That two part Exit game is pretty great. Enjoyed it a lot.
Wait, you already played it?
What other Exit games have you played, and where would you rank it?
For my money their Orient Express one is their best/ most interesting yet.
Yeah, it released in Germany a while ago, played it on New Year’s Eve. I thought it was really hard, but in a good way.I liked it even more than Orient Express, but I enjoyed all of them we played, really, with the castle one probably being the weakest, but maybe we had an off night. We skipped all of the Beginner ones. After a few games you kinda get into a groove with their riddles, but I am still in awe everytime at how creative they get.
edit: after a quick look I think we played all of the intermediate ones except the island and the ice station (sorry, don’t know the english names) and all three of the hardest (and the pharao one had to me the most memorable riddle).
The Pharaoh one was good, the Abandoned Cabin was as well, the others I’ve played (we’ve done 5-6 total) we’re fine. The final puzzle to the island was great as well.
As for the Pharaoh one, I suspect you are referring to the ‘blue original’ riddle? That one gave us fits. It was also our first one, so we didn’t appreciate how literal they were when they said ‘everything will be used’.
However the Orient Express is much more narrative than the others, I loved the bios and how we had to use them. It really shows their growth. Similarly the last two series of Unlock follow a similar arc. The dinosaur, the Wizard of Oz and the Scherezade ones in particular hit our triggers.
That was the riddle, yeah. I enjoyed the narrative elements in the Express too, though the two-parter is much more their usual fare. Will shop faround for the island game, then.
Usually when people mention “THAT riddle” in Pharaoh, they’re talking about THAT one. The bullshit one.
You know which one.
What have I got in my pocketses?
Tried Fog of Love today with my visiting friend. It’s a pretty neat little narrative game with just enough mechanical heft to guide play. Basically, you set up a pair of lightly sketched characters embarking on a romance. You get trait goals that are secret but which you want to work towards for the end of the game, an occupation you pick yourself (from a random selection), and features that you select about your partner’s character, the latter two of which establish a few basic personality tendencies for your character. Then you move through a handful of “Chapters” of a (broadly defined) story scenario playing Scenes that prompt both players or the other player to make choices about their reaction to a scene in ways that may modify their personality traits, modify Satisfaction (the “points” of the game) , and possibly have other effects. For the “Both Choose” prompts, certain pairings of choices will have additional effects. There can also be cards that modify the next played scene or have special one-off effects, Reactions that can be played in response to a particular trigger, Secrets that do one thing if they stay hidden and something else (usually a choice prompt) if revealed by another card, and so on. Finally, you have Destinies that you choose at the end to determine the future of your relationship - whether you stay in it, on what terms, and whether you “win” (are happy). It’s pretty clever and produced a bunch of hilarious story beats, even in the tutorial. I’m looking forward to checking out the more advanced scenarios.
Then we headed to the gaming gathering I’ve attended off and on for decades, and got to play Sentinels of the Multiverse with characters and an environment from the Cauldron fan expansion, against the official villain Deadline. He opened very aggressively and we were almost all sucking fumes by the end (actually, I and the host of the evening both got KOed the final villain turn) but we did manage to pull it out thanks to some clever card play.
Finally, we closed out the evening with a four player Suburbia run (with one expansion, whichever adds the edge tiles). Our host’s son, Thorin, led by a solid 20 points or thereabouts, but I pulled a respectable second place, which I thought was pretty good for my first time with the game. And I very much enjoyed having a heavy government town with a very very pretty cemetery and Office of Bureaucracy.
I remember seeing Parks on Kickstarter. I thought the artwork was gorgeous, but the gameplay didn’t seem all that great. How was it? Loved seeing all the pics.
First play, first win of Pax Imperium IV. Total play time of 7 hours. I enjoyed it. Will play again. Learned lots. Barely squeaked out the win.
That explains why y’all’s group picture looks like the kind of picture dudes take when they’ve been rescued from a shipwreck or collapsed coal mine: your faces are all saying “we survived!” :)
I love the idea of a grand game like Twilight Imperium, but I just don’t think I have it in me anymore to play one game for seven hours, especially when I know one or more of us poor sods will figure out early on he’s going to lose, so he just has to hang in there until someone else wins.
Any peak moments come to mind? Any cool reversals of fortune? Red seems to have a tough time of it there ast the end. Hearing about people’s epic sessions might have to be the closest I come to a seven-hour boardgame.
Also, what are those grey containers? Did they come with the game?
-Tom
Embarked on the Sword & Sorcery campaign with previously mentioned visiting friend (Maddy) today, with two characters each. Our party is Ecarus, the Knight of the White Rose; Samyria, the Druid; Morrigan, the Witch Hunter; and Auriel, the Sorceress, a completely different lineup than used when I first tried the game with my regular group, and Law-aligned instead of Chaos at that. I think we did a better job of keeping track of the minutiae than the first time around (since, for one thing, I had more of a grasp of the rules) but still forgot a few important things. Overall it seemed a bit more challenging since the move from 3 to 4 heroes passed a number of thresholds that bumped up difficulty, and Ecarus in particular struggled to do much damage (the one-handed weapons in the basic Stash kit are pretty underwhelming, especially when penalized by the story effect in the first part of the quest). On the other hand, he hardly took damage until late in the quest, and at that point 3/4ths of the party ended up dying over a couple of turns because that final encounter is a heck of a dustup. And he had the tank kit to be the main target over most of the game. And the other three characters were all quite solidly effective in their particular niches, just in different ways than the Runemaster, Necromancer, and Assassin we were rocking last time around. Definitely digging this game.
Tomorrow we’ll probably tackle quest 2.
I played the first scenario and it felt terribly generic. Peeking ahead through the remaining scenarios – I think there were only four? – it also seemed to suffer a lack of content. This was just the first box, though. Is there anything to recommend it over the bazillion other dungeon crawls? Does it require buying the next set to make it good?
-Tom
I’m not an expert by any means. Today’s run of the first scenario is my second session with the game and the previous one was also a run of the first scenario. There are a few more scenarios than you remember - seven total in the base box, but it’s probably fair to call it a tad light on them. I suspect the heavier emphasis on in-scenario story beats and (however minor) branching decision trees makes them more difficult to write than something out of, say, Descent.
As to a unique appeal…this is what I posted after the previous time I tried it. Some of this is probably comparable to other games in the genre that I haven’t played, but I obviously wouldn’t be able to tell you:
Maybe more will reveal itself as we proceed with the campaign.
we are playing not so seldom 6 hours for one game of chess in the chess club… Playing 7 hours does not sound bad if you enjoy yourself ;)
Amazing! Did you get to try out Jaws at all? I was surprisingly excited for Shark Island a few years ago (matched only by crushing disappointment when I actually played it later), but Jaws looks like it might be better.
Is Die Hard looking like it may be more than a thematic cash-in?
I didn’t get to play Jaws unfortunately but the components looked nice. I did get to play the first act of Die Hard. The board is cool in that it’s double sided and you unfold it more with each act. I played act one which is a quarter of the board where John is trying to find a gun, shoes, and a radio. The mechanics seemed interesting and I definitely want to play more.
I’m going to be doing some capsule overviews of the games I got to play on the podcast next week!
Thanks @Vesper for posting all those pictures!
I think I’m getting jaded, though, because none of those games look interesting to me at all.
I don’t understand why the back-of-the-box text for Jaws doesn’t just come out and call the shark by his proper name, though!
In Jaws , one player takes on the role of the killer shark off Amity Island, while the other 1-3 players take on the roles of Brody, Hooper and Quint to hunt the shark. Character and event cards define player abilities and create game actions for humans and the shark. Gameplay is divided into two acts — Amity Island and The Orca — to replicate the film’s story:
- In the Amity Island phase, the shark menaces swimmers and avoids capture. Other players attempt to pinpoint the shark’s location and save swimmers from shark attacks.
- In the Orca phase, played on the reverse side of the game board, Brody, Hooper and Quint are aboard the sinking ship engaging in a climactic battle against the shark, while using additional action and strategy cards to defend the Orca from targeted shark attacks.
If humans kill the shark, they win; if the shark attack on the Orca succeeds, the great white shark wins.
Grey containers are made by Folded space. To be fair we would have been done in under 4 hours but the host missed one critical rule: in a 4 player game you are supposed to doke out all 8 leader roles so 2 each. Not doing so doubles play time.