Me and my wife loved this game! We'll definitely keep it and show it to friends (once the quarantine is over :P)

As I mentioned in a previous comment, the rulebook doesn't cover some cases: Who starts first, where do straights start and end, what the value of suits or As are.  Also the first card that showed up (moon laser in the Savannah) didn't mention what a flush is and we had to look it up. I might as well mention a couple typos: dice->die (twice), the draw->they draw.

We had issues with cognitive load with two mechanics:

1) It was hard to remember checking for Drawn effects of new cards, especially when we have to check the continent matching and what the new card's defeat effect is. Perhaps just the trigger penalty is enough? The cognitive load issue was even bigger because it didn't happen every time, and it had the same place as useful abilities. I'd suggest either removing the Drawn effect, or move it to a different section of the card and make all cards have something (sometimes positive sometimes negative) to make it easier to remember to check the effect when drawn

2) Remembering to bring the die down was hard. We wanted to be doing fun stuff instead and we may have forgotten to bring it down once or twice, it was hard to tell if we had forgotten. We had to remember which player got the new card last time to calculate who gets it next and see if the die is at the right score. 

A way to reduce cognitive load is to link the new plot card to something else, that players do anyway or want to do. For example, you could place top 5 cards from the deck on the side, when that pile is over a new plot card comes and 5 more cards from the deck are placed on the side (ability card draws draw from the deck and not the new pile). Another solution would be to introduce 5 counters that go on top of cards when played, 'new recruits' could have an ability, eg they can't be discarded or injured, and when 5 counters are placed all counters are removed from cards and a new plot card comes. I'm sure you can figure out different solutions too.

Gameplay was pretty tight. 4-of-a-kind cards were especially difficult to deal with, though at least we knew that if a specific number was not in discard/injury/death it will eventually come. We managed to stay on top of things, the triggers were never too hurtful, we were always between 2-4 plot cards, and winning was decently easy in the end, but it always felt that things can go wrong. I would love to see increased difficulty rules!

We felt that the defeat conditions were pretty repetitive and not using the potential space. We'd love to see stuff like '5 even cards', '2 cards from each suit', '5 cards under 6' or '2 consecutive pairs' rather than more and more flushes and 4 of a kinds.

Overall, excellent work Robin, you found a great way to use a standard poker deck in making a small PnP game that has an amazing playing experience and has great variety and replayability.

EDIT: Fun fact, I realized I had no poker deck around, but I used a Tichu deck which worked just fine :)

It’s quite remarkable what a single sheet of rules provided as a game experience. Of all the games on offer, this was our favorite. And, possibly related, the easiest to get into.

We’ll start with our critiques:

We played on Hell Mode the first go round because we triggered newly revealed cards if they matched other continents on the board. Not sure if this needs a clarification or if that was just us not paying close enough attention.

We also found ourselves losing track of turning the die counter quite often. Since a turn is so fast, it’s easy to forget this step. I think we erred on the side of caution multiple times and cheated ourselves out of a turn here and there. Would a simple tracker be better? Play a card, push a token down/around a track?

Some of the verbiage felt wonky. If a player reveals a plot card (the die counter goes to 0), are they still the active player if a plot card refers to this? Or is it the player who is about to play a card? This is sort of a limbo on certain plot card trigger effects.

When “every player draws one card”, the active player gets kind of a bum deal. Does this mean they draw beyond the hand limit of 4 or do they just draw a card and ignore the ‘end turn’ step? Only confusion is certain plot cards mention being able to have more than 4 cards and others don’t.

Finally, and this may just be us, but we never used a single ability.

The good:

The sense of danger and escalation is spot on. Doctor discord feels really threatening!

The rewards for completing plot cards felt good. Often we found ourselves discussing the benefits of those on the table, sometimes making risky moves to make something ‘better’ happen. Were it not for social distancing, we would have been high-fiving each other. A lot.

The injure / kill piles are a fantastic mechanism. However, are we allowed to look at this stacks during the game? We saw it as looking at our “agents’ files” so we used that information to help us along. If this is part of the mechanism, include a clarification of whether or not players can look through their dead or injured.

Very little to print and cut. And the fact that it’s played with a standard deck of cards (something most folks have laying around) is amazing. If folks are familiar with poker terminology, this game is a snap to learn. Maybe think about including clarifications on all plot cards (some have it) just to ensure your player base is as broad as it can be.

In short, we wanted to play this again right away, even after winning our second (non-Hell-Mode) play. It’s really great!

Cheers!

Assembled and will play later today. Some rules questions:

1) Straight is 1-2-...-K? 1-2-...-K-1? 2-...-K-1?

2) What's the value for face cards? 10?

3) There can be any number of plot cards on the table, right? Can go to 4, 5 or more if you're doing badly? What happens if we do really well and theoretically complete all plot cards?

This is fun to play and easy to learn!

I really like the way the plots escalate, and making these poker hands without being able to communicate the specifics is a fun challenge.

I definitely think the information on the cards could be presented more clearly, but all the ideas were still communicated. Representing the hands with a set of symbols could make it easier, especially because when sitting around a table, only one person can read a card at a time. One way to simplify (if that is a goal of yours) could be making all the "Triggered" effects the same for each card, so players know to do this set of things when any card is triggered. The "Triggered" effects could even be continent specific and printed on the "Advance Plot" cards. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the specific effects, they really helped amp up the tension.

My other note is that this game seemed easy to win, and the loss condition for the "Plot" deck seemed somewhat arbitrary. Maybe you could use some sort of tracker, and every time you pull an "Advance Plot" card, players push that tracker one step towards losing.

Overall a good time with a fun theme!

My crew and I have enjoyed checking this game out. It was easy to assemble, learn, and play. The theme is cool and some of the flavor text on the cards is hilarious! (Exploding Pandas and Laser Penguins in Madagascar come to mind!) 

It would be cool to see a little more integration of the theme with the mechanics. For example maybe a custom 52 card deck with icons/symbols that would tie in to the spy-theme. 

Good stuff!

Co-op yatzee designed with your favorite novelty poker deck you’ve been saving for that special occasion in mind.

This:

• Use a dice to keep track of how many turns

Could say

• Use your coolest-looking dice to keep track

or

• Number a fancy box’s sides 1-6 to keep track

or

• Use a favorite pop-up book to keep track of

without losing face.

This game does a thing. It then looks around at the world. It sees the world is better for the thing it has done. It’s still doing things today. It carries on. This is a fine game.

This game’s plot cards have too many words and not enough icons of the stuff you will be reading (and asking each other) more than once throughout the game. A 3-by-3 table grid and a single “ex. defeat” instead of instructions to defeat would go a long way to improving the plot cards’ Information-Relation Effectiveness and ease-of-use, like this: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CnB0-mlbC7d28DU64l3YVsWsVxU296YH

Hi Robin, my wife and I played your game tonight. We had a great time and really enjoyed it! We thought the theme was super fun and creative. We also loved how accessible it was, most of your components were things that we had already in our house. My wife loves set collection card games, especially Phase 10, so she loved this game. I sent you my notes and thoughts concerning your game mechanics and game play via twitter (I was not sure how to just message you on itch).