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Hi! Alas, it was something we hand-wrote for that game. If I ever do a digital, shareable one (which I'd like to), I'll share it here!

For sure! 

What lovely comments - thank you so much! This deserves an in-depth reply, but I don't have that in me today - I'll just say, I wrote parts of the game listening to the same soundtrack, by Alberto Iglesias. So we share that! 

Wow! Thanks everyone for being so kind to our game - there was a moment in the development where the "more maps" element sort of got lost, but it came back with a vengeance! We received a lot of in-depth, insightful, constructive criticism for The Hanging Room, and it's been great to hear from you, so thanks so much :) I hope you'll have more news of our game soon :) 

Hah, is that you? I remember The Service, I looked at it a while back! I really will have to try it someday! 

Also funny you mention the Firebrands system: last year, for Mapemounde, Flavio and I were working on a Firebrands-esque spy game, but didn't manage to pull it together in time. So we just had to come back with a spy game this year! It was a bit of a different project though - the idea was to play it over a map of europe, with each minigame taking place in a different city, in a different time, slowly building the story of two spies chasing each other for years. Very Smiley vs Karla, again, but from a different angle :) 

Hi Lari, thanks so much for your comments - it's great to see that another fan of the genre got what we were going for. I'm sure there's much we can tighten and smooth out both in terms of explaining, and in terms of actual procedures, and Flavio and I are eager to develop this some more. I was surprised by how difficult it is to explain even banal procedures when they include interacting physically with the maps and components, and while I did my best  there's still much to do. I'm looking forward  to  adding examples, and maybe some schematics - I really think they could help! 

I know my Co-designer Flavio has been reading your game and wants to submit an evaluation - he's much more of a boardgame expert than I am so we felt that he could give a proper analysis :) Really cool to see different takes on the genre in the same Jam! 

Ciao Daniele, grazie dei commenti! 

Riguardo all'ispirazione, decisamente fra i due che menzioni siamo piu' vicini a "I tre giorni del Condor". In termini cinematografici, ci sono parecchi film tratti direttamente da romanzi di LeCarré: il mio preferito, e quello che rende al meglio l'idea che avevamo del gioco, e' Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (In Italiano La Talpa), del 2011, con Gary Oldman. Al di la' della "ricerca" sul genere, lo stra-consiglio proprio come film, e' eccezionale per me. 

Riguardo la fluidita' del gioco, di sicuro c'e' molto da testare, e ci saranno aggiustamenti da fare. Posso dire che non sono abituato a scrivere giochi che si concentrano su procedure "fisiche" come interagire con una mappa, disporre index cards, e simili, e ho trovato eccezionalmente difficile spiegarle in maniera chiara. Ci sono vari passaggi che mi sembrano intuitivi e semplici all'atto pratico, ma che hanno richiesto una spiegazione complicata. Ancora non so se questo significa che sono effettivamente semplici e intuitivi, e sono io a non saper scrivere, o se significa che in realta' sono piu' complessi di come me li immagino. Servira' che qualcuno che non sono io provi a giocarlo, per scoprirlo :) 

E' interessante il tuo punto sull'avere piu' partite "collegate", e ammetto che ancora non mi ero posto il problema. Di base, penso sia un gioco piu' adatto ad una one-shot: se guardi ai finali, e al materiale di ispirazione, sono storie che raramente "finiscono bene". Pero' si potrebbero avere delle partite collegate in maniera meno diretta, magari riproponendo temi, elementi di sfondo, e solo alcuni dei personaggi. Vale la pena pensarci un po', e scrivere un paragrafo in merito a un certo punto. 

Riguardo alle vignette, abbiamo scelto (per ora) di non organizzare la mappa in maniera cronologica per lasciare molto spazio a una narrazione non-lineare, in cui i personaggi svelano man mano le azioni che hanno compiuto, saltando avanti e indietro quando serve (ad esempio, per rivelare che un personaggio ne aveva pedinato un altro quando si rivela qualcosa).  C'e' di sicuro un po' il rischio che le narrazioni si ingarbuglino, e sta anche ai giocatori tenere le cose in fila. Probabilmente ci vorra' qualche aggiustamento, o anche solo qualche consiglio su come usare al meglio queste procedure. 

(leggo ora i tuoi commenti riguardo alla tua ispirazione per l'immaginario fantascientifico-ma-non-troppo, che hai lasciato nelle altre discussioni: non le avevo lette prima di fare la mia valutazione per evitare groupthink)

Un ottimo lavoro, Iacopo! 

Ho apprezzato molto l'idea di usare il lato "coperto" dei post-it per stabilire territori inesplorati, da svelare man mano; davvero un'ottima scelta. Anche usare i post-it "pescati" come risorse per le frasi rituali, o quelli bianchi per aggiungere nuove idee alla mappa, e' una soluzione semplice ma efficace. Ben fatto!  

Se dovessi fare uno sforzo a muovere una critica, penso che potrebbe essere interessante avere delle procedure che usino in maniera un po' di piu' l'albero genealogico, che al momento mi sembra meno "centrale" della mappa della valle. 

A livello di colore, apprezzo la decisione di ambientare il gioco nello spazio (ambientarlo nel periodo dei pionieri del West avrebbe sollevato una serie di problemi storici abbastanza spinosi da risolvere), anche se, forse proprio per questo, mi viene da pensare che si potrebbe spingere sull'elemento fantascientifico un po' piu' forte, nella descrizione degli ambienti e delle risorse. 

No need to apologise, and you didn't sound disparaging! The discussions so far have been interesting in showing me what people expect when they see cards used in a game - and as with any expectations, I deviate from them at my peril :) I decided to explain at length because it helps me visualise things; sorry, I used you to think out loud! 

This shows that we need to think about how we use cards, and how we explain their use - it may well remain just what it is, of course, but if it does it will be deliberate. 

Questo gioco mi ha colpito. Il tono e' accattivante e ben veicolato, e le procedure sono chiare e interessanti. Mi piace l'uso delle frasi rituali, e il ruolo di Due Neuroni sembra molto divertente! Complimenti anche per la stesura del gioco, che e' chiara, ben strutturata, e facile da seguire. 

Ho un paio di domande: 

• Un giocatore puo' decidere di uccidere un servitore usato da un altro giocatore? E se succede, come si  procede? Non mi pare di aver visto spiegazioni della cosa. (Forse, mi viene da dire, potrebbe essere interessante non avere servitori assegnati in maniera fissa, ma lasciare che i personaggi "saltino" da un servitore all'altro in un turbinio di piani sanguinari e mal congegnati;
• Se ho capito bene, Arrivano quelli forti... pone il Signore del Male e il Paladino del Bene sotto il controllo del giocatore che ha il ruolo di Servitore, ma viene attivata dal giocatore che ha il ruolo della Sventura. E' voluto? e se si', perche' se posso chiedere? 

Se posso muovere una critica, il finale rischia di "sgonfiare" un po' la premessa: in particolare, se ho capito bene, si guardano i risultati sulle index cards collettivamente, e si ottiene una indicazione che vale per tutti. Dalla premessa, mi sarei aspettato che solo uno, forse, si potesse salvare. Bello pero' lo spunto dei finali "divergenti".

Inoltre, penso che il gioco avrebbe bisogno di qualche supporto in piu' per riproporre davvero l'atmosfera da Grande azienda, ad esempio dando spunti di scena piu' direttamente ispirati a quel tipo di ambiente. Mi immagino situazioni in cui il Signore del Male affibia compiti inutili e complicati ai servitori, o in cui cerca qualcuno da punire per qualcosa che e' andato storto. 

Al netto di queste due critiche, pero', resta un gioco dal tono tragicomico e grottesco, che penso possa funzionare e far divertire al tavolo. 

Come ultima nota, apprezzo molto l'inclusione di una meccanica di sicurezza, bravo! 

What you do is, you mark down the rank and suit of a card near the element that allowed you to draw it (so an element of the mission you approached, or one of your own relationships you revealed). When you play a card take some big decisive action or reveal something, you need to narrate how the element connected to that card was involved in you taking that action or finding out.  

So there isn't any general requirement, say "you can only use a hearts card for an action that centers around seduction", or anything like that. But there's a specific requirement, focused on your game and what you already have introduced: the cards require you to reincorporate elements that have already been discussed at the table. 

So, say you have 2 cards in your hand: one is the 8 of hearts, one is the 6 of spade. You drew the 8 of hearts when you approached the prison your busted agent (also one of the characters, the Casualty) was being held in, by bribing one of the guards. You drew the 6 of spades when you revealed that you and the Planner, your mission head, have been lovers in the past. 

Now you want to do something big, let's say, check if the Casualty's claim that he escaped on his own from the prison is true, or if he's lying. 

To do so you have to use one of your cards. When you play it, you need to incorporate the related element: so you may say how you talked to the bribed guard, and play the 8 of hearts; or you may invent something about how your relationship with the Planner helped you in this, and play the 6 of spades. 

This helps making your story a bit tighter (instead of generating a lot of leads and only actually playing out a few), and also helps creating the tangled knots of relationships and rivalries you often find in the stories we're trying to emulate. It is, effectively, a labeling system - but a deliberate one. I don't quite see that as not using the cards, but ymmv of course :)

We also use the 4 Aces to quickly identify the operation critical elements on the chart, so all players remember them. But all dynamics and interactions are exactly the same; simply, the game pre-determines what card you'll obtain if you do an approach action centered on one of those elements. 

This is an interesting board game idea - reminds me of a few video games I've tried, and I think it could be fun to see in play. I also really like the idea of having different evolutionary trees for different players. 

The game looks pretty simple and quite funny; I'm not a sharp enough analyst of board games to get a sense if it's rightly balanced and the various mechanisms intersect nicely just from reading it, admittedly.  As it is, it maybe looks a bit too linear, but further iterations can also add complexity if necessary. 

As it is, the game's text is a bit confusing; I had to refer back and forth a couple times to get a good idea of the flow of play. The explanation themselves are quite clear, but the text's order is not super helpful: the initial description of the flow of one turn is a bit difficult to understand because the reader doesn't yet know what most of those terms mean in this context. Still, nothing that a good round of editing can't fix. 

Thanks for the comments! Indeed, I think the game may be more intuitive to play with a corkboard than laying flat on a tabletop - and of course you can play online using graph notes sites or Miro, I have no idea why I didn't actively specify it in the text. 

We'll definitely take a look at the role of cards, and may give the Blackjack part a go, though I'm not sure the game *needs* anything like a chance-driven resolution system. As a small note, we do use suit and rank, to refer cards back to specific elements on the maps, so that players will be forced to reincorporate previously appeared elements in their narration. 

I'm also very excited to develop more mission types and expand that section - Flavio's idea to make it modular is really cool! 

(btw, I appreciate the points about print-and-play layout and copy checks raised by other reviewers, and I agree with them; as it were, I didn't raise them in my review because I consider a Jam submission to be a preview/first draft, but they're good points!)

Recallers is striking both for the inspiration that moves it, and for the care that was put in turning that inspiration into a game - the language, the graphics, and the many lovely easter eggs hidden throughout. 

Play procedures are streamlined, and simple - the focus is really more in what the prompts and questions add to the shared imagined space at the table, and of course in what players bring themselves. That said, they're clear, well explained and seem very functional. I like the way the guidebook is broken down so that it can be read during play, presenting information when it's needed. I also really liked the option of either giving out pre-written text to read aloud, or a summary to guide people who want to ad-lib it. It's also useful to have a summary of the procedures on the game map - and neat to have it in the Legend! 

After reading it through once, I only had one outstanding question, but checking back I quickly found the answer; I'd defintely feel confident bringing this game to the table. 

I think the game's tone is its strongest asset: the premise, the way play is slowly ushered in, and the prompts on the character and memory cards all serve to kindle and capture a real sense of childlike wonder. The prompts on memory cards will strike on actual childhood memory for many players, I believe - I know they did it for me. At the same time, the questions asked by the cards really help reflect on the paracosm imagery and bring something more to it. 

The way the game introduces, navigates and, in cases, excludes more troubling content - like conflict, sadness or difficulty - is also very smart. While I love playing intense games that confront dark themes heads on,  Recallers thrives on a different tone, and makes deliberate, conscious choices to help preserve that. Conflict and sadness are not entirely excised away either, but they're introducted in very nuanced, thematically appropriate ways. 

This is very much a game where the concept of "magic circle" applies, and I can see it creating a really special space and atmosphere at the table. 

Hey Sam, thank you for your comments! It's useful to see what folks didn't find clear, or clear enough: we were figuring things out as we wrote it, and had limited time (and word count) to do rewrites and more examples, so we'll try to address all these in a future version. I'm really glad you liked the tone and think it worked, so thanks for that! Also yes, the modular mission structure is a great touch that my co-designer Flavio thought of, and we're eager to expand on it in new versions! 

I'm going to answer to a few of your specific questions or points - not as rebuttals (all your criticism is very fair) but just to help outline how the game should work, in case you end up trying it before we do an updated version :) 

- In terms of what motivates players, it should indeed be the characters' motivations: I thought of them as player agendas, expressed as in-character roleplaying notes. We can probably emphasize that. It's true there isn't a particular mechanical payoff at this stage, but the game is very light in terms of actual "mechanics" and crunch, so it's a bit difficult to hang things on that. We've been thinking of connecting the motivations to the order in which players pick their epilogue, but I was not super convinced it was thematically spot on.  It's a note we have for playtest. 

- You're not the first reviewer who raises the role and functioning of the cards, so we probably should have been more clear about that in our writing: essentially, the cards work as tokens, nothing more. You get a card when you Approach or Reveal your own relationships, you spend a card when you Act, or when you Reveal anothers' relationship, lie or motivation. The other thing is, you write the card's rank and suit on a map element, and have to reincorporate that element in your narration when you spend that card to do something. This is a way to keep things a bit tighter in terms of storytelling, and create the tangled webs of secrets and relations that you see in spy novels. We picked cards because we felt they fit the aesthetic more than tokens, because they're common in almost all households, because you can refer individual cards to map elements... and ultimately, because we like cards. There's a version of this game in our heads where secrets are created and revealed by essentially playing blackjack, but the maths for that are convoluted and we didn't think we could figure out something playable by the jam's time frame. 

- We didn't want to put a hard time limit on vignettes, despite the need to keep them brief; but we've included a Question that other players can ask to signal "get to a point". 

- I agree that some of these interactions are a bit difficult to visualise from just the text. It was certainly difficult to find ways to explain them in writing! Hopefully they'll still be pretty intuitive at the table. I think  for a future version I want to write in examples for each procedure, and sharpen the language. Maybe put in some charts. 

Thanks again! 

Hi Vetetio! Thanks for the comments. You're right, some of the interactions at the table are quite convoluted and explaining them in written form isn't super easy; we certainly want to provide a summary of the rules and many more examples in future version. As it is, we were already over the word limit so we weren't able to, unfortunately. 

You're spot on in thinking about flashbacks in a movie! We wanted the feeling you get in a LeCarré novel of slowly piecing things together and figuring out what really happened. 

There isn't a "conflict mechanic" per se: you just need to have a card in your hand, and play it. Any card will do, and there's no comparing card for higher numbers. Cards are just a way to keep track of resources: you get resources by adding something to the story (through approaching or revealing a relationship), then you spend those resources to make a different contribution that has a big, lasting impact (acting or revealing other secrets). 

Glad you like the epilogues! It's heavily inspired by one of our favorite games, Psi*Run, but the finer points of how it's implemented here (like the reverse turn order) are Flavio's doing :) 

Hi Jay! Sorry for the long wait for a reply. Thanks for the answers, all very useful. Re:typos, I see the game is getting printed already, but if you think you may, for example, want to update the pdf I can send you a list of what i found via DM.

Re: the play aids we made, it was a sheet helping us remember the available rituals. It gave us the ritual's name, what is it meant to do/feel/convey, and the starting ritual phrase. Given this was a oneshot, it helped us remember that rituals were a part of the game, and remember what specific rituals may serve the scene and how to start them - otherwise we feared we may forget.  

In hindsight, I think having the exact same thing for the Setting Elements (maybe 4 columns with name, themes, "pick up when" and "put down when) would have been very useful, too. 

Ours was a sheet scribbled in pencil, nothing nice I'm afraid - but I'd definitely say it helped us play and made the game more approachable/accessible.  

Ping!

Hey! Sorry for the wait - I found a way to schedule a game of Sleepaway with some friends so I thought I'd try it first! Btw, we had a blast and I'm in love with the game. A couple questions: 

- When rituals ask you to destroy a Minor Character card, we assumed that the character dies in the process. Is this correct, or could poor Maximilian have survived? 

- On that note, the progession of NPC deaths (animals > adults > campers)only applied to the lindworm's cards, right? or must it be respected in all other circumstances as well? For example, in our Crossing the Waves ritual it made sense for one of the campers to be a stowaway on our boat, so his was the card we sacrificed. No animals or adult npc had been killed so far. Was this correct? 

- During the rituals, we kept roleplaying as normal, but we were only using the ritual's available moves, and we were driving play towards those. Is this the correct way to play them? (I initially thought they may play a bit more turn-based, like a minigame in The King Is Dead, but we found a more natural flow)

Other questions I had became clearer in play. 

I also spotted a couple typos/oversights, would it be helpful to flag them?

Also, there's a handout/ref sheet that we prepared on the fly (with pen and paper) that would be useful to play the game - would a suggestion on that be welcome? 

Hi! This looks incredibly cool and is blowing me away, but there's a couple questions I have about some mechanics/procedures. Is this the best place to ask them?