Pocket Mars Review

This review originally appeared on the Polyhedron Collider website, but if you didn't read it there, you can now enjoy it here too!

Game: Pocket Mars

Designer: Michał Jagodziński

Artist: Jarosław Wajs

Publisher: Board & Dice

Player Count: 1 - 4

Runtime: 15 - 30 minutes

“Mars is there, waiting to be reached.” - Buzz Aldrin



Mars. The Red Planet. The Roman God of War has hung in the night sky capturing the imagination of man, and drawing the creative mind to it like gravity since it was first gazed upon. In the last few years, the fiction was left behind as science began to catch up, and we now know more about this baron and hostile planet than ever before. Yet, the more we know, it seems the more our imagination runs rampant and so the notion of the colonisation of Mars seeps into our consciousness, filling our screens, bookshelves and of course, our boardgames. It is in this vein that we explore Pocket Mars.

 

[caption id="attachment_2653" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Getting an even spread of your colonists is one of the methods of winning[/caption]

 

This is a fairly simple, quick, micro hand management game from those multi-use-card-aficionados at Board & Dice who have brought us SUPERHOT, Multiversum, and InBetween. Pocket Mars sits very comfortably in the mix with those games, which although all have very different themes and even mechanics, they all, to echo Mr Tudor (Mr Tudor Mr Tudor Mr Tudor), share a tonality that’s hard not to notice. So, if you like those previous games, just stop reading and go buy Pocket Mars, you’ll probably like it too. If, on the other hand, you want to know more about a game whose marketing campaign was based on growing potatoes in shit* then read on.

Pocket Mars pits up to four rival companies vying to be the first to establish a safe, successful, and secure colony on Mars. To do this you’ll need to transport your scientists from earth, via your shuttle to the Red Planet, and to one of the four pre-established buildings. Through the use of a series of project cards, you’ll upgrade the buildings to become more efficient and thus setting up the necessary infrastructure to support a mass colonisation. You’ll do this with a bunch of cards, some cubes and all within about 30 minutes. Which is pretty flippin’ impressive.

[caption id="attachment_2659" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Enter / Prize classic....[/caption]

Each player begins the game with a joke-poking named shuttle with one colonist aboard and six further colonists back on Earth. The five main buildings needed to conquer the barren red landscape are in situ, so all you need to do is get them working properly. Queue the Project Cards that will do just that. These cards can be used in one of two ways, from the two cards in your hand, or from the two face-down cards in front of you known as the Prep Module.

In short, this is a game of hand management and set collecting, you’ll want to shift cards from your hand - where they have a weaker, but more immediate action - I like to think of this as maintenance your colonists are making - to your Prep Module. From here you’ll play them against one of the buildings on Mars. This is the chunkier, multi-faceted action that you’ll need to do to shift colonists from your shuttle and into a building - I like to think of this as “Installing” you are putting new equipment into the building that it needs, thus one of your colonists needs to be there.

Now, this action makes up the bulk of the game, as the game ends when one player gets all of their colonists on to Mars, but it is also the most interesting process in the game. The Project cards are numbered (or ranked if you want to follow my analogy) from one to seven. You’ll install your card against the existing one (or the building itself), and, if your Project card has a higher score - thus a better upgrade you put your colonist in that building.

[caption id="attachment_2658" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Stark, austere graphic art with vibrant colours[/caption]

You’ll then get to trigger the card’s actual ability - the thing that your Project actually does, then; because, you used the building, the building’s ability also triggers. This happens even if the Project you installed is not as good as the previous version, like Windows 10, but these buildings don't use a Microsoft operating system, so it’s all good. The other, interesting, little used, action you can do that is very similar to this, is play a card from another player’s Prep Module. This doesn’t allow you to shift any colonists, and they get the card ability, but you get the building ability AND you get to stop them placing a colonist. It is very sneaky, and feels a little off theme, but is a very worthwhile action and adds a devious hint of player interaction.

So, what makes Pocket Mars interesting, different and worthy of your time, and/or money. Well, it’s because of what this game is really about, and that is area control. It just doesn’t really look like it, or rather, the bit that looks like area control - the cubes - isn’t the interesting area control bit of this game. Still with me?

[caption id="attachment_2652" align="alignnone" width="4032"] The Water Building allows you to easily recycle the project cards you don't want[/caption]

Pocket Mars is more about controlling the cost associated with the buildings, about planning and playing ahead. By inflating, or artificially lowering the cost against a building in one turn, and with the knowledge of what type of cards the other players have in their Prep Modules you can take advantage of this supply of information. What the card can do is only one small part of the information you need to be able to counter or block other players. What type of card and more importantly where that card is, is actually more important. And you can see all of this at a glance.

It is the almost perfect information that makes this game so quick, but not at the expense of strategy. To score well, you need to have an even spread of colonists across Mars, you’ll want to get some of them into the “office” of each building too. So, control the costs and you’ll control a piece of Mars, but really you need to control lots of different pieces at different times.

[caption id="attachment_2655" align="alignnone" width="4032"] I'd love to see little astronaut meeples, I understand why they are cubes, but I'd still like to see them...[/caption]

That’s not to say that this game isn’t without its flaws, and despite being a self-confessed Board & Dice fan, this game does fall particularly foul of a recurring ‘issue’ I have with their games, namely; abstraction. Theme and the implementation of the mechanics are abstracted from what they’re “meant to be”, this does make this game a little less accessible I find, and when introducing this game to people, as I have done so in this review, I feel I have to add the character and descriptions/context to actions. This is amplified by the condensed rulebook which is almost completely bereft of flavour, reducing this game of celestial colonisation down to little more than its bare bones. The austere un-named cards with their stark graphic ‘art’, the buildings are only named on the last page of the rulebook and Matt Damon is indistinguishable from his fellow scientists. All of this leads to a fairly abstract game of layering cards and shifting cubes. But...

[caption id="attachment_2656" align="alignnone" width="4032"] A mini space adventure[/caption]

But, all of that is okay when you step away from the telescope and look at what you have with a little bit of distance. You’ve got a very small, cheap, four-player game which has some interesting mechanics, choices and interactions. It even has a solo mode. It is a perfect little thinker of a game for lunch breaks, to travel with and for the damage, it’ll do to your wallet and game shelf this game provides a mini exploration to mars in half an hour. Pocket Mars may not be the slice of Mars game you’ve been waiting to try, but it is still a short, worthwhile game.

Disclaimer:  This review was based on a full priced retail edition paid for out of my own money from my own pocket.

*Just go watch the brilliant Martian and it will all make sense.

 

Review: Spirit Island

Game Name:	Spirit Island	Published Year:	2017
Game Publisher:	Greater Than Games	Player Scale:	1-4
Game Designer:	R. Eric Reuss	Run Time:	90 - 120 min

In a distant land, yet unexplored lays a beautiful Island where nature still rules. But with the ever-growing colonial powers reaching further at the end of the world it was a matter of time until they managed to find this place.

Welcome to Spirit Island!



In this coop game, each player will play as one spirit of the island representing the embodiment of nature, from the river, plants or thunder to the darkest beings. You’ll be helping the Dahan, the indigenous inhabitants of this Island, to get rid of the colonial settlers and prevent them to taint this paradise. It won’t be easy, and you’ll have to use your whole arsenal of powers to accomplish this.

How it plays?

Game mechanics are relatively simple to grasp. In every round, you’ll start with the growth phase, your spirits will grow progressively stronger as the game goes on. In this phase you’ve got different options depending on your spirit, but they usually end up in some combination of adding presence to the island, gaining energy, power cards or recovering your hand.



Then everybody will select at the same time the power cards that are going to be played this round.  Fast powers will get played next to no particular player order, followed by the invaders turn and finalising with the slow cards. This is where the game gets complex, there are so many strategies, combinations and combos to do that it can be a bit overwhelming on your first game, but this is the beauty of this game’s system. With simple mechanics it manages to get a brilliant card system that will make your brain hurt thinking the best move working together as a group because believe me, you won’t stand a chance if you don’t cooperate with each other.



Each spirit (There are a total of 8 spirits in the base game, 2 extra in the Branch and Claw expansion, and 2 extra available as a promo) has a starting deck of 4 powers each related to your spirit’s nature. Then throughout the game, you’ll get to increase your hand with new powers from a common pool. You have minor powers and major powers, for this you always get 4 cards, keep one and discard the other 3. This makes the game cycle through the deck at a good pace and you can always find something more useful for your spirit’s gameplay. For the major powers you’ll have to discard one of your other power cards, these ones are usually very powerful and will be more useful as the game advances. Also, each spirit has special rules, and innate powers printed on its board that get activated by certain elements.



The invaders follow simple rules, where they ravage, build and explore in this particular order. But you have knowledge of where this is going to happen with s couple of turns in advance. The way this works is, they explore in an unknown place, next turn they build in the terrains they’ve explored and in the following turn they will ravage in those. So you will have to strategize around this.

Wherever they manage to ravage successfully it will place a blight, which hurts you and if these grow in number can be game over at some point. The game will end in victory depending on the fear level of the invaders, as it will change the victory conditions. In general, the more fear, the easier is to win. By increasing the invader’s fear, you’ll also get fear cards that will be very helpful to win the game. You will lose if blight reaches a certain level or the settlers have finished with the invasion and you haven't reached the victory conditions yet.

With the Branch and Claw expansion, you also add extra terrain effects (diseases, beasts, plants, …) plus the events that change the game a fair bit.



If this didn’t sound like enough content already, the game can be tweaked as you want with certain elements. You can add scenarios, which will change the objective for the game quite significantly, you can add invaders behaviours with different levels of difficulty and also you can add blight cards that will make your game unique once the island gets blighted.

Solo game

The game can be played with just one spirit, some people like it more playing multi-handed, but I have to say that I’ve enjoyed all my games with just one spirit. Some are more difficult depending on how the invaders expand as they start slow but gain inertia and become really powerful at the end, but you need to reach that end. Definitely makes for a good challenge every time and with so much variation not a single game will be the same. Otherwise, there is no real difference with the multiplayer game, as it scales really well. For these reasons is one of the most beloved games in the last few months in BGG's 1PG.

Opinion

I am really impressed with this game. I’ve heard people describing it as a mix of Mage Knight meets pandemic, not sure if I would compare it too much with Pandemic. This you get the same satisfying eureka moment when you find the perfect combo to devastate the invaders when all seems lost like Mage Knight has and I love about it, and the ever-growing invaders in your lands, the invasion can spin out of control quite easily like sometimes it happens in Pandemic. But the game definitely stands on its own.

Art is good, the map is not the prettiest, but it makes it really easy to spot everything once it starts getting crowded. Components are nice, and the card quality is good. Every spirit plays really different, and they all feel balanced to me, I was really impressed by that. Don’t get fooled by the colourful artwork, the game is heavy, strategic and will make your brain hurt to win, even in the lower difficulties. But is not unfair and always feels rewarding to win it.

I would recommend getting the Branch and Claw expansion if you like the game, the base game feels complete on its own, but it adds quite cool features to the game that I wouldn’t go back now and has two more spirits to play with! The game was part of a Kickstarter campaign but is easily found in retail (I bought it this way) and there will be another campaign for it later down this year. If you want the promo spirits it was recently in the BGG geekstore and can be bought in the designer's website, though it seems currently out of stock.

Pros: Rewarding gameplay (love the card system with the fast/slow powers), high variability and flexibility for tweaking the difficulty.

Cons: The game is more complex than it seems, this might be a problem for some people. If you suffer from analysis paralysis the game will get very long for you.

You may like: Mage Knight, Start Trek: Frontiers

What are you waiting for then, go get yourself a box full of deadly spirits!

 

Waggle Dance Review

In the realm of board game mechanics and their marriage to theme few games do so well as Waggle Dance, taking worker placement and applying it to a theme synonymous with hard work, with busy work, with lots of work. With this game, the worker placement mechanic has never been more at home. That is not to say that Waggle Dance is not the most thematically rich game you’ll ever play no, but one can not help but admire the simplicity and elegance of this pairing.

[caption id="attachment_2683" align="alignnone" width="1600"] This is how it all begins! Look how pretty, and neat and tidy it all is[/caption]

Game: Waggle Dance

Designer: Mike Nudd

Artist: Mateusz Szulik

Publisher: Grubblin Games

Player Count: 2 - 4

Runtime: 30 - 90 minutes

Waggle Dance is a term used in beekeeping to describe the moves a bee performs when returning from a bountiful trip out in search of nectar. Upon returning to the hive, said bee communicates through the method of dance the location of these wonderful flowers, allowing the other bees to further aid the hive in success. This game is not about interpretive dance, it’s about working really hard and really smart to make loads of honey.

Once the very beautiful array of low polygon art cards are laid out, running A - G, and colourful cubes of nectar are positioned and the exquisite dice are handed to up to four players you can set to work increasing your beehive, your workforce and ultimately making honey. Your worker bees are dice, and at the beginning of each day/turn you’ll roll them all, and then start to allocate them in turn. With the exception of the central six flowers, each action card has six available slots for workers to be assign, numbered one through six, meaning you can only assign your number two worker to the number two spot, but on any action.

[caption id="attachment_2682" align="alignnone" width="1600"] Whatever you roll, there is an opportunity to do some actions, you just have to get there early[/caption]

Alternatively, you can always place a worker on one of the six types of flower, again numbered one through six, however this time, it comes down to more of an area control thing, as the more bees you have on any one flower the more nectar you take, and the more you deprive your opponent bees.

Of course, you’ll want more bees, as more bees means more actions, more dice rolling, and as every gamer knows rolling more dice is better than rolling fewer. But, to get a new worker you first need to get your queen to lay an egg and then you to incubate and nurture that egg in order for it to hatch, not only that, but an egg takes up a lot of space in your hive, very valuable space needed for honey. Managing your hive is an extremely important part of this game, making your hive bigger is easy - providing there is space on that action card for one of your dice, getting an egg is easy, again assuming you can get one worker to that action.

[caption id="attachment_2684" align="alignnone" width="1600"] Already this hive is getting full, extra bees will help...I hope[/caption]

Hatching an egg, making honey or moving nectar around your hive are all slightly trickier actions as it requires not only you to roll a double; any double will do (they’re just like dreams that way), but then you have to allocate that double to that task instead of monopolising on some precious nectar. Yet converting nectar to honey is the whole aim of this game, and as should always be the case with great games, that should be easier said than done. Honey can only be produced when you have four types of the same nectar in the same honeycomb, making the whole process of collecting and organising the nectar, followed by turning it into honey not only a time consuming and laborious task but also very fitting.

Bear in mind though that each honeycomb of the hive can only support up to four pieces of nectar or one egg, and if you are only able to snag bits and pieces of nectar and not consolidate the types your hive will end up in a hodgepodge mess of colours and cubes. Further to this, once nectar has been converted into honey, the honeycomb can’t store anything so playing this game means you have to be diverse, you have to play the long game, having a lots of workers or a big hive are great, but only if they can be supported, and there's no point doing that if you’re not bringing in any of the much-needed nectar.

[caption id="attachment_2685" align="alignnone" width="1600"] Time to make some more honey![/caption]

Waggle Dance supplies choices hand over fist; with but a few cards and a few dice from the first turn to the last each turn you’ll be questioning not only what you will do, but how and when you’ll go about doing it. Since this game has perfect information you can see and try and gauge what your opponents will be doing, and that is part of the brilliant and beautiful puzzle Waggle Dance presents. One of the things I love most about this game is the move away from the “issue” normally presented by dice chucking games, luck, although there is still a degree of getting the dice you want when you want them, this is significantly mitigated by the fact that rolling a one in Waggle Dance is just as good a rolling a six. It is more of a question of the array of dice rather than any individual die roll. If you’ve seen this game and thought to yourself “I don’t really like dice games” then stop, look closer. This is a worker placement game with a great twist.

All of this choice does come with a sting in the tail however in the form of Analysis Paralysis, more so in the early turns, players can become overwhelmed by choices and figuring out what to do, when and how can be a little too much. As the game progresses though this does flatten out somewhat, yet the possibility for it is ever present in this type of game.

[caption id="attachment_2681" align="alignnone" width="1600"] I love the vibrant colour of this game, bring on the Summer![/caption]

Another thing you might be surprised to hear of though is the player interaction, not something terribly common in worker placement games, yet Waggle Dance does provide this too in the form of the Queen cards. These cards present special abilities ranging from getting a temporary worker bee, to being able to mix your nectar or to giving one of your opponent’s bees a bug so the call in sick (I know, hilarious right?). These Queen Cards can cause a little confusion, in a bid to make the game language neutral there is no text beyond the rule-sheet, which will need to be heavily referenced by all players until they are very familiar with what all these cards mean.

Now, let us not forget about how flipping beautiful this game looks. Just putting this game out on the table is an open invitation for summer to arrive, the vibrant colours, the minimalist low polygon art and the dice – true story, I played this at my FLGS one Saturday afternoon with my other half, as soon as she saw the dice she told me I had to buy the game, so I did. The pips are honeycombs, the one is a bee, they’re so bright they could easily be confused with sweets.

I do wish the Queen cards had text on them so they could be more easily understood, and I’d love to see a board or better yet a cloth/neoprene play mat for this game, mainly so I could play it in a beer garden at the height of summer and not have to worry about the wind blowing the cards away. Once you get past the AP, once you dive in and start making decisions and doing the work this game shines. The rules are slick and simple, roll dice, follow the order of cards, make honey. Everything else, all the magic and charm of this game is in the playing of it - as all great games should be.

Waggle Dance is my favourite worker placement game, beautiful, fun, and it scales perfectly with player count and game length, I know I’ll never have trouble getting it to the table!

Disclaimer:

This review was based on a full-priced retail copy of the game and was paid for out of my own money from my own pocket.

Review: Tao Long

Game: Tao Long: Way of the Dragon

Designer: Dox Lucchin, Pedro Latro

Publisher: Thundergryph Games

Artists: Dox Lucchin

Player count: 2 (also with a solo mode)

Runtime: 40 mins

[caption id="attachment_2634" align="alignnone" width="3480"] Using the teleport tunnels is a great way to escape[/caption]

This beautiful, low component abstract game spans across the most grandiose of themes, it is a battle for the very soul of the universe, pitting chaos against order, love against ambivalence, fire against water.  Ying versus Yang. On this battlefield you will command a mighty dragon, a dragon so vast should you somehow cast mortal eyes upon it, it will fill the horizon. How does one control such a creature? Why, with its soul, its Bagua.  Each dragon, the mirror of the other, fights desperately for its half of existence, for its fate is tied inexorably with its twin. Through raging bursts of flame, unrelenting jets of water, and the sheer might you will battle for supremacy for another epoch of man.

Pretty heavy stuff, huh?  You’re right, it is, but it’s actually just a beautiful, interesting abstract game steeped in Chinese mythology.  It is a game with a very different, and very interesting control mechanic, a game that, much like chess rewards repeated plays, of accumulated wisdom.  It looks very pretty, is small and compact but delivers a very solid, vexing punch well above what you may initially think.

[caption id="attachment_2633" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Although smaller, the white dragon is now more manoeuvrable[/caption]

And when I say vexing, I mean the really good, under our skin itch type of vexing that urges you to get this back to the table.

So, your dragon is made up of four tiles, one piece for the head and the remainder are the body, printed on both sides, one side showing a straight connection, and the other a bend in the body.  When you move, you’ll move the head and then fill up the gap from the tail end. This is a very satisfying method of movement which feels both very mechanical, and yet organic, much like the way a caterpillar moves it has that rolling, creeping sensation which feels very at home with the Chinese dragons.  

You’ll aim to move your dragon around the board, to put your opponent in range of a fire or water attack, and/or a bite attack.  Each section of the dragon has four hit points, and so as the game progresses at least one dragon will become smaller and smaller until finally the head is destroyed too.    

[caption id="attachment_2635" align="alignnone" width="4032"] The Bagau in full swing[/caption]

Now, in keeping with the tone game, that is literally how you move, the physical or Board of Human.   The control of that move is done on a separate mini board; the Bagua and it is, in my opinion, incredible.  Frustrating, but incredible.

The Bagua board, or the spirit realm, or in plain old English the User Interface is the traditional representation of the “eight symbols” that in Taoist cosmology represent the fundamental principles of reality.  (Remember it’s still an abstract game, but the Bagua is a fascinating area philosophy that is utterly worth your time reading up on).  In short, each position allows a type of movement for your dragon, and the opposites on the Bagua are rotationally opposite, so where Earth allows you to move horizontally, Heaven moves you vertically.  But you can’t just pick the movement, oh no, you use the Bagua Stones; counters in black and white. To make a move you collect all of the stones on any spot, and then in a clockwise motion deposit one on each subsequent space, with the last space being the move you actually make.

[caption id="attachment_2637" align="alignnone" width="4032"] Water is your health, and fire is your attack, however, water can also be used as an attack when there are water stones in the centre.[/caption]

This is a fantastic little puzzle all in itself.  Look at the board and you know what you want to do, in fact, you know where you want to go, how you want to attack and you can even take a pretty good guess as to how and what your opponent is going to do.  It is the orchestration of that plan, the manipulation of the Bagua board which is going to let you pull this off. It is the combination and the duality of these two boards which makes Tao Long such a good, interesting game.

Entering into “combat” it becomes far more engaging, far more tactical, as the aggressor you need to keep your opponent pinned down, but you need to keep out of range of a retaliation - not easy when your only four tiles long!  You’ll do this with not only the dragon itself and the obstacles present on your chosen map but on the Bagua. Thunder and Wind both grant a turn of the head and an additional move so you need to keep stones away from them, but equally Heaven and Earth grant double movement, which could lead to an escape.  You’ll be playing this game on two fronts and they do feel very much like a physical and mental a combat, that are both the same thing, but different.  

[caption id="attachment_2638" align="alignnone" width="4032"] When all else fails you can bite the other dragon[/caption]

The chase aspect of the game is hugely entertaining, to begin it is a lot of posturing, and gentle positioning, like two large carnivores, vying for control, in some ways it “feels” like chess, without actually being anything like it (oddly enough the opposite of Onitama, which is also a Chinese themed abstract game).  You’ll want to amass some fire stones before combat, as a fireball attack is efficient and brutal, and prevents you from getting drawn in too close for a counter-attack. This “phase” of the game really feels like a pre-battle sequence, who will break first and make the attack? How will the attack come? Teleport spots on the board can make a huge difference and can be executed with electric efficiency in the right player’s hands...and this is where we approach a stumbling block for this game.

Tao Long is very pretty, and the UI is very interesting, but it is so different it often takes players a little while to get used to it, and some of the iconography isn’t as intuitive as one would hope.  In every game I’ve had with a first timer they are still checking with me that, yes, Lake will allow you to turn your dragon’s head from vertical to horizontal- even towards the end of the game. Tao Long is also a game of accumulated wisdom, the more you play the better you will get by leaps and bounds, you’ll develop tactics and strategies which you can take between games, improve upon, hone and master.  In theory, this doesn’t bother me in the slightest, but in practice, it does limit who will play this game with me now, as the experience difference is a gulf that can be daunting and/or difficult to cross. I want to move onto the harder, more interesting modes and maps, but my opponents often aren’t ready or comfortable to do so.

[caption id="attachment_2640" align="alignnone" width="4032"] This map provides a great challenge and great fun[/caption]

The rulebook for Tao Long isn’t quite a streamlined as one might like either, it is chocked full of flavour, of quaint philosophical wisdoms, the descriptions of various moves are flowing with the “meaning” of the move, but this does get in the way a little bit (“little bit” in this instance is the very British code for ‘’a lot”). In my first game or two, I found that I was often turning to the rulebook to ensure everything I was learning and teaching was correct, but this backward referencing was slowed by all the bombastic, flowery text.  I found the page, the section I wanted but I had to skim through too much text to realise that yes, I was right or wrong.

Tao Long does a great job of encapsulating a battle, with posturing, positioning and a finally a chase and hard-fought battle.  Manoeuvring your opponent to be right where you want them when you want them isn’t easy but drawing the first blood is hugely satisfying.  Escaping an attack is equally exciting and fraught. The careful balance of the physical position of your dragon and the alignment of the Bagua stones presents a wonderful, complex puzzle that becomes more engaging and more rewarding with each play.  

[caption id="attachment_2636" align="alignnone" width="4032"] The Chase is on![/caption]

This game may not be for everyone though, the bar of accessibility is higher than it needs to be, especially for an abstract game such as this, and without frequent and sustainable opponents you may quickly find that your personal enjoyment is dampened by too many easy games.  Tao Long is a game that demands and deserves repeated plays, it was clearly designed to spend time on the table, not on the shelf. If nothing else this game is certainly worth a look, just because of the balance of the two boards and their intricate and clever link, and for around £20 it’s not too big a risk, at the very least you should certainly give the Tabletopia version a go.

Disclaimer:

This review was based on an Early Bird Retail Edition of the Kickstarter project that I
pre-ordered and paid for out of my own money from my own pocket.  Do I
regret not getting the deluxe edition, with the neoprene play mat,
wooden components and all the mini-expansions?
Yes.
Yes I do.

I know, I know, this song has been in your head ever since you read the word bombastic. You’re welcome.

Inbetween Review

Game: Inbetween

Designer: Adam Kwapiński

Publisher: Board & Dice

Artist: Seweryn Borkowski, et al

Player Count: 2

Runtime: 30 - 60 minutes

Upsideville is the quintessential little US town (probably somewhere in Maine), it has all the staples you’d expect of a good town, a decent High School, a great drive-thru, and your atypical friendly neighbourhood police sheriff. Yes, living in Upsideville is pretty great. Or at least it used to be, there is something else there now too. The veneer of the American dream is being slowly scratched away, eroded by some indeterminate malevolent force. A darkness, a Creature if you will, is warping, twisting and turning that white picket fence into a dark splinter of its former self. It’s happening to the Townsfolk too.

[caption id="attachment_2619" width="3647"] Full box art, front and back. It's all about the flipside[/caption]

If that sounds like Stranger Things the board game you’d be 99% right, you’d be a hair’s breadth away from being IP infringing right. If you love that show and love board games look no further (put down the Stranger Things Monopoly and step well away from that Eggo monstrosity). If you’ve not heard of or had time to binge watch that show, then you’ll be glad to hear that no prior knowledge of it is needed to fully enjoy this game - you’ll just notice all the little nods to it while you play if you are familiar.

[caption id="attachment_2621" width="4032"] Thanks to having 2 icons, Maggie is almost Secure...[/caption]

So, Inbetween; it’s a game of good versus evil, of the Townsfolk of Upsideville rallying against an insidious menace that is trying to destroy the very fabric of reality. On the flipside of that, it is a game of a Creature from another plane of existence, that is trying to reach through and conquer ours, and in doing so, it will pollute and twist our world to fit its own. And that is the key point in this game, the flipside, the other version, the duality, it rings out in theme and mechanics. It is a game of direct conflict, take that style mechanics and is ultimately a tug of war, not just for the town on the whole, but for the people that make it.

[caption id="attachment_2624" width="4032"] Everybody is just going about their daily lives as if nothing is wrong.[/caption]

The game starts with ten of the townsfolk, five in each dimension; Town and Creature - this does not mean that those individuals are safe or lost, far from it, it is simply their starting state; an Inbetween (see what they did there?). A player’s turn is denoted by the Activity Marker, a wooden cylinder where the ends indicate the player’s turn, it moves and flips at the end of each player’s turn, and it is really important, as sometimes, sometimes you’ll play out of sequence, depending on how the game progresses. On your turn, you’ll play a card from your hand, and matching the symbol on that card allows you to shift the Safety Marker one space. Each Townsperson has four spaces, four levels of safety, from Alert to Secure, or Nervous to Devoured. Getting three characters secured or devoured is one of the possible victory conditions.

[caption id="attachment_2618" width="4032"] When there is something very much going on, it is just a matter of time[/caption]

Alternatively, you can clone the symbol type on the card and add that to any Character; so I can make Rodney both a Sheriff type and a Community type - making him far easier to secure in subsequent turns. This is a really interesting, and clever way of balancing out the character mix.

[caption id="attachment_2622" width="3904"] With two icons, there are now more opportunities to Secure Rodney[/caption]

Now, when the Activity Marker is on any character where the Safety Marker is anywhere but the top space, it will trigger the character's ability. And these are really quite special, forming a large part of any strategy, and it is here that the twist comes, and it is this twist that makes this game for me. Firstly, the player whose dimension the Activity Marker is in gets to increase their (potentially game-ending) Awareness - which also grants a terrific one-shot ability for use at the beginning of the player’s turn. After this, the Character ability kicks in - regardless of whose turn it is. The effects vary from character to character, but they are all very worthwhile, and many a game I spent my time struggling to keep Timmy Guarded (spots 2 or 3) just so I can use his ability.

The combination of Activity Marker movement and character ability require a degree of planning, of orchestration, ensuring you have the cards and energy to dish out some much-needed damage to your opponent, or that they manipulate the game state to your advantage. These manoeuvres have a sense of a plot twist, or a major beat in the story you are unravelling.

Something I particularly appreciate in this game is duality, it seeps through from the theme into the mechanics, forming two very different player roles and styles. All the cards have multiple abilities, all the character cards are dual sided. Inbetween is a duel between two forces that are equally, and reflectively matched, but are different, it tricks you into thinking it is a classic Tug-of-War game, but that implies a fundamental equality between the two sides. The fairness in this game stems from the differences between to two roles, not their similarities. There is a subtle asymmetry to Inbetween making the two roles noticeably different, and interesting.

[caption id="attachment_2626" width="3224"] A birds-eye view of the game[/caption]

Inbetween utilizes multiple Game End/Victory Conditions which is something I love in my board games as it opens up gaming strategy and variability. Not only does this make each game potentially very different, but in a tug of war game, this system can result in some fantastic surprises. Rather splendidly, these conditions all work in tandem for at least the first half of the game, and depending upon how the game progresses you will often have at least two of the three options remaining open as viable victory methods, and it is, as I can personally attest to, very easy to switch between strategies and have your ass kicked.

I really like the art in this game, it would have been all too easy (and dangerous) to duplicate the Stranger Things pencil style artwork, instead Board & Dice call upon Seweryn Borkowski and gang to produce something that reminds me a lot of Todd McFarlane’s Spawn series - which is no bad thing at all! And the box! It has to be one of my favourites on the shelf, mainly because of how different it is - no logos, no text, not even the game name. Front and back are full art - and I love it.

[caption id="attachment_2627" width="3740"] This box really stands out on the shelf by how different it is[/caption]

One thing I would like to see tweaked, however; is the abstraction of the components, blue, red, and purple cubes look at odds within the theme and art style, and the little counters are unnamed which when playing takes you out of the game, more so for the Creature: “I’m going to play this little cloud thing, and Terrify Jamey.” Maybe not all players use all the in-game terminology all the time, but its absence means that I can’t. A very simple thing, but the lack of names, in a game which is otherwise very on point with its theme, stands out.

[caption id="attachment_2623" width="3576"] The Tokens of no names...[/caption]

Every turn is valuable, with each action that you do something you are also not doing something else. There are interesting choices in this game, and as the game progresses those choices become weightier. It encapsulates the tug-of-war rather brilliantly, with an attitude of it is better to win the game rather than Secure/Devour that character. It is a game of pivoting possibilities, where your luck or your tactics can change quickly, and with dynamic effect, but the game never feels out of control. It is a game that can be a little tricky, or maybe finickity to teach, as each Phase has sub-sections to it, and cards and actions have multiple ‘moving’ parts, but it is a game I feel really rewards repeated plays. Inbetween it is one of my favourite two-player experiences, giving me everything I want in a game in a very small package.

Disclaimer:

This review was based on a full priced retail edition that I pre-ordered and paid for out of my own money from my own pocket.