Gremlins, Inc. is an intense strategy board game in a steampunk world of corrupt capitalist gremlins who compete for money, political power and prestige. Steal resources, extort bribes, manipulate elections, lay traps, arrest other players: in this game, you have to be mean to win!
It’s in early access on Steam at the moment. Might be good. Designed by Alexey Bokulev, the guy behind Eador Genesis.
Wishlisted. I’m a sucker for digital board games, although they often end up not very good. The Witcher board game is terrible; Armello was disappointing. Small World 2 is pretty good.
For only $9.99, it’s gonna be hard to resist!
Useful info links:
Great illustrated Steam guide
Tutorial - Part 1: The Basics
Tutorial - Part 2: Player Avatar
DICETINY: The Lord of the Dice is another cool looking board/card game thingy. Gets released on Steam tomorrow (early access) for $5.
screenshots
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I am as well, but will wait for the proper release or at least until single player campaign is in qa
I agree with you on Witcher and Armello, but Small World 2, which I bought at release, bounced right off me. What do you like about it?
I picked up Gremlins, Inc. because I am weak. After several attempts at playing, I was going to write it off as confusing, cluttered, and too difficult to follow what other players are doing, when I had an Aha! moment last night when everything clicked and I was able to play a game to conclusion. The learning curve is huge, not helped by a confusing playing field:
The game is still very much in EA. There’s no single player campaign to speak of (you can play solo, but only by setting up a multiplayer game against nothing but bots), you can’t save mid-game (planned for the future, according to devs), the “tutorial” is just a series of help screens (although a real one is planned ads well), and the AI is (in the developer’s own words) stupid.
Still, once I figured out how to play, I enjoyed the game, but for me it’s going to stand or fall on the back of the single-player experience, since no async mode is planned. The developers say the $10 price point is going to hold at release, so there’s really no reason not to wait unless you just want to show support.
Anyone check out Dicetiny? For $5 I’ll probably give it a shot.
Lord Gek and I played a 3P game (with one AI) of Gremlins, Inc. this past weekend and really enjoyed it. The board was confusing at first, until I realized all of the Locations are on the perimeter, each with a loop/bypass layout (with the exception of two), and shortcuts across the board are mined with Bribe and Misfortune Spots (“Wanna shortcut across the board? Sure! But it’s gonna cost ya!”). And getting to the Astral Plane without the use of a card is just brutal, if your Bribe value is anything but zero.
The UI can only get better, but I think it’s pretty good at this stage of development. I especially like the log at the bottom of the screen, but overlap issues are present. Also, whenever a strategic decision is required, the player should always have access to the information needed to make that decision. So there needs to be a way to temporarily hide decision screens that block this access.
For those willing to invest the time in a real-time MP game, hit me up. I’m sure Lord Gek would join in, as well, especially on the weekends. A 4-6 game with humans would be a glorious cutthroat experience!
Info one might not know:
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[li]Holding CTRL shines sun beams down upon the player tokens
[/li][li]Partial move points on a card can be used to land on Locations (for example, a 6-MP card can be used to move one space onto your targeted Location), but not to land on Spots (for example, a 1-MP card must be used to move one space onto your targeted Spot).
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Eh…looks like Hearthstone and Culdcept Saga had a baby. Even though it’s only $5, I might wait for reviews.
Coming to the realization about the Locations being on the perimeter and learning how to make proper use of the Log were the two key points of my Aha! moment. Trying to find Locations on the map was driving me crazy. Decision screens (at least the ones I’ve seen so far) can be moved, which solves the blocking issue.
I’d be up for a short game this weekend - perhaps to 10 or 20 points. I can see this being a lot more fun with real people, given how big a part backstabbing plays.
It’s a faithful port of the board game, and I like the board game. It’s lighter than what I usually enjoy, but there is some meat there, and it plays quickly (usually not much more than an hour). The digital game has the bonus of being able to play a solo game in around 10 minutes or less. But yeah, if you don’t like the board game you won’t like the digital game either :)
And thanks to tgb and Mysterio for the Gremlins info. Tempted. If it looks like I’ll have time to play this weekend I might pick it up.
A little bit of gameplay for the Objects in Space game, inside an RPS article:
Morse. Makes you win the war by typing out Morse codes, but not just for ‘morse monkies’ :)
RPS article:
Thea: The Awakening seems worth a look:
rps stuff:
Indeed it does.
Just a bunch of free-ware curiosities, thanks to this RPS article:
Not tried them all yet, but i like Orchids to Dust (relaxing) and The Bomb Squad Academy (not relaxing) so far :)
Going to throw one out here- Legend of Dark Witch on Steam. $5. Mega man-style game with cute graphics. Horrible initial load time but otherwise seems perfectly fine.
can you raise your pinky? (surely, or it is not a proper sim for the discerning tea drinker)
Yep, A controls the pinky finger.
