in the World of Manifest Destiny is the third title from Off the Page Games, Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim’s follow-up to both Mind MGMT and Harrow County. As a game — and in terms of quality — it hobnobs more with the former than the latter, presenting one of the best exploration puzzles I’ve ever witnessed. As an adaptation of the comic, unfortunately, it leaves the tale only half-told.
Gastrotheism
There’s an old anthropological theory that religions naturally develop from polytheistic to monotheistic. Like many anthropological models, this one is outdated and hated by pretty much everybody. Religious folks dislike the theory because it implies their religion evolved over time; everybody else notes that there are plenty of modern polytheists, not to mention religions that defy the monotheist/polytheist rubric altogether. Anthropology: uniting theists and doubters since 1647!
Despite producing some rather bad science, the notion of a pantheon gradually winnowing itself down from a whole extended family to a singular daddy-god is the topic of Monotheism, a deck-in-hand card game designed by Frank Brown Cloud and illustrated by Jennie Plasterer. It’s delightfully unhinged.
Skyblivionrockmarsh
Way back in 2011, Todd Howard let it slip that Skyrim would have “unlimited dragons,” dragging surprised reactions from the internet. Don’t believe me? Here’s pre-People Make Games, pre-Shut Up & Sit Down Quintin Smith’s press release on the matter. It’s pleasingly sarcastic. Because, you know, “unlimited nouns” has always been the Elder Scrolls’ whole thing. This is the fantasy series that made volume its defining metric. Depth? Nah. Enjoyment? Get outta here. Kelvins? Only if you’re talking about Lord Kelvyn, the Redguard Knight of the True Horn. No, really. Like I said, unlimited nouns.
Which brings us to The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era, Chip Theory’s adaptation of not only Skyrim, not only Oblivion, not only Morrowind, not only those other ones nobody talks about anymore, but the whole dang universe with its boundless recreations, provided your recreational interests are limited to hoofing across fantasy landscapes and murdering fantasy gobbos. It comes with a bazillion components, weighs so much that it should have a team lift warning on the box, and costs as much as twenty-five burritos from my favorite local burrito place.
You heard that right. Despite my policy on the matter, this thing is so pricey that I think it warrants some discussion. First, though, I want to walk you through the shape of an average TES:BOTSE campaign.
Boss Cells
I don’t envy the creative team tasked with adapting Dead Cells to cardboard. The video game is all twitch reflexes and light-speed assaults — a state I’ve heard called “submission,” more about submerging oneself within a game’s flow than about responding to any specific stimulus — which isn’t exactly the most conducive mode for taking turns or planning ahead. How does a designer transpose a video game that’s about subordinating one’s consciousness to sheer reactivity into a medium that generally works the other way around?
For the most part, the answer is that Dead Cells: The Board Game doesn’t bother.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a living spring of talent behind this adaptation, a wundersquad that consists of Antoine Bauza (7 Wonders, Ghost Stories, Oltréé), Corentin Lebrat (Faraway, Draftosaurus), Ludovic Maublanc (Cyclades, Ca$n ‘n Gun$), and Théo Rivière (Sea Salt & Paper, The LOOP). For this collaboration, the squad approaches the original design like a fold-up snowflake, snipping around the edges of the video game for the stuff that’s easily ported to the game table and leaving the rest scattered on the carpet.
Don’t Know If It’s Day or Night
A lot has changed with Bernard Grzybowski’s Purple Haze since I examined it three years ago. As wargames go, the final product is more assured and polished, as one would expect, but also less burdened by the prototype try-hard attitude. I might even go so far as to call it one of the finest narrative wargames ever produced.
To explain why, you need to meet my squad.
A Mindful Rain
It’s been said many times before, but A Gentle Rain is not Kevin Wilson’s typical fare. Highly abstract, both in setting and objective, and showcasing a willingness to sidestep victory conditions altogether — a willingness that Wilson doesn’t wholly indulge in, although he gets close — this has all the makings of a pet project. For all that, it’s beautifully crafted and clearly wants to communicate something, even if that something is fuzzier around the edges than most board games manage.
I didn’t get it. The first time I played it, that is.
SPACE-BIFF! 