200 Word Reviews (Part 3 - 41-60)

Because I'm running behind on these reviews, here's another batch for today. At an average of 5-10 minutes or so reading through each of these, then composing my thoughts and writing them up, it takes about 2 solid hours to write each batch of 20. When I've got other things to do around the house as well, that can extend to 4-5 hours, so I don't think I'll be able to write up more than one batch of 20 each day.  

Entrant	Name	Premise	Rules	Definition	Agenda	Coherence	Total
41	The Gulf Between Them – Star King West	1	1	0	3	3	8
42	Revenant – Adriano Bompani	1	1	2	1	1	6
43	My Brother’s Keeper – Chris Krueger	1	2	2	3	2	10
44	Sete – Drink in the Apocalypse – Leandro Lisboa	2	2	2	1	2	9
45	Chance Goodbyes – Michael Blatherwick	3	2	2	3	3	13
46	Spaghetti Pitch – Avital Lubin	3	2	0	3	3	11
47	Mongols and Manticores – Lucas Hald	3	2	2	2	2	11
48	Scenari’Odds’ Fast paced scenario solving rpg – John Bryant	1	2	1	2	2	8
49	Don’t Split Up – Eli Eaton	2	2	0	3	1	8
50	The Whole Potato, All At Once – Dylan Scott	1	2	0	0	0	3
51	An Incomplete Entity – Z Gosck	3	3	2	4	3	15
52	It Came From Studio 9 – Michael Klamerus	2	2	1	3	3	11
53	Warrant – wolfrug	2	3	0	3	2	10
54	One Night – Human and Monsters – Allinic Aflin	2	3	1	2	3	11
55	Multi-Headed Monster – Alchemeister	1	1	1	0	2	5
56	The Doppelganger Effect – Côme Martin	3	3	1	2	3	12
57	Story of the Boat People – Lorelei Nguyen	3	2	2	3	4	14
58	Mission Impawssible – Saffire Grant	3	2	0	2	2	9
59	The Cataclysm – B.J.Best	2	3	0	2	2	9
60	Trench – Jason Hughes	3	2	0	2	3	10

The Gulf Between Them

This is almost an “arty, angsty, catharsis freeform” game, but it just manages to avoid that fate.it follows the typical “two characters discuss their innermost feelings” schtick, but adds a third player between them who I capable of twisting the answers given between each other. That adds depth and a point of difference that so many games of this type are missing. Again, it’s a really narrow premise, and I can’t see a whole lot of replay value in it. But it seems interesting as a one-shot.   

Revenant

A multi-player “arty, angsty, catharsis freeform” game. What is it that I don’t like about these games? Probably mostly that they are exposition, they are the epitome of telling not showing, you don’t do anything. It’s all just reflection and lack of interaction with any outside force that might make a real difference to the narrative. This feels just like a hundred games in that genre that have come before…

My Brother’s Keeper

I’m in mixed opinion regarding this one. It feels like the kind of game I don’t like, it has a very railroaded narrative structure, it doesn’t really feel like it does anything innovative within that structure, but there is scope for play. It’s like a closed ended “arty, angsty, catharsis freeform” game. It’s also interesting that the author felt like there was a need to spend twice as many words justifying the game as were spent writing it.

Sete – Drink in the Apocalypse

This is an interesting anomaly, it seems to be competitive in some ways, but there are certain areas where a player with a high attribute cannot be beaten by a character with a low attribute. Since it has to be played in a pub, I’d have included a rule where each drink allows you to increase an attribute by 1. As it stands, it’s a basic (but seemingly flawed) system, it also seems to set a premise but doesn’t really seem to go anywhere. It feels really incomplete.   

Chance Goodbyes

It doesn’t take much to turn a “arty, angsty, catharsis freeform” game into something a bit more interesting. This game does that. A player walks to their doom, but there is a slim chance that they might walk back again. Over the course of 6 encounters (and 15 questions), they make their peace. These questions aren’t force fed, their randomly determined. I don’t know, there just feels like a nicer structure to this game than similar examples of the genre.

Spaghetti Pitch

Throwing spaghetti at a wall to see if it sticks. I like ideas that engage literal translations of things, and I like games that use unusual mechanisms, this certainly fits both those criteria. It fits the criterion of players taking on roles, it also fits the criterion of a game, it just uses both of those aspects in ways I wouldn’t have normally considered. A very narrow scope of play, but it executes things well.

Mongols and Manticores

The manticore player confronts a horde of mongols who want it dead. This is simulated by drawing and eating M&Ms. I don’t see how the Manticore can lose this one. Maybe there needs to be a limitation on the number of M&Ms eaten, or some kind of obstacle or fallout when certain colours are eaten. It feels like it’s almost there, but could do with a bit of playtesting or refinement to really be coherent. Unless of course it’s just an excuse to eat a bag of M&Ms.

Scenari’Odds’ Fast past scenario solving rpg

This one is a bit of a non-sequitur game. It doesn’t seem to particularly facilitate an ongoing narrative between interconnected scenes, but I guess the definitions of portraying a role, and playing a game don’t necessarily require this. Using a timer and rapidly speaking to earn points can be problematic, and I don’t see a way to resolve this, but generally it looks like it’s been thought about. Could do with some refinement.

Don’t Split Up

Arbitrarily, a group of players roll dice. Whoever rolls lowest in each round is eliminated, apply a story over that framework. I can see where it’s trying to go, but I’m not really sure it gets there.  

The Whole Potato, All At Once

I guess it’s a bit like a less pleasant version of ‘Spaghetti Pitch’ further up in this batch of reviews. You bite into a potato, and if you swallow it you succeed. If it’s the last bite, you succeed really well and level up…which has no real effect. It’s proposed as a universal system, which means no real premise, no agenda, no method of defining a character. Just sounds like an excuse to watch people eat raw potatoes.

An Incomplete Entity

I like this one. It feels like it would make a good session zero game, defining characters and the world through play. Nothing is known about the characters but they gradually add depth as they encounter situations. It follows a fairly standard attribute plus ability plus 1d10 system to resolve tasks, so it’s reasonably familiar to players who’ve tried a few different game engines. The only thing I think it would be lacking to create a complete game system would be some method for character advancement. As it stands, it seems to do what it promises pretty well.  

It Came From Studio 9

Another movie interpretation of PrimeTime Adventures (see “What’s my Motivation?” earlier). Players take on the roles of people behind the scenes, discussions are had, then a pair of dice are rolled. There’s no real connection between the whether the players agree that a scene is successful compared to whether or not the dice agree. A few scenes are used to determine whether the whole movie is successful, a bomb, or so bad that it becomes a cult classic. There’s some good ideas in it, but I think it needs a bit more work.   

Warrant

Ostensibly a game about bounty hunters claiming warrants, everyone basically gets three cards and matches their cards against the rest of a deck. If the players card is higher, they catch the bounty. The game is basically functional without any playing of roles, but I’m not sure how easy it would be to get those high ranked cards if the players had a bad start with their hands… and I similarly think that it’s a bit arbitrary that whoever gets the best hand at first will basically win the game.     

One Night – Human and Monsters

This one’s a bit of a minimalist social deduction game. Sort of… but it looks like the actual social deduction bits have been left out. Players define their characters, and a random one is a monster. Then the rolls from the GM eliminate character hit points, and eventually characters, but there are bits of this part that feel left out. Maybe I’ve just read too many games today, and I’m just missing something.  

Multi-Headed Monster

This is really a game of GM fiat, where everyone plays a single head of a multi headed monster, and has a randomly determined pool of energy points that they spend to overcome specific tasks. No die rolls, I think, it’s a bit confusing here. Maybe you get 3 dice to roll in any scene, then need to eat to reclaim dice.  There’s nothing about difficulty numbers or what die rolls mean. This one does need a lot more work.

The Doppelganger Effect

I was thinking ‘Orphan Black’, but it’s probably more Jet Li’s ‘The One’ using a system that’s similar to the infamous ‘Dread’ using the Jenga tower. I can see this really working for a chaotic narrative about phase shifting hijinx, I certainly can’ see it working for something too dark and serous, especially given the random tables that have been offered.

Story of the Boat People

Here’s another political one, especially political as an Australian where ‘boat people’ have been a political hot potato for the past decade and a half. This is another one of those bleak games, I wouldn’t quite go so far at to pigeon-hole it into my “arty, angsty, catharsis freeform” category, but it’s close. Player take turns telling stories of their homeland, the worst storyteller is cannibalised. After a round of storytelling a die is rolled, a when three 6s have been rolled, the boat reaches a promised land. But this basically means that a minimum of 3 players will be cannibalised, and probably everyone. No idea what happens when only one person is left. A few more words would probably go a long way here.  

Mission Impawssible

I’m just imagining this transposed to ferrets instead of chihuahuas. You basically need tokens to overcome obstacles, you get tokens by getting into trouble in one way or another. There are three predefined scene, but there’s nothing to say how many tokens are needed to get through these scenes so that means a hefty amount of GM fiat…except that it’s designated a “GMless story game”, I think there needs to be something here to focus play a bit more.  

The Cataclysm

Another game where high card wins, and the roles played don’t really matter, so it fits more into the storytelling parlour game genre. I like the idea of using a tarot deck to describe the story of a world changing event, but I’m noticing a lot of elimination games in this year’s entrants, and nothing about what players do once they’ve been eliminated from proceedings. There’s a lot of gaps in this one.

Trench

Angsty, dealing with emotional events, single player eliminated every turn… this is a mix of everything that I’m seeing again and again, but at least this time we’ve been given a description of what players do when they are eliminated. I can see how this sort of game might be appealing to a certain crowd of people, certainly as a one-off session at a convention, but I don’t think it would get much play here. It’s better written than some similar games, a hence hasn’t been give overly critical scores.