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Corpse of Discovery
I don’t read comics, or at least that used to be the case. While I still don’t count myself an enthusiast, Mind MGMT, the inaugural title by Off the Page Games, introduced me to Matt Kindt’s series of the same name — and a wider world of comics than I had previously known existed. Harrow County, the imprint’s second effort, didn’t spark my affection quite so thoroughly, but that’s a tall bar to clear.
Now Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim are back at it. This time they’re tackling a brutal comic series by Chris Dingess and Matthew Roberts called Manifest Destiny. In a wise marketing move, Cormier and Lim have switched the title to Corps of Discovery — it’s pronounced “core,” lest the headline lead you astray — and mechanically, it’s one of the most enthralling cooperative games I’ve played in ages. I’m of two minds about it.
No County for Old Men
After I declared Mind MGMT my favorite game of 2021, the pressure must have been unbearable for Off the Page Games. All right, all right, I doubt they noticed. Still, Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim’s adaptation of Matt Kindt’s comic series was such a zinger that any follow-up would be swimming upriver.
Case in point, Harrow County: The Game of Gothic Conflict, co-designed by Cormier and Shad Miller as an adaptation of the comic series by Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook, which is on Kickstarter for the next two days — yes, I’m running behind — carries itself with an exerted air. It does so many things in a short span of time. Maybe it should have doubled down on two or three.
Ceci n’est pas un Jeu de Société
It says so right there on the side of the box for Mind MGMT: “The Game of Calm and Relaxation. Where everyone wins.” Given the portrait that adorns the cover, of a woman partially shrouded by flames and implements of murder, one gets the sense that maybe this game isn’t being entirely forthright with its advertising.
The evidence keeps piling on. Hidden messages. Sinister warnings. Visual references to René Magritte’s La Trahison des Images. Much like the reality- and expectation-bending comic book series by Matt Kindt, Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim’s version of Mind MGMT appears to be one thing only to soon reveal itself as something else. Before long, this state of constant metamorphosis proves to be the rule. You can barely hold it in place for all its writhing.
SPACE-BIFF! 