#'it's just a rulebook' and the game cover and the game board and items. you want to tell me the imagery doesn't make up like 70% of the--

[emmavakarian-theirin]

reblogging again because just fyi this absolutely involves AI ART for those that are wary

New Mass Effect official art from the Mass Effect The Board Game - Priority: Hagalaz Rulebook [source]

[kerlonpool]

And yet it moves lizard

#AND YET IT MOVES LIZARD FULL#

The goal of the game is to score the most points-through wizards and towers, matching spells, and collected gold and items.

#AND YET IT MOVES LIZARD FULL#

I don’t have a full rulebook link, but the Kickstarter page has a summary of the rules, as well as a “detailed gameplay” section. And if this meets the same funding levels as Raccoon Tycoon, then the start player token will likely be an enormous wooden meeple again, this time of the blue lizard wizard seen on the cover. The coins will be cardboard in the base game and metal in the deluxe game those who didn’t like the paper bills in Raccoon Tycoon will be happy to see this replacement. I believe the reagent tokens will be cardboard in the base game and printed wooden tokens in the deluxe game. Various treasures can be found in the Dungeon. Also, the tower cards all have identical illustrations, just with a different color to match the wizards-it would be nice for those to have unique artwork since everything else in the game is individualized by magic type. This is similar to Raccoon Tycoon as well, and although I do like both styles, I don’t necessarily think they really fit with each other, particularly the dungeon cards. The dungeon cards and the board itself are (I think) illustrated by Jacoby O’Connor, in a more cartoony style. The bottom half of the board is wonderfully illustrated, but is covered by cards during play. The portraits look like they’d fit well on the covers of a fantasy book series, and have a classical fine-art style. There are 7 classes of wizards, each represented by a different lizard and each favoring a different familiar. The components should be pretty similar to Raccoon Tycoon: the Wizard, Tower, Familiar, and Spell cards are all tarot-sized cards, which show off Annie Stegg Gerard’s detailed illustrations of the various lizard wizards and their familiars. Thaumaturgy must be the school of magic that involves cheating at bowling.

Mana coins (in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20)Ī few of the wizards.

Gold Coins (in denominations of 1, 5, 10).

210 Reagent tokens (30 each in 7 types).

Stretch goals may add more components to the game, though I do not have a full list of those yet. Note: My review is based on a limited prototype copy and through playing it on Tabletopia, so it will include a mix of photos and screenshots, and some things will change between the prototype version and the final game. (Screenshot from Tabletop Simulator) Lizard Wizard Components New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer. Lizard Wizard was designed by Glenn Drover, published by Forbidden Games, and was illustrated by Annie Stegg Gerard and Jacoby O’Connor. The game is similar to Raccoon Tycoon but adds a few more things, so it’s a slight step up in complexity, but the rules are still fairly easy to learn. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $49 for a copy of the game there’s also the deluxe tier for $89 that includes metal coins, player mats, and wooden reagent tokens, or you can select add-ons individually. Lizard Wizard is a game for 2 to 5 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 90 minutes to play. Recruit wizards, build towers, cast spells, and summon familiars in the land of Astoria! What Is Lizard Wizard?

[redditnosleep]

Somebody Broke Her

by TobiasWade. Warning for domestic violence.

You know the kind of girl I’m talking about. She looks like life chewed her up and spit her back out.

You can see it in her eyes, if you could even see her eyes. Her loose tangled hair covers most of her face, and she’s always staring at her feet. You can see it in her hunched shoulders, hear it in her mumbling voice. She’s both desperate and afraid to be heard, hating herself for everything she says and everything she doesn’t say.

She doesn’t live in my building, but I see her almost every day when she visits her boyfriend in the apartment next door. I’ve said hello to her a few times — she always flinches when I talk to her. The first thing out of her mouth is inevitably an apology — sorry for being in my way, or for being here too often, or for taking up one of the dozen empty parking spots. I asked her name once, but she said it didn’t matter.

“Why not? What am I supposed to say when I see you?” I asked.

“Nothing. You don’t need to. I’m nobody.”

“Well my name is —”

But she just kept walking. Head leaning against my neighbor’s door, hands in her pockets, looking like an ostrich trying to disappear into the sand.

“Bye nobody!” I chimed as the door opened to let her in.

I couldn’t be sure under the hair, but I think she almost smiled. “Bye somebody,” she murmured, disappearing into the doorway. My neighbor Jeff poked his head out — scrawny fellow with a soul patch and a beanie which seemed permanently fixed to his head. He nodded sharply at me like a fighter paying insincere respect to his opponent, slamming the door.

I liked watching Nobody from my balcony when she was parking her car. I liked the fluid grace of her movements which transformed regular motions like opening doors and stepping over obstacles into a choreographed dance. I must not have been the only one to notice either, because there always seemed to be someone hitting on her whenever I saw her. Not the charming kind either — fat oafs jumping out of their car like they were waiting for her, or pushy street rats backing her up against the building. I thought she was a prostitute at first, but she always rebuffed them so vehemently that I figured that wasn’t the case.

Often at night I’d see her leaning on the railing of my neighbor’s balcony, smoking a joint and staring off into space. I got the feeling that she was staring into a world that only she could see, but looking at her face, I also got the feeling that it wasn’t a very pretty world. I wish I could see it too. Sometimes I’d go out onto my own balcony and try to make an excuse for conversation, but she’d invariably duck back inside the moment she saw me. If I was lucky and she seemed to be in good spirits, I’d hear a “Bye somebody” before she went. A stupid joke, but it always made me smile.

She couldn’t have been happy, but I suppose it wasn’t any of my business. I’d hear her boyfriend yelling at her through the walls sometimes, although I never heard her say anything back. I figured that she was her own person with her own choices to make, and if she was being really mistreated, then she wouldn’t keep coming back. It’s not like I had proof that she was being abused or anything — and what I did guess, I quickly dismissed as petty jealousy, resolving not to interfere with her life.

That resolution lasted for about two months, but it ended last night. It was after dark and I was getting home late when I spotted Nobody pressed up against my building. Two men in leather jackets were several inches too close for innocent conversation, practically pressing themselves on her while she squirmed to get away. I honked my car horn at them, and one looked over his shoulder. Fat stupid face, mouth hanging part way open, he stared at me for a few seconds before turning back to her.

“I got to go,” I heard her say. “Somebody is waiting for me.”

I honked again. Fat-face turned to walk over to my car. “Cool it, asshole,” he shouted. “This target only has 11 points left anyway. Get your own damn girl.”

I rolled down my window. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You new or something?” he asked, fishing out his phone. He showed me the screen which depicted a GPS map of my neighborhood. Scattered throughout were little targets, each with a name and a life-bar like a video game character has. The target against my building was named ‘Cillia’, with 11/100 life remaining.

“I don’t know what the fuck that is, but I’m not playing,” I told him.

He laughed. More like a guffaw really — deep and guttural without the slightest hint of mirth. “You’re after that piece of shit and you’re not even getting points? Hey Mark — he actually wants this bitch.”

The other guy — presumably Mark — still had the girl against the wall. He made a half-lunge at her as she wriggled free, but it was just to scare her. She looked like she was about to run toward my car, but seeing the fat one over by me, she sprinted to her own vehicle instead. We all watched as she tore out of the parking lot, the biggest smile I’d ever seen plastered across her face.

“Don’t waste your time. Somebody already broke her.” Fat-face slammed my car with the palm of his hand as he turned to leave. “Let’s go Mark. There’s two more of them on this street.”

I was so relieved to see them go that I didn’t try to ask more questions. Nobody had a name. It was Cillia. And something was tracking her location and broadcasting it out to these creeps. It didn’t feel like I was meddling in someone else’s business anymore. I couldn’t just play dumb and let her sort this out for herself.

A few minutes later and I was hammering on my neighbor’s apartment. “Hey Jeff, you in there?”

“Bug off,” came the muffled reply.

“It’s about the game you’re playing with Cillia.” It seemed pretty vague to me, but if he was involved then he’d know what I was talking about.

Loud shuffling like someone crossing the room in a hurry, and the door opened a moment later. He was wearing nothing but his boxers and his beanie, skinny body blocking the door.

“Yeah, what about the game?” he asked. I hesitated, unsure what to say next. He must have misread my silence, because his face became animated and hopeful. “Hey did I win the prize or something?”

I nodded stiffly. Jeff threw the door open to welcome me in, practically dancing with excitement. “Holy shit I knew it! I’ve been on the leader-board for weeks — it was only a matter of time. Seriously competitive shit, you know? I’ve got everything ready for you, come on in.” He rushed to a cabinet under the sink and began hauling out cardboard boxes. I still didn’t know what the hell was going on though, so I had to play along to get more answers.

“How many points are you at now?” I asked.

“723,” without hesitation. “19 separate targets, although I’ve been getting most of the points from Cillia, as you know.” He plopped two cardboard boxes on the coffee table beside me, flaying them open for inspection. The greasy smell of stale sex was nauseating. “This one’s got all the condoms in it,” he said. Hundreds of them — all used — neatly tied off into little balloons. “Then this one has all the recordings.”

“723 is a lot,” I said, pretending to be impressed. “Tell me how you were keeping score.”

He looked suspicious for a moment, but it passed. If my question raised any red flags, then he was so pleased with himself that he didn’t dwell on it. “It’s legit, I swear. I used the ‘Break Her’ rulebook and everything. 10 points for humiliating her. 15 points for taking a personal item or making a big decision for her. 25 for unwanted sex or something physical. Then I’ve got a bunch of the small ones I’ve been building up — the daily criticisms, isolating her from friends and family, that sort of thing. What’s the prize going to be?”

“Hold on a minute, I got to ask all the questions first. Standard procedure, you know.”

“How come you never told me you worked for ‘Break Her’? You must have known that I played,” Jeff asked. Again the suspicion, this time lingering on his face.

I shrugged, making notes on my phone as though I was dutifully recording his answers. “What do you think the purpose of the game was? And how did you get into it?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You just got to break her. I started playing when my buddy got dumped by his ex. He paid to have her registered in the system, and I thought it would be fun to join so I could start harassing her. At first it was just to support my buddy, but it was pretty helpful seeing where all the vulnerable chicks were. Turned out I was pretty good at it, so I decided to try and get enough points to win the prize.”

“Uh huh.” I typed as he talked. My fingers were literally shaking. “And Cillia? Did you ever love her?”

He laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. A pause, then: “Oh, are you serious? Come on, man. It’s just a game. So what’s the deal? Am I getting the prize today or not?”

I didn’t look up from my phone. I was so disgusted that I couldn’t even look at him. The silence was excruciating.

“Is this legal?” I breathed. Silence again, as both of us digested what I said. My cover was blown.

“You lying piece of shit,” he grunted, protectively ripping his boxes away from me. “You trying to steal my points or something?”

He was on me before I even realized what was happening. Bony arms wrapped around me, the momentum flinging me to the ground. He got in a good hit to my jaw before I flipped him on his back. I was bigger and stronger than him, but he twisted under me like a feral animal.

“She’s mine! You don’t know how much work I put into that bitch!” he roared. I punched him to shut him up. He spit blood at me, and I hit him again. I never thought it would feel so good to hurt someone, but now that I started, I couldn’t stop myself. Next I knew my hands were so soaked in blood that it ran between my knuckles like rivers. Jeff wasn’t moving. And I was okay with that.

Jeff’s phone beeped where it lay on the ground. Somehow the weight of what I’d just done didn’t hit until I heard it. It beeped again, and I lifted it to see what was going on.

It was a notification from ‘Break Her’. I opened the app, and saw a short questionnaire. Humiliation, abuse, control — a daily checklist for him to go through to get his points. What the hell did I get myself involved in? And who was I to think I could make any difference when a whole world full of terrible people were trying to destroy her?

At the bottom of the form it asked: ‘Did you see her smile today?’ Numb and overwhelmed, I clicked ‘yes’. Immediately Cillia’s life-bar jumped a point, up to 12/100.

Well that’s some difference at least. Not much, but it’s a start.

[playeroneplayertwo]

The Village Green Preservation Society (Village)

Over the past few years, Inka and Markus Brand have been on fire. The husband and wife designer duo have, in the past three years alone, released the lovely dice-placement racer Rajas of the Ganges (2017), come out with their own sprawling take on the legacy game in The Rise of Queensdale (2018), and played their part in changing the hobby forever with their remarkable Exit series (2016-?).

But if you roll back your calendar a few years, you’ll find a lovely gem of theirs about simpler times. Rather than escaping certain death in Exit or building a grand and majestic estate in Rajas of the Ganges, you are, well, just living your life. Train to be a wainwright or stableman, make your mark, live a long and hopefully productive life, perhaps join the city council or the church, and leave a legacy to be remembered in your small town forever.

Simpler times, indeed.

Village (2011) Designed by Inka & Markus Brand Art by Dennis Lohausen Published by Eggertspiele

Village is, at first glance, a fairly meat and potatoes euro about following four generations of your family through their simple lives in a small village. At its heart, this is a fairly straightforward resource management and conversion game. And yet, unlike so many similar games, there’s a little more than just picking up cubes and converting them into goods–although that’s certainly in the box, as well. Village is proof that the Brands’ inventiveness is no new thing. In addition to cubes, you’ve also got to grapple with time and its slow march forward. Every action takes time, and as time moves forward, those young’ns will grow, eventually becoming well-respected elders, continuing to age until they die and either become part of the village chronicles or are buried in the cemetery and are all but forgotten.

Lowdown (How to Play–in a Nutshell)

Before you ask: yes, it’s about points. Points, points, points.

Colored cubes and action selection combine to define Village. A certain amount of cubes are mixed randomly in a bag before being randomly distributed among a number of action spaces. On your turn, you will take a cube from a space, put it on your individual player board, and then you may take the action from that corresponding space. Each action will have a cost in time, and time is kept on a circular track on your player board.

The colored cubes will accumulate, and soon you will be cashing them in when you select an action in order to convert those cubes into different resources in the form of tokens. One color cube, however, is a plague cube, and if you choose (or are forced) to take a black action cube, you must advance time further.

The actions, which I’ll cover only briefly, are all similar variations on a theme–essentially resource conversion or selling items for points. You can take bags of grain in a harvest (another resource you can convert later or sell to market), grow your family (adding another meeple to your personal board), travel beyond the village (use wagons you’ve made to visit locations for bonuses), craft (cash in your cubes or grain to make wagons, plows, wagons, or buy/raise horses or cows), join the village council (points!), participate in church (points again!), and go to market to fulfill orders by selling your goods (the most points!).

In addition to simply trading in cubes to get other goods like plows or wagons, don’t forget you’ve got those meeples. You’ll often also deploy those meeples as family members to a particular location to make it easier to do that action in the future–essentially because you have trained them in that craft. The idea here is that the second time you need something, like a wagon, you’ll be able to go to your Auntie Edna or Uncle Pete, now trained as a wainwright, and get a wagon spending only time, rather than spending those precious cubes you’ve been hoarding.

When you’ve advanced your timekeeper far enough, however, one of your oldest generation-meeples must die. Slightly macabre, perhaps, but arguably realistic. Those family members will either take one of a few spaces in the village chronicles (for lots o’ points!), or be buried in the village graveyard (for no points!). After the village chronicle or graveyard is full, the game ends. Most points wins.

Tea for Two (Scaling for Two Players)

Each aspect of the games is scalable, with the village chronicle having fewer spaces for two players vs three or four, as well as fewer cubes and fewer market orders for fulfillment. In a two-player game, you’ll have a lower likelihood someone will take a cube you’ve been eyeing, but beyond more limited screwage–which is normal for a two player game vs a three or four player game–scaling is very good here, not really altering the experience at all.

Death to My Hometown (The Bad Stuff)

The mechanics here are very sturdy, albeit typical, euro fare. Take a cube, do an action. Take a cube, place a meeple. Take a cube, convert cubes for tokens. Take a cube, sell tokens. Rinse and repeat. This is a reliable game engine, built on an equally reliable chassis. Many of the actions feel comfortably familiar: harvesting for grain (take a resource) or the “family” action (put out another meeple from your supply), market day (sell for a variable market tile aka convert goods to points). About a half-dozen games immediately come to mind that rely on very comparable actions, and the reliance on cubes here abstracts these actions further, moreso than some of the others. The rulebook states (and I had to look this up because I don’t remember this at all) that orange cubes represent skill, green cubes persuasiveness, brown cubes faith, and pink cubes knowledge. I like that the cubes have some representative analog, but once you play, they completely lose any semblance of meaning beyond their color. A game like Clans of Caledonia (2017) has similar actions (build things, sell things), but feels infinitely less abstracted. Action-wise, Village is not reinventing any wheel.

The other hit Village will take is on the graphic design. A meat and potatoes euro game designed in 2011 looks–today, at least–very dated. It has all the attractive graphic design of a shag carpet and lava lamp. Ten years in board game graphic design is 30 years in fashion or interior design. Board Game graphic design still remains a vulnerable spot in the armor of a great many euro classics, and in that regard, Village is no different. Some publishers have learned a lot since 2011, but even today, Eggertspiel isn’t known for its flashy look. Village is a prime example of their perfectly utilitarian–if nothing to write home about–art and graphic design.

Local Hero (The Good Stuff)

I’d heard a lot about Village prior to playing it, and after reading the rules, I was a little confused about some of the more effusive praise that had been heaped on it. The mechanics are so… generic euro. After playing it, though, I realized something remarkable about it: Village is greater than the sum of its parts.

Being a person of slightly above average cynicism, perhaps, I find it rare to say that about a game. More often than not, I hear about a game and get excited–whether that’s because of the designer, mechanics, theme, art, or some combination of all–only to find the experience of playing it somehow less than the sum of its parts.

So why does Village succeed where other, more immediately engaging or interesting games ultimately fail?

For me, in a nutshell, it’s because of the time mechanic and the familial/generational development. Somehow, a game with a fairly bland and only moderately well-implemented generic euro theme (farming/working in a town/selling stuff, etc) manages to build a story as you play. The story I’m referring to is not actually in the game, mind you. This game does literally nothing to create a narrative for you. There aren’t even basic event cards, like This month there is a storm! Oh no! Better stock up on grain to sell so you don’t starve! Rather, somehow, a story manages to slowly and unassumingly coalesce for you as you play. Let’s say on your first turn you take a meeple and invest the time to train them as a stablehand, becoming skilled at raising horses and cows. You begin to sell your cows at market, and with cows, you’ll be well on your way to a much better harvest, because you’ll now be able to plow for more crops. With more grain, you can fulfill orders, or take those bags to the mill for money (aka points!). Or maybe you’ve got a barfly Uncle (with the expansion, Village: Inn (2013), at least). Maybe he was, over the years, able to buddy up, over a weekly shot and a beer perhaps, with the bigwig Count, guaranteeing that you’ll get more points at the game’s end if someone else in your family is able to visit him by traveling to his faraway castles! Excellent!

Oddly enough, this kind of thing is also present in other games. Giving a meeple a profession does not a story create. To put my finger on it, and I don’t want to sound maudlin, but for me it’s that death mechanic. I’m not exactly a softy, but is remarkably effective, to say nothing of affecting (although that’s may be a slightly-strong word). Your nameless meeples are bestowed with something akin to preciousness as you’re forced to usher them to the village chronicle, or more unfortunately, the graveyard.

Ultimately, there’s something ineffable about Village, something beyond the simple mechanics of it. There’s something remarkable here and worth exploring.

The End (Final Thoughts)

I was a bit flowerier than usual in The Good Stuff, because it’s hard for me to say what works so well about Village, but to turn back to gamier terms, there’s lots of great and satisfying strategy here. Lots of tactical decisions, lots of scrambling to meet objectives, errr I mean market orders. Lots of dilemmas, lots of time management–never enough time, btw–to say nothing of never enough of those dastardly cubes. There’s a lot to manage, but never so much that it becomes overwhelming. There’s new stuff here, but not enough to be daunting or difficult to manage, and it’s a game that is just welcoming enough to be taught to new-ish folks to the hobby. And the time, again, that time. For every first or second generation that you drag your feet to remove from the board, equally interesting is how you may, at times, rush these folks through their lives in hopes of sneaking them into the village’s chronicle before someone else.

So much of this game feels expected, but it’s surprising how much one little wrench can do to the works of a machine and ultimately defy all of your preconceptions. My first impression of the Brands was formed in playing Exit, which duly impressed me. Upon playing Village, however, I was delighted to learn that their seems to be no end to their ingenuity, and I will be keeping an eye out for anything that bears their name.

Player One Eric

[junker-town]

What do the rules say should happen if a defender throws a towel at a pass, like UCLA just tried?

Meet “unfair acts,” the obscure rulebook item that prevents players from just doing whatever.

There was nothing dramatic about Week 2’s Hawaii-UCLA game in Los Angeles. The Bruins were up four touchdowns by halftime, and they coasted to a 56-23 final.

But after garbage time had already commenced, one unusual play happened on a third-and-5 for Hawaii at midfield. Rainbow Warriors quarterback Dru Brown uncorked a pass to slanting receiver John Ursua, and while the ball was in the air, UCLA defensive tackle Chigozie Nnoruka threw a towel at it:

He threw the damn towel http://pic.twitter.com/r1Q7eZbpms

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) September 10, 2017

Nnoruka, wearing No. 93, decided to try skeet shooting, except his gun was his right hand and the clay disc was a leather football. It didn’t work. His towel might’ve grazed the ball, but it kept traveling to Ursua, and Hawaii picked up the first down. No flag was thrown, and if one had been, what would it have even been for? The Rainbow Warriors punted a few plays later, and the game resumed being unremarkable

The NCAA’s rulebook says nothing about “throwing a towel at the ball.”

That doesn’t mean you’re allowed to do it, of course.

There are all kinds of illegal things that aren’t listed in the rulebook. The only mention of a “weapon” in the rules is a prohibition on “simulating the firing of a weapon” as unsportsmanlike conduct, but that doesn’t mean you can bring a gun onto the field.

This isn’t like in baseball, where there’s a specific rule that says a defender can’t throw his glove at a fair ball. If he does and hits it, everyone gets three free bases, as happened when the Rangers’ Elvis Andrus tried such a stunt in 2015. There’s no reference in the NCAA’s rulebook to using one inanimate object to try to stop another.

Had the towel toss been caught, it likely would’ve been called an “unfair act.”

This is the rulebook’s elastic clause. Per Rule 9, Article 3, these are “unfair acts.”

-A team refuses to play within two minutes after ordered to do so by the referee.

-A team repeatedly commits fouls for which penalties can be enforced only by halving the distance to its goal line.

-An obviously unfair act not specifically covered by the rules occurs during the game

If officials judge that a team’s done any of these things, they can call unsportsmanlike conduct. Then, the referee gets to do whatever he wants. The rules say he “may take any action he considers equitable, which includes directing that the down be repeated, including assessing a 15-yard penalty, awarding a score, or suspending or forfeiting the game.”

These are important rules to have, and the people who made them hoped they’d never have to be used. Can you imagine how annoying it’d be if a defense was backed up to its own 1-yard line and kept taking encroachment penalties for six hours, preventing the offense from snapping the ball? Eventually, the zebras would run out of “half the distances” to assess by moving an 11-inch ball forward, despite what the laws of division say.

The third bullet there — “an obviously unfair act not specifically covered by the rules occurs during the game” — should cover an attempt to shoot down a ball with a towel. It could also cover someone macing an opponent or doing some sort of obviously criminal act. You could watch football for a lifetime and not see these rules get used.

The officials on the field didn’t see this towel throw. What if they had?

The referee’s trained to watch the area around the quarterback when he throws the ball, and the rest of his crew is trained to watch the intended receiver.

There are a million things the zebras look out for every play, from making sure each team only has 11 guys on the field to watching for little skirmishes after the whistle. Looking for defenders throwing objects to knock down the ball is a bit off the board.

Had the officials seen the toss, I doubt UCLA’s Nnoruka would’ve been thrown out of the game. I also doubt the ref would’ve given the game to Hawaii by forfeiture. One possibility would’ve been simply warning Nnoruka, keeping with the point that most officials don’t really like to call fouls. If they did, there’d be holding called all the time.

At any rate, chucking a towel at the ball is only illegal if officials say it is.

Generally, you’d think they would. But maybe they wouldn’t.

[liketherogue]

Splatoon 2, Imperial Assault (7/24)

Been playing a few different games. Will lump impressions of them under one post.

Splatoon 2

Aesthetics

Splatoon 2 offers more of the same, which is a very good thing. The game has a very good sense of color, shape, silhouettes, and how they all fit together in space. I’m reminded of the times I went to Great America, where there was (and still might be) a Nickelodeon section of the park. Everything felt like it was a toy to be played with merely by looking at it. Splatoon 2 captures a lot of this sentiment, with its use of exaggerated geometry, round, bouncy structures, and vibrant color palette. 

The fashion and style that the game is based around, the Japanese bubblegum skater chic, meshes very well with the overall aesthetic and the ever-changing nature of the solid primary colors. It’s a very organized mess that is just plain fun to look at and live in.

Mechanics

Gameplay is near identical to Splatoon 1 with two key differences:

The first is the addition of a new PvE mode, Salmon Run. For a relatively simple game mode (wave defense) it uses the game’s mechanics to the fullest: squid swimming is an effective way to maneuver the map and find bosses, the different randomized weapons and bosses are varied such that you have to change and adapt your playstyle, and maintaining inked turf is crucial to keeping effective control of the field. 

The second big change in 2 is the complete overhaul of specials. While certain special’s mechanics exist in some form (e.g. Killer Wail becoming Sting Ray, Inkstrike becoming missiles, etc.), the impact and strength of the specials as pure offensive techniques has been lessened. The tradeoff, which I would argue works for the better, is that specials are far more oriented around positioning and your teammates. On their own, the specials tend to be rather lackluster, but when supported by a team that either gives you an opening or capitalizes on your special, it can be pretty devastating to the enemy.

Story

Splatoon 2 is interesting because for such a seemingly shallow game, it has a surprising amount of depth to both the characters and the history of the world. The single player, as in the first, has collectible pages that unlock more details about the world and past events. I’ll have to delve a little deeper in, but if Splatoon 1 is any indicator the game can have some relatively dark tones for a family friendly game. 

The characters continue to be fantastic, as both their dialogue and visual designs give the players a full picture of their personalities. That said, the new celebrity duo, Pearl and Marina, are an interesting replacement to Callie and Marie and I’m not quite sure how I feel about them yet. The strange paradox here is that while their personalities are quite pronounced and different, I don’t get as much of a distinct difference between them as of yet. From what I’ve seen so far, Pearl is twitchy angry ankle biter genki girl and Marina is the shy soft-spoken easily embarrassed wallflower, but that could be more of the fanbase’s headcanon seeping into my head rather than anything from Nintendo themselves.

Technology

The game runs at a very smooth 60(?) FPS. The game handles beautifully and while there are load times, it’s not nearly as bad as Splatoon 1. 

While there were some network and connectivity issues during the Open Beta (Splatfest), the game seems to have mostly eased out and been operating at stable connections. For the most part. I’ve run into more than a few games where there was at least one DC (oftentimes more), and I’m not sure if that’s because of leavers or Nintendo’s less than stellar netcode. 

Imperial Assault

Aesthetics

The game is very neatly packaged. It comes with a very nice assortment of very detailed plastic minis, a wide array of colorful tokens, and well drawn tilesets that do a very good job of creating very diverse and modular scenery. IA keeps in line with Star Wars’ established nu-retro pulpy scifi tones, with sleek lines, solid colors, and tech embellishments.

Mechanics

True to form, Fantasy Flight Games has created one of the most confusing rulesets I’ve ever had the (dis)pleasure to agonize through. Thankfully, my group of players is mostly at the point now where the rules are mostly remembered, with certain nuances being covered by the rulebook. However, it did take several months and more than several games being played wrong for us to finally play the game right.

The game plays much like XCOM in terms of combat mechanics, but the actual character progressions functions a lot like SRPGs. There is a high degree of customization, both in character talents/perks and the possible item upgrades. What’s neat, as IA is an asymmetric game, is that these mechanics are in place for both Rebel and Imperial players. Is this completely balanced? No. Is it still fun? Yes, with the caveat that it will take some growing pains to ease into a comfortable flow with the game. 

Story

While a board game, IA is a game nonetheless and still abides by the elemental tetrad. Having the game be based around a pre-existing franchise, especially one as big as Star Wars, offers no shortage of flavor; there are countless species, planets, environments, storylines, movies, factions, and much much more to draw from.

The explicit context of IA is that the players control an elite strike squad of rebel soldiers, tasked with infiltrating high priority Imperial territories and carrying out covert (or not so covert) missions. The story is fairly simple in that regard, but like the original trilogy there’s something to be said for a narrative being straightforward if done well.

Technology

The board game medium is definitely one that works for IA and, due to the asymmetry of it, is almost a necessity. Sure, you could design this as a 4v1 game and put it in Unity, but there’s a special tactile comfort you get with moving your pieces, drawing cards, and rolling dice. To that end, the cardboard tech that IA is comprised of is perfect.