This one’s for Karl.
Not a lot of cooperate games feel cooperative to me.
We all win or lose together, sure; we are cooperating in the strictest sense. But if there's a sense of camaraderie, it's typically not a direct result of the mechanics or setting of the game itself.
But when I play Deep Rock Galactic, even with total strangers and without voice chat, I feel like I'm playing with friends. Or at least coworkers. And I will absolutely risk my life, and mission failure, in the name of never leaving a dwarf behind.
Space Infantry’s Registered Nurse
Space Infantry: Resurgence takes much from the original Space Infantry: the high difficulty; the great narrative; the simple-but-effective core system; all the ambiguities, typos, and errata. But one thing it left behind, thankfully, was the chit-pull system.
The Final Combinatorial Hour
When Arkham Horror: Final Hour begins, you've already lost. The ritual is done, the gates are open and vomiting out monsters, mass hysteria, dogs and cats living together, do you read Sutter Cane? All that.
As players, you are tasked with figuring out how to reverse the ritual. And like all good ritualistic, world-ending spells, this means collecting enough cards that match either of two unrevealed symbols on some tokens.
Stone Soup
When thinking about storytelling in gaming, I often think of the folk story about stone soup.
The designer provides the pot, the fire, the water, and drops in the stone to get it started. But the player is also on the hook for bringing their own ingredients and making this into a soup worth eating.
A Macabre Wrapper - Fear in Gaming
When the rest of the family is asleep, and I have a couple hours of quiet darkness alone, there are few things I love more than nestling into the couch and scaring the everlovingchrist out of myself with a scary videogame or movie. But in all of my boardgaming, there are very few, if any, experiences where I've genuinely felt fear.
Game Dynamics, Jim Croce, and Michael Bay
"And you can keep the dime."
From Jim Croce's Operator, I think this is one of the saddest lyrics in music.
Halloween Gaming
Halloween is probably my favorite holiday. Having always been interested in the macabre, Halloween affords me a month or so of that being expected. This year especially has been great, with Mindhunter and Stranger Things 2 hitting right at the perfect time, on top of the yearly traditions with my kids of Lonesome Ghosts and Witch Hazel, the Vince Guaraldi Trio, and Bing Crosby's take on Brom Bones.
The Probability of Killing Hitler
In Black Orchestra you attempt to kill Hitler. You spend the game collecting and moving items, managing cards, choosing a plot, attempting to get everything just so for your dice-based attempt at winning the game. But just how perfect does your plan need to be?
Turn Down a Bower, Lose for an Hour
Both of my dad’s parents are still alive, and they live in a retirement community that shares a driveway with me. So I get to see them quite a bit. And my kids, now nearing 4 and 5, have been lucky enough to get to know them. Nana and Papa, to them.
Overthinking Skills in the Outer Rim
Though I'm not sold yet on the idea that Star Wars: Outer Rim is a good game, I have had a couple fun-enough sessions. In more than one instance, players had the choice expending a resource in order to improve their chances of passing a skill test. And given the 4 unique sides of the 8-sided dice, and the way skill tests work, they were a bit at a loss of what exactly that resource would be worth.
So at the risk of everyone’s first reaction being "never tell me the odds," let's do exactly that.
Bumping the Lamp
Kristian Williams has a fantastic video discussing the aspects of blending live-action movie footage with animation, and why Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is maybe the best example of the art.
Game Distillation
If you're in to solo gaming at all, you've probably run across Morten Monrad Pedersen in one way or another. You may have read his insightful blog or played some of the solo variants he's created.
Has-Been Heroes and The Analog Equivalent
Of all the video games I currently enjoy, I would never have guessed that Has-Been Heroes would be the one taking over most of my limited game time. Not one to keep up with new releases (and there was no fanfare or even ad on the Xbox when it hit the digital shelves), it came out of nowhere has been my biggest gaming surprise in quite some time.
Badly Expressed
Stephen Fry once wrote: “A true thing badly expressed becomes a lie.” Readers of these posts, in the past, future, and at this precise moment in time, will be experienced with the proof of this theorem in regards to language, but I think the idea holds true when broadened to just about any other medium or craft. Including games.
The Jasper Effect
A curious thing happened when I released Until Dawn into the public’s hands. Players started playing poorly on purpose. Their backs to the wall, their shotguns empty, their cabin breached, they would look down at their faithful German Shepherd, teeth bared in anticipation of ripping some zombies to dusty shreds, and say “No, Jasper. Sit. Down. Stay.”
The Dreaded Grind
Most people who do any amount of videogaming will be familiar with the word "grind." Wikipedia defines it as "performing repetitive tasks for gameplay advantage." It's a contentious topic.
Overthinking Rhino Hero: Super Battle
I love to overthink simple mechanics, especially if they're a little outside of the typical die roll or card draw. Rhino Hero: Super Battle has an interesting little die roll-off system that I hadn't seen before. This is a quick and easy kids/family game, right, so why not ruin it by overthinking the hell out of it and doing some probability calculations.
Pick of the Litter 2017
Think about your favorite movies. The genre-defining movies. The movies that defined an era or pioneered a new technology. Think about the movies we still talk about a decade after their release. Think 2001: A Space Odyssey or Get Out.
Friction on Ice (Cool)
Friction is a term I've stolen from a friend to describe the parts of a game that unnecessarily burden playing it. It could be an ungodly terrible rulebook, forced repetitive component manipulation, overly picky and ultimately useless rules regarding card location, or even a bizarre VP schedule broken out by the area of the board the VP comes from rather than the player allowed to earn the VP in question.
Pick of the Litter 2016
It's usually around this time each year that I've finally had a chance to play all the new games that I picked up in 2016. There's still a few I haven't had the chance to really dive into yet, but it'll be a while before those get proper playtime. So let's take a look at 2016.