Blog Archives
Shoot the Moongha
With a title like Moongha Invaders: Mad Scientists and Atomic Monsters Attack the Earth!, you know what you’re going to get. At least in general. You won’t be managing any trains, that’s for certain.
Steal My Heart
Your crew stands motionless, not daring to move, to breathe. The tumbler ticks beneath your fingertips, your heart pounding so loudly in your ears that you can hardly hear the dropping of the pins. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Your crew has circumvented the guards, crawled through service ducts, hacked the security system to bypass lasers and heat sensors. At long last, you deciphered the combination to the safe, pieced together from memos and computer logs throughout the bank offices.
The final pin slides into place. The door, a solid foot of clockwork steel and reinforced concrete suspended by hinges thicker than your demolition man’s biceps, swings outward with a whine. Your crew cranes their necks to get a peek inside.
Within, something begins to bark. Loudly and repeatedly. Down the hall, you can hear footsteps, coming fast.
“This is what the customer sent us to retrieve?” Rook says, bafflement evident in his voice. “A damn chihuahua?”
Over and Under
If there’s any one thing that sets the designs of Ryan Laukat apart, it’s the fact that nothing ever really “goes to hell.” Even when you’re fighting world-crushing titans in The Ancient World, they never quite get around to crushing the world. There are no Nazis to pilfer your 1930s loot or kidnap your significant other in Artifacts, Inc. Even warfare in Eight-Minute Empire represents minor setbacks rather than crushing routs. By and large, Laukat’s games are set in a bizzaro universe where optimism and progress rule the day.
Now, that might sound dull. I couldn’t blame you if it did. Because, sure, it’s conflict that drives our games, and a game without conflict hardly feels like a game at all. Which is why it’s such a relief that Laukat’s designs are brimming with conflict — it’s just that it’s the sort where nobody ever gets seriously hurt, where you’re racing to be the most optimistic and most industrious, where the goal is to have the most good things happen to you rather than avoiding the bad. It’s childlike, almost, if that didn’t feel like an underhanded insult. Innocent. Pure.
Above and Below might be the greatest exemplar of Laukat’s spirit of optimism thus far.
Choo Choo Island
Bad little boys are laid on the tracks,
— lashed in place with rusted old chains —
locomotives splitting clean as an axe,
when sent by grandma to the isle of trains.
That’s what old gran used to sing to me as a young child. Ever since, I’ve had a peculiar paranoia of islands packed with trains. Who put these evil trains on an island? Why are they so mean to lost children? Were these the little engines that couldn’t? I used to stay up nights pondering the answers to these questions. So when the card game version of Isle of Trains fell into my hands, it was a good four months before I got up the courage to play it. Turns out, it’s a perfectly pleasant hand-management game. Huh!
You’ve Got Me Couping Like a Baby
Way back last year, I highlighted a title that was pretty much my ideal filler game: Coup. Confrontation, deception, and bullying, all crammed into one fifteen-minute package. Glorious.
Well, now I’ve been given the opportunity to review it all over again, because Coup just got a mouthful of a sequel. Coup: Rebellion G54 they’re calling it, for some reason. And it’s totally blowing me away.
Doctor Congo, I Presume?
As a medium, board games tend to revolve around tried-and-true topics, uncontroversial subject matter like surviving a zombie apocalypse or building a medieval town. This is hardly surprising; with their focus on social interaction and optimal move-making, there isn’t often much room left over for heady discussion — say, of the obstacles facing a developing African nation. At best, the game will be scrutinized for casting its controversial setting as “play,” or perhaps even more damningly, for not focusing enough on the play. At worst, it could come across as downright ignorant or offensive.
DRCongo, the latest title from Ragnar Brothers, embraces the controversy. Not only is it set within the Democratic Republic of the Congo, casting its players as industrialists who collect diamonds, deploy peacekeepers to suppress insurgents, buy political offices, and get filthy rich extracting oil and minerals from the Congolese countryside, it also posits that its magnates are forces of benevolence, employing their wealth to bring about an era of stability. In essence, you will take part in some extremely spurious activities, but the end goal is surprisingly admirable.
If nothing else, DRCongo is hopelessly optimistic.
No Place Like Catacombs
At long last, the great gates that have obstructed your passage to Khrlot shudder open, axe-bitten oaken doors shrieking on their hinges. So stale is the air that the moisture of your mouth and nostrils is sucked dry in an instant. Beside you, Elani sighs noisily, flicking a glinting coin into the air and nabbing it just as quickly. Xoric runs his finger along the blade of his axe, testing its bite, and Varesh rummages through his spellbook, frowning deeply. Before you is the darkness of the final tomb obstructing your passage to Vasesak, the foul sorcerer of the catacombs beneath Stormtryne.
He will know your fury. You have vowed it.
One by one the braziers gutter to life. You are not alone down here — not that you expected to be. Long before you can make out their shifting outlines, you’re bombarded by a ghoulish cacophony, clacking pincers and the chattering jaws of Vasesak’s reanimated servants. To your side, Xoric tests his axe’s weight, giving it an exploratory swing through the air. Elani pockets her gold and licks her lips. Varesh begins muttering an incantation, flames licking at his fingertips.
And then you ram into the nearest skeleton with your forehead, bashing him to pieces, before rebounding off a pillar and smacking a troll onto his arse. “Good shot!” shouts Elani, following up your assault by smacking into the troll with her shoulder. You grumble a bit. After all, she just stole your kill.
Tiny Epic Review
The audacity of the Tiny Epic series has never been more pronounced. First they were proclaiming a kingdom both tiny and epic, then a battle. Now it’s the whole damn galaxy. Plural galaxies, even.
Then again, the upside is that Tiny Epic Galaxies is the best thing we’ve seen yet from Gamelyn Games, so maybe we’ll give those oxymorons a pass this once. This once.
Pyramids of Powah
I don’t often read about politics, pretty much because they’re boring and deflating, but the other day I found myself totally spellbound by the President’s recent State of the Union. In it, he was talking about “levels of contribution,” the idea that we have different things to offer to our society, and using himself as an example. I won’t bore you with the details — I’m sure you can find it online with a quick search — but the basics came down to him arguing that his personal lowest level of contribution costs a red gem but provides three victory points. Not very much at all. At the next level he requires an additional yellow gem but gives four back, of any color, which is a two-for-one return on our investment. Then at each successive level he could contribute something more; for example, a boost to the nation’s scientific community, then an increase to our magical capacity. But he would also consume more gems. Because gems don’t come easily, this isn’t always an easy decision, but in the end a nation that most carefully invests its gems is the one that rises to the top.
Best State of the Union ever. Politics finally make sense.
Has BattleCON Been Exceeded?
At first glance, Level 99’s forthcoming fighting game, Exceed, looks suspiciously similar to their flagship fighting game, BattleCON. Don’t believe me? Take a look:
SPACE-BIFF! 