I just thought that today I would give some quick thoughts on some board games that are on the to-sell list and my thoughts on them:
ABOVE AND BELOW: A nice game but the encounter book is so random and also has such a big effect on the final scores. The stories are also not that good in the encounter book (on average).
CHAMPIONS OF MIDGARD: A nice idea but I would have preferred the damage system from Ancient World potentially. The randomness can really destroy your plans on what is a tight game. However, I do like how the troll was implemented and believe most semi-coop games should use this model as opposed to the everyone-loses approach.
DEAD OF WINTER: A game I only really got to try playing the once at least. It doesn’t really work 2 player and the cross-roads cards and roll-a-dice for everything also make it swing allot. I do like the secret individual objectives though and is perhaps the only semi-coop game I have come close to liking.
IN THE NAME OF ODIN: A kickstarter game that I enjoy except for a couple of things. The first is what seems to be the lack of polish around components (or testing of the final version). The second is the lack of testing around final scoring and end-game triggered. Overall, it is a bit dry for my tastes with Feast for Odin replacing it as a more engaging puzzle game with more teeth.
SHADOWSCAPE: I was really looking forward to this one and then it fell completely flat. It can be gamed too easily, completely lacks any sort of theme and the graphic design is exceptionally poor (to the point of being near-broken). I wonder how much actual playtesting went into this at all. This and Name of Odin have made me take NSKN games off my list of good companies as a lack of polish seems to now be there standard practice (poor rulebooks, typo’s, untested games, poor graphic design).
3 WISHES: I received this with the new Mistfall Kickstarter. It is okay, but needs 3+ players to play and also sometimes feels a bit random unless you have a good memory for where things are. Unlike games such as Love Letter, however, you don’t feel like you can do well without the memory aspect or deck knowledge.
ESCAPE: ZOMBIE CITY: I picked this up on one of the big sales from Miniature Market. It is okay, but doesn’t really create the tense atmosphere of Escape or Zombie 15′. A good idea that just needed a bit more tension throughout (making Zombies a bit more deadly or moving a bit faster). Instead, it often feels flat.
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