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!