Sunset Over Water Review

Those of us who lack the always enviable skill of artistry, especially that skill of painting can rejoice, finally, that there is now an alternative to colour-by-numbers and those adult colouring books (which failed my expectation on the adult front) with Sunset Over Water, a lightweight, quick game of painting landscape masterpieces and selling them off.

Warning: This review was written with a thesaurus close at hand, primarily used for synonyms of charming and delightful, because, well, Sunset Over Water is both charming and delightful. Indeed, you will be enchanted by the simplicity of the rules, and you’ll find the artwork presented on the landscape cards to be quite enchanting, but there is more to this game than meets the eye, in fact, you’ll have a very jolly, if not somewhat twee and bohemian time playing this little gem.



For this game, you need not a beret, paintbrush, easel or pallet, just your eight little action cards and your colour matched lazy-arsed, yet fetching artist meeple, posed sitting down, staring off into space not really doing anything.

Twenty-five landscape cards are arranged in a five by five grid, a number of art studios (one more than there are players) advertise for specific commissions, and then there are the typically artistic daily goals to be attempted. Now, before you start playing the game take a moment to stop and smell the roses-look at this tremendous and beautiful artwork, then consider the very accessible, easily understandable and yet utterly understated graphics present on the top left of each card. Sunset Over Water is a simple, beautiful and graceful set collection game, that wants you to take your time with it, to enjoy each turn and minute spent playing.



Each turn you’ll draw three of your action cards, select one and once all players are ready you’ll reveal that chosen card. A neat aspect here is that the two you rejected are placed at the bottom of the deck, in the order of your choosing, meaning they will reoccur in a later turn, or as they are amusingly referred to in this game, days, making the game six days long. These action cards dictate the time of the day you’ll awaken (turn order), which direction you’ll hike with a canvas under the arm, and how productive you’ll be by the number of landscapes you'll paint. These cards all have typically varying limitations such as an early start but not much movement and only one painting, against sleeping until noon and still managing to paint three lovely landscapes.

The simplicity of these choices and the scope for error are engagingly juxtaposed, you’re all working towards the same commissions, you can all see the same possibilities, your previous positioning in the play space, the cards you declined for later use all come together in a fascinating mixing pot. And those days fly by, the actions, once chosen are rapid with commissions flying out at a sometimes-alarming rate-particularly for the artist that had a lie-in.



Sunset Over Water does apply a soothing balm for the last player though, that although may not feel like much at the time (each Daily goal is worth but a lowly 2 prestige points) these soon stack up. Awarded for the player to last perform an action, such as move horizontally, or to end in a corner: always the last player tough. This catch-up mechanic does feel very, well, mechanical and so stands out a little from the otherwise delightful and unobtrusive rule set but is a necessary system within the game.

The captivating artwork that I have gushed about all through this review, is, however, not beyond critique; the one simple flaw being its duplication. On the one hand, I can appreciate that sixty unique cards would have had an impact on the price, but there is a small pang of disappointment often accompanied by an audible “Oh” when the same landscape artwork occurs on adjacent cards. It’s like going to the sandwich fridge at the shop, seeing it fully stocked but then realising it has only Tuna Cucumber and Egg Mayo available - yes, they’re sandwiches, and yes, they’ll do the job, but one cannot help but be a little dissatisfied, and left wanting just a little bit more; like a coronation chicken, or maybe something with pickle.



Sunset Over Water also sports a solo mode, which I was pleased to see in a game that is about a very solitary pursuit, and happier still to find it an equally absorbing puzzle - this mode introduces a vexing variability to the available commissions by way of the alarm clock system used in the multiplayer, and Ranger Stations which cannot be painted but are one of the few ways to replace the vacant slots from previously painted landscapes.

This pleasingly minimalistic set-up from simple, yet considered insert makes Sunset Over Water very quick and easy to set up, and more importantly, to refresh - which given the brevity of this game is, I think, is a huge part of its appeal. This game is very light, offering fun and interesting choices in small doses. I cannot help but feel the similarity between this and Splendor, not that this is a contender to that game’s shelf space, but it feels like a relative to that modern classic. There is little in common mechanically, really but there is that sense of familiarity between them.



A game about painting pictures, should, and in this case, does, have artwork at its very fore - making the game hugely accessible and I really wouldn’t be surprised to see this box soon gracing the shelves of a Waterstones or Borders near you. It certainly wouldn’t be out of place in the gift shop of an art museum either, albeit a more forward-thinking one. It is light, quick fun, with enough allure to make it a welcome visitor to my gaming table again and again. With a theme and art that really is alluring, this game can be introduced and enjoyed by new or veteran gamers, young or old.

This review first appeared on Polyhedron Collider.

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

The Awakening Review

It will intrigue you, it will puzzle you, it will move you. There’s a good chance of goosebumps, of fist pumps, of “Oh, course!”s and “I should have known”’s. The Awakening is far from your usual ‘Escape Room’ style games, for one thing, you are trapped not in a room or a building, your path to escape is not barred by doors or locks, no instead you are trapped inside the mind of a comatose girl. Your daughter in fact. The Awakening differs from other games of this genre as it’s not simply about solving first one puzzle and then another to fanfare when the door final swings open. It’s about telling a story. Of being part of that story. The plight of Sam and his daughter, Lizzy, isn’t a bolted-on theme, rather it is the driving force in this game. You won’t be just escaping a manufactured, puzzling room, you’ll be rescuing your daughter.

Game: Escape Tales: The Awakening

Designer: Jakub Caban, Matt Dembek, Bartosz Idzikowski

Publisher: Board & Dice

Artist: Magdalena Klepacz

Player Count: 1 - 4

Runtime: 20 – 180 minutes



Players are collectively Sam, a widower whose only child and last link to his late wife now lies in a strange and unexplained coma. Everything the doctors and specialist have tried has been for nought so now, out of choices Sam, makes one for himself and delves into the arcane. It is here that the game, well, at least the tutorial begins. Not every game can teach the rules as you play as well as it is executed here, there’s lots of reading, or scene setting and flavour with rules interspersed but all done so unobtrusively and for an experienced gamer it all kind of just makes sense.



Trust me, just download the app to your mobile, set the different types of cards out on the table and put the tokens all in easy reach, take a sip of your drink and in a sombre voice start reading…

In short, you have several action tokens, these you’ll use to cover spots on the reference card after you’ve collectively decided which part of the room you are going to investigate. By 'investigate' I mean to turn to the corresponding page/section in the storybook and read the text there. The story text is concise without being austere, it’s emotive without being overly flowery and perhaps most importantly it is focused. Everything you do; be it solving puzzles and riddles on the app, placing these abstract blue tokens on the cards, you are reminded at each and every turn why you are doing this.



Throughout the game, you’ll be asked to fish for cards from the deck, these cards come and go, some will be items, some will be enlargements of things in the room so you can see/read more easily, some will be ‘things’ that you’ll meet, many of them form part of the puzzles you’ll have to solve. And, oh the glorious, boggling, brain burning puzzles you’ll have to solve. That’s why you’re reading this review, The Awakening is still “an escape room game” after all.



These puzzles come in all manner, shape and size, many, if not all, will have proper names (which clearly, I don’t know). Once you’ve collected a card bearing one of the puzzle icons you’ll unlock your phone and have a little look. The app will tell you which cards you need to attempt the puzzle, and once you have them you can begin. There are riddles, code breaking, (the dreaded) algebra, labyrinths, rotational space visual puzzles…and they are just the ones I can “name” from the demo copy. This is where the cooperative element comes in, where this game shines at involving all the players, of creating an engaging social interaction. More people around the table means more grey matter, more ways of thinking and ultimately more fun.



Naturally, with puzzles comes some frustration, there will be things you are good at and enjoy, and then there will be areas that you are less good at, things that are a struggle-not the good type of self-rewarding struggle. From the few I’ve solved I can see them slowly ramping up in difficulty and complexity and I have little doubt that further down the line, deeper in the story they will become more difficult still.

These puzzles create wonderful moments of inner and outer conflict, as for some you’ll end up fetching a piece of paper and a pen to start scribbling stuff down, you’ll attribute values and reasonings before finally punching in the answer! It’s no good. You’ll look at one another, someone will say “Did you forget to carry the one?” and awkwardly laugh. Finally, you’ll submit and ask the app for a hint. Yes, these are puzzles, and yes this is a game, but more than that The Awakening is a story first and last. It wants you to progress, it wants you to move forward to explore, engage and ultimately finish the story.



Some people won’t take a hint (but isn’t that true of life too), they’ll need to work it out themselves and that’s cool, but it may be tiresome for those around the table that just don’t have any interest in solving an algebraic puzzle (not that I have anything against algebra). So, I’d say it’s important to make sure everyone is on the same page before the game starts.

Important to note about this game/story is that it will change with replaying it. It has a choose-your-own-adventure storybook with it, and you’ll get little choices along the way, there will be big choices too all of which come together to shape your experience. Depending on what you explore and in which order, it will change your story, I have no idea how all these mini-narrative strings come together in the end but I want to, no, I need to find out, there are nine rooms in total, and in each game, you’ll only ever see seven of them, there will always be cards left in the deck that you don’t get to see. Like a good book or movie, I feel The Awakening will call me back to replay, to re-explore and re-experience it.



There were lots of mini-wins for us in this game, we won when I noticed this one detail that helped with the order of the numbers. We won again when we connected ‘this’ and ‘that’ to open another puzzle. I felt the win slowly rise as we got closer and closer to solving the labyrinth. We won too as the story progressed, leading our version of Sam down a specific path. The Awakening blurs the lines between game, puzzle, and story, giving me just enough of everything to keep me at the table.

 

Nimble Review

This review first appeared on Polyhedron Collider.

Nimble is a game that will present you with neither interesting nor agonising choices. It will not test your resolve, or your ability to read a bluff in a friend's face. It will—as the name may hint at—test your reactions, your nimbleness if you will.

Game: Nimble

Designer: Peter Jurgensen

Publisher: Pegasus Speil

Artist: Christian Schupp

Player Count: 2 - 4

Runtime: 1 – 5 minutes

The rules and gameplay are very simple; all you have to do is draw a card from the top of your player deck, briefly place it on your discard pile and then place it on one of the central piles, where you will match the frame of your card to the circle of one of the central cards.

The first person to burn through their deck wins, if they haven’t made any mistakes that is.

That’s it. That’s the entire game mechanics.

You may think it sounds a lot like snap, and you’re halfway right, it does have that feel of snap but the good part of snap, all the excitement without the boring waiting. In Nimble, the game progresses as fast as the players, once someone says “Go” you do just that. If you can’t find a match you put the card in your discard and draw again. Another player beats you to the central deck, forcing a change and you have to start your frantic search all over again.

The game is about quick decisions, quick reactions and even quicker recognition. I find myself holding my breath playing, focusing all my attention on the cards, forcing my eyes to only look at one part of the card in my hand and one part of the card on the central piles, it’s here that the game tricks you.

Frame to circle

Frame to circle.

It’s simple. Say it with me now,

“Frame to circle”

So why can’t you get it right, why that moment of hesitation, that moment of second-guessing. You know what a frame is, you know its cream. And you know what a circle is, just look for a cream circle on one of the piles in front of you. Why is that so hard? It’s not as if the circle is hidden somewhere, but it does feel like it, that one cream coloured circle in a sea of pastel colours – some of which will be cream.

Playing this there will be mutterings of “redredredredredredredredred” and “purplepurplepurplepurplepurple” like your extras in a TV show and you’ll do it just to keep focused. I say it feels like the exciting parts of snap because there is a simple pure delight in finding your match quickly. That thrill of getting three cards on the bounce down, down and down all to the dismay of your opponents that stop their colour-chanting-mantra to groan.

Although there is an almost self-elimination in this game, you can’t sit back with your laurel wreath waiting for everyone to cheer your victory. No, because even when you’ve burnt through your deck and are out, there is no guarantee you’ve won. When any one player runs out of cards (including the discard pile) this causes the game to immediately end. However, now each of the card stacks are checked for errors, should the supposed “winner” be found to have ballsed-up, they are disqualified and the player with the smallest remain stack of cards wins. There is beauty in this too; a tension as each card is drawn (in reverse order) and is slapped down on the table. Now that the pressure is off everyone joins in:

Blue
Cream
Red
Purple
Ohhhhh!

Stringing the cards together, the errors are easy to spot and the erroneous card is easily matched to its player by means of its colour coded back.

And that’s why there is the second-guessing, why there is that hesitation during the frantic gameplay; one wrong move now will cost the entire game. How long do you risk checking? Do you trust your eyes enough, are you saying the colour of the frame right now or the circle of the card in your hand. You’d better check again.

With a game that is so dependent on colour, there is the rather obvious consideration of accessibility in regards to forms of colour blindness but the publishers here have you covered in a charming way. Each of the six card colours is used to depict a different classic story, where purple is War of the Worlds, the cream is Pinocchio and turquoise is Don Quixote. The good people at Spielfritte have, in fact, done a colour blind test of the game and to me at least it looks pretty good, but have a look yourself if you or someone you're likely to play with is colour blind.

It is hard for me to know how effective the storybook identification is, I know it looks pretty and some of the colours are intentionally 'close', causing difficulty and hesitation when slapping the cards down. For me, it was the turquoise/blue distinction, but I quite like it. It's all too easy to make a mistake in this game when playing at speed. And that's kind of the point.

It has many of the beats you would associate with a party game, just without the larger player count and that’s not a bad thing. We’ve been able to get a game in while someone is at the bar getting a round of drinks between “bigger” games. Nimble is a bridge or an aperitif in a game night, it’s a fun, family game; perfect for children. It’s light, it’s simple, and it’s a shot of cardboard childish delight that forces your attention and focus.

A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review

Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr - First Thoughts

“He has moments of lucidity, but mostly, the things he says come in fragments, I don’t think he even knows where he is. If we could piece together all these things he talks about, maybe he’d let go, and go peacefully.”

Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr from Hub Games was one of, if not, the hot ticket at this year’s UK Games Expo, and being lucky enough to sit down with the designer, Michael, to play some of the first scenario, it really isn’t very hard to see why.

[caption id="attachment_2845" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The choices are often simple, but morally complicated. The austere board with, at times, the graphic artwork really helps bring this story to life[/caption]

Firstly, this game breaks new ground in terms of how it handles its theme, and I think a large part of the hype around the game stemmed from that. In this game, player’s take on the roles of the primary carers attending to Billy in a hospital shortly after he has suffered a massive heart attack. All you know about him at the beginning of the game is that his name is Billy Kerr, he is dying, and you will be the last people to learn the story of his troubled life.

Throughout this co-op, worker placement game, players will have their nurse meeple assigned to one of the three shifts that make up each of Billy’s day; morning, afternoon and night. Once allocated the player has to decide how to treat Billy that day, some shifts will allow more choice than others, but it boils down to treat him physically, keeping him alive, or offering palliative care. This second option is again often split between talking to Billy and learning more about him or simply plumping his pillow so that you can gather your strength for the next crisis.

[caption id="attachment_2847" align="alignnone" width="1920"] At some point things will take a turn and start going badly for Billy, will you treat him, or finish his story so he can die in peace?[/caption]

As you talk to Billy you’ll draw Fragmented Memories, these will have a quote on one side, and come the end of the day, all players with them get to flip these cards to reveal black and white blurry snapshots of Billy’s life. These will form a jigsaw, a mosaic-like image that tells part of his story. Throughout the game you’ll have opportunities to access Vivid Memories, these form a sort of mini-game that is wonderfully thematic, where you’ll get a full colour, fully detailed version of one of your fragmented memories, which you’ll overlay in you patchwork story of Billy’s life to get a clearer idea of what happened to him.

There are other mechanics, which, in a full review, one might cover, but the important thing about Holding On is that although the mechanics are the thing that makes this game run, they are especially unobtrusive, allowing players to become immersed in this story first and game second.

[caption id="attachment_2844" align="alignnone" width="1920"] These wonderfully abstract memories allow you to build your own version of Billy's story[/caption]

Holding On is a sombre game, and make no mistake, Billy is dying, but his full, flavoured and yes, troubled life will reveal a game that is sure to be equally full of wonder. Speaking to Michael and Rory after my demo they told me that across all their playtests certain scenarios resonated with different people. Scenario eight has something interesting enough to stand out to many. Number ten is the end of what one can hope is an engaging and moving story, and I think it is here that this game really wins. The story, more so than the desire to win and beat the game, is what will drive and motivate people to play, and possibly replay; re-exploring Billy’s life, seeing it from new angles and with a new perspective.

This is a game of worker placement, where players will mechanically flip cards, read them, manage their workers and resources but at each and every turn you are present in the story you are constructing, from the art that depicts Billy’s pain to the austere medical backdrop and the lovingly detailed memory cards. Choices are not only weighted by what they will do to your turn, the round or the game, but also to the life of a dying man.

[caption id="attachment_2846" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The story lies at the heart of this game, even the board has a three-act structure[/caption]

This wonderfully immersive, engaging game will be released worldwide for Essen. If this sounds like your cup of tea, I’d speak to the folks at you FLGS to reserve one and make sure you get a copy.

I’m going to end this preview with this little tidbit:

Everything that happens in Billy’s life, everything is real. It’s all based on actual events from an array of people. The artwork featured on the cards, including things like graffiti, is all taken from real life locations and records. It is just a game, to you, but everything you see really happened to someone.

This review is based on a demo of the game played during the UK Games Expo 2018 ran by the publisher/designer.

This review was first seen on Polyhedron Collider but thanks for reading it again :)

 

Detective – First Thoughts Review

On Saturday 2nd June, at approximately 2 pm somewhere near Birmingham International airport, I liaised with a tall mysterious Polish man and three other rookie sleuths to find evidence to support the claim that when playing Portal’s Detective: A Modern Crime Boardgame “You are not playing a detective; you ARE a detective!.”

[caption id="attachment_2837" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jaffa Cakes not included[/caption]

My ‘demo’ game of Detective covered the first of five assignments and covered the first four days of working a much larger and overarching case.  With this game not only are you (hopefully) solving crimes, but you are also telling an elaborate and complex story, where each choice branches off to reveal or hide more. The first case sets into motion events and leads that will run throughout the entire campaign, weaving and telling an epic tale of murder, betrayal and adventure.

[caption id="attachment_2835" align="alignnone" width="1920"] This is all the board you get with th is game[/caption]

Now, I’m not one for listing components of boardgames, but in this instance, it’s worth noting that the board, tokens and pawns you get with this game are largely left to one side.  In fact, you don’t even really need a table to play this game on (we used Ignacy’s hotel bed), a deck of cards (one deck per scenario) a laptop, and lots and lots of paper is what will take centre stage.  It was recommended to us that one player looks after the board, tokens and cards, another be the key computer operator, and that we have a narrator and a scribe to take notes but I’d recommend that EVERYONE take notes, you’ll also want your phone nearby.  Why have this division of labour? Why describe these aspects of a recreational activity as labour? Well, once this game gets going, it gets a little full-on, especially for the scribe.

Needless to say, a bad thing has happened and to begin with you’re presented with three options, interview person A or person B, or take evidence to the lab.  The only resource that you really have to manage in this game is time, you have eight hours a day, and only four days to crack the case, what and—perhaps more importantly—how you get to your answers comes down to how you manage it.

[caption id="attachment_2833" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Listening very closely to every word spoken[/caption]

The deck of cards, through which you‘ll be exploring this world, will also be the biggest cost to each day.  Each is marked with a unique hashtag number representing another ‘lead’ or avenue of investigation. They’ll also come with a location; which takes valuable time to travel to and the task at hand which—depending on the difficulty—takes time to complete.  You’ll find other clues along your way, such as the @ symbol where you’ll enter data into the game’s online mock Antares police database. You’ll access lab results, crime reports, and profiles of suspects, witnesses and officers, and it all looks very cool and nifty.  Finally, you have what was one of my highlights, the Wi-Fi symbol. This is where you’ll literally have to Google something. This game takes place in the real world, so as much as some might not like the idea of using a computer or phone to play a game, it is not only essential here, but doing so further grounds this game in reality.

At points throughout the game you can delve, dig and press, in other words, go that little bit harder and further to get your answers. This will allow you to flip a card, read an extra report etc. but these all have an additional cost of skills, something that can only be used once per case….and you kind of need to use them, in fact, you’ll find very quickly you’ll need to use them all the time.  With every card drawn or flipped, with each entry on the computer and Wikipedia entry read you’ll come out with more questions than answers, more choices and less time.

[caption id="attachment_2834" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Using the database to look up suspects and persons of interest[/caption]

Unlike any other board game I’ve ever played, what Detective gives you in spades is an invitation to come in.  What you as a person, an individual can bring to this game, this experience, can and will dramatically shift the game experience for everyone playing.  This game of “who-done-it” is not a case of lining up prescribed dots that have been left under a rock for you to find. Far from it. You as players, as people in the room, are given information that you then have to stitch together to form the solution.  Things you, yes you, dear reader know about performing an emergency stop on a wet road, or self-defence, or assistance animals might all of a sudden become very useful and insightful. (Please note that I may, or may not have made those examples up).

[caption id="attachment_2836" align="alignnone" width="1920"] I only got to read one card...it wasn't a goo dcard[/caption]

“What about replay value?” I hear you ask, well, this doesn’t have a straightforward answer.  Since Detective takes you on a story, once you reach the end and know the outcome, you can never truly “unknow” it.  However, you can still explore the route to that end. One investigation can differ widely from another all depending on who you talk to and what you do.  For some, those that are happy to re-watch films, and re-read their favourite books, Detective will continue to deliver even once the mystery is solved. For others, you’ll simply get around fifteen great hours of gaming.

I mention that the board itself is kept to one side while you play this, it’s because Detective is more than a board game.  The board, the cards and counters they are simply platforms for this grand experience. Is it then more like an RPG, or a choose your own adventure?  I’m afraid that will have to be for you to decide, all I can do here is present the facts. What I can tell you for sure though, is that for me, playing Detective was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had.

[caption id="attachment_2832" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The master sleuths all together post game![/caption]

You can pre-order Detective: A Modern Crime Boardgame from Portal Games.

So Long, My World Review

There are but a few hours left, then, and then it’s all over. Everything. No more light, or dark, or time. Just the end. No one knows why. Or how. So before all the questions are gone too, all we have left is “what”. What are you going to do in the last moments of your life?

Game: So Long, My World

Designers: Enrica Fincati, Francesco Simioni

Publishers: Axis Mundi

Artist: Enrica Fincati, Francesco Simioni, Lorinda Tomko

Player Count:1 - 5

Runtime: 30 - 40 mins

[caption id="attachment_2806" align="alignnone" width="1920"] A chain of cards, this time I'm going to lead a good life[/caption]

So Long, My World from Axis Mundi, is a game bleak in concept, bleak in theme, and yes, you guessed it, bleak in art. It is the theme, rather than its execution that will get under your skin, that will leave a taste in your mouth after the game is done and put away. In it, you’ll find a little bit of deck drafting, bidding and a sort of tableau building that all coalesce over a Matrix-esque end-of-the-world story that isn’t quite a story.

The game revolves around the idea that the world we live in is an artificial construct, and somehow the code that binds us to the world and to our identities has become corrupted. This means that not only is The End of all Ends happening, no one is really sure who or what type of person they are. Each turn, as the clock marches forward, an Event card is drawn and read aloud—these cards are wonderfully, terribly rich, often giving the reader (the first player) a choice that will affect that round. Based upon the event, resources are doled out to their respective locations, these locations being the Visions players will experience and the resources are the Feeling Tokens that are attached to, and quantify the emotions and experiences of the drawn Event card.

[caption id="attachment_2802" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Even the clock face is bleak and daunting[/caption]

From here, players will secretly bid on which Vision they wish to visit and Drain, a simple choice of gaining a new Remnant card, the Vision’s inherent feeling, or some of the emotions that have become attached to it from past events. This simple choice forms the basis of your game, with the outcome of it you will then play cards from your hand, paying their emotional cost and gaining their benefit and Insight points which you’ll score at the game end.

[caption id="attachment_2804" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Feelings. Nothing more than Feelings! I quite want to listen to the Offspring now[/caption]

There are five types of emotions, two are positive, two are negative and the final one is neutral. Early game you’ll need to decide which way you want your final hours and your alignment to go, as there is a little quirk with the end game scoring by means of a Kama Chain.

The ‘NET’ feeling of the card-where a positive cancels a negative-gives the card a Kama score, so if you’ve explicitly, exclusively played cards towards one alignment you’ll get a Kama Chain Bonus; and it is a massive game swinging bonus: an extra point per card in the chain. The term dominant strategy springs to mind.

After my first game, it left me wondering “Why wouldn’t you do that in every single game?” After my second game I had to ask “What is the point of the neutral cards”...and then it all twigged: Bauhaus!

[caption id="attachment_2808" align="alignnone" width="1920"] This kama chain is full of despair[/caption]

Talking of memories and past experiences; a memory I personally have difficulty shifting is that of art history module on the Bauhaus Movement. Why bring this up? Well, the central principle behind this artistic movement was ‘Function over Form’, and with, So Long, My World you couldn’t get further from it.

Theme trumps mechanic, time and time again in this game and for added flavour, there are two themes vying for control over the game. On the one hand, you have this chilling end of the world thing going on, and it is brilliantly executed. But on the other hand, you have Reboot cards and these seemingly random remnant cards which when I first opened my copy I thought were test or errors in printing.

[caption id="attachment_2807" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The Reboot cards are a hard and harsh reset of the game state[/caption]

The artificial existence aspect of the game feels like a different game entirely, like I’ve somehow mixed the components of two games together that just happen to use the same typeface and iconography. Perhaps there is a bigger picture here that I simply don’t know about; I know that all the games from Axis Mundi are somehow connected and exist in the same universe, but as the first contact with that ‘universe’ I’m left utterly baffled.

For me, a game about the end of all existence is interesting, engaging and different enough to grab my attention, I don’t want these silly frills—and that’s just how they feel. In this game, things happen that from a mechanical, nuts and bolts, point of view left me thinking “erm…”.

Lots of things.

[caption id="attachment_2810" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Some Vision are dark and sinister,others quaint and charming, and at some point in a game you'll need each[/caption]

But, this game wants you to get involved, to emotionally commit to it, and the mechanics don’t all need to make sense for that to happen. It wants to shock you, send shivers up your spine, and at points, it does exactly this; other people overhearing some of the cards that are being read out are at once fascinated and terrified by this game.

I would like some player interaction, I would like to have more winning conditions and a more even scoring system, and hell I would like more in-game choices and some crunchy tactical decisions, but So Long, My World isn’t that game. It is chilling, interesting and quirky and I think can best be summed up by one photo of one component. Look at this and ask yourself this question: “Is this an interesting choice?”

If your answer is yes, then it would be worth checking this game out on Kickstarter now.

This review first appeared on the Polyhedron Collider Website but thanks for reading it here too :)

This review was based on a prototype version of the game provided by the publisher, as such the final version may differ from what is seen here.