Going on a Saga holiday

The core concept behind Call of Kilforth is a glorified pick-up-and-deliver style of game, but to reduce it to such a thing would be doing it a massive disservice. The world (i.e. a 5×5 grid of location cards) is randomised to start with and the heroes venture out from the center location: Rimeshore Port. From there, the world is your oyster. You can set out in any direction, doing whatever you want to. To help keep the player on some kind of leash, regardless of how loose it may be, each hero has a few different things to give them something to aim for. Each has a race, a class, and most importantly of all, a saga.

The sagas are the cleverest part of the design in my opinion. While you can assign a saga based on a character’s class (which the rules suggest you do on your first play), there’s nothing to stop you throwing caution to the wind and randomising all three things. It’s great because it means not only is the world’s layout different each time, changing where you need to go to collect goods and fulfill quests, but also the way you go about accomplishing things changes too. Your race and class might align to turn you into an intellectual glass cannon, as stupid and charismatic as a steroid-fuelled troll, but a force to be reckoned with when it comes to fisticuffs.

Sagas are essentially mini-books consisting of a few cards, and by collecting assets and rumours on their travels, the players can flip a page and continue their stories, working their way toward a final showdown against the boss of their saga. I say final, but in truth, it’s like fighting the boss before the boss. The Ganondorf before the Ganon, if you will. Completing a saga finale brings the game’s Ancient to the world (or Ancients, plural, in a co-op game), the big bad-ass whose defeat signals the end of the game. It’s a juicy bit of compressed narrative that keeps all the players invested in what’s going on, and while it might not rival the 100+ hour campaigns of bigger games, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Pick up and deliverance

So the story bit is there, the reason for you to want to do anything in the first place, but what’s it actually like to play? It’s a lot of fun as it happens, and immediately familiar if you’ve played some of the Forbidden (Island, Desert) games. The whole idea of spending some of your action points to move to a named or type of location card, to collect a thing or fulfill another thing, it’s comfortable. It’s putting on a favourite sweater and enjoying how it feels. The same goes for flipping a location to its bad side. It’s a nice comparison to use to draw more casual gamers into your new fantasy purchase. “Remember Forbidden Island? That game we played that comes in a tin? Yeah, it’s a bit like that”.

The thing most likely to throw a spanner in the proverbial works is the amount of keywords. They’re everywhere, and not always in one specific place. Luckily, the rulebook does a great job of explaining them, but on your first couple of plays, you’ll want it on hand to refer to. Speaking of the rulebook, while I found it a bit disjointed at times, I have to give them kudos for including a proper index at the back. When I play a game like this where I can pick up the paper copy, look at the back, and it tells me which page to look at, it makes me wonder why more games don’t do it. It’s much nicer than having to download a PDF copy and use ctrl+f to find the thing you’re looking for.

There’s a forced pace to the game, which might not appeal to everyone, but works in its favour for me. Each round of the game is played out over a day and a night phase, and each night forces one of the locations to flip to its Gloom side. Gloom’s bad, unless you particularly enjoy losing HP for ending a day somewhere gloomy, like Eeyore’s basement. Trust me, you don’t want this, especially when you consider that your number of actions for each day is tied to your HP. 4 HP means 4 action points, all of which area precious, especially when there are eight things you want to do each day.

Making the most of your available actions is undeniably the crux of doing well. You’ll be bouncing all over the map, carrying out quests, revealing places, and fighting bad guys, all while trying to collect the things you need to complete said quests before you even think about cracking on through your saga. You’ll collect stuff to help you along the way like items, titles, and spells, but it can still feel like a tall order.

Final thoughts

Right at the top of this review, I mentioned how I like the things Call of Kilforth does and the things it omits. I should put some context around that. As much as I want to think of myself as someone who wants to immerse myself in high fantasy campaigns that take hundreds of hours, the truth is that I’m not that person. The set-up and tear-down times alone can be bad enough before I even think about finding a group to take it all on with, and then wringing the necessary hours out of my already demanding schedule. Hallelujah then, for a game that gives me my fantasy questing fix in a couple of hours, then all goes back in a box that takes up a small space on my shelves. Not forcing me into a huge campaign means if I forget what happened the last time I played, it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference.

That said, there’s a fair amount of terminology to contend with when you first play. Make no mistake, this isn’t as light a crawl as something like Bag of Dungeon (review here). There’s still plenty here to get your teeth stuck into. The rulebook runs to 28 pages (and includes at least one Monkey Island quote, which instantly wins favour with me). Within a couple of plays though you’ll innately know what the game terms mean. For example, ‘Veiling’ a card is the equivalent of ‘tapping’, rotating it 90 degrees to indicate that it’s spent. Once you’re familiar with the basic game, there’s plenty in the box to keep things interesting. Outposts, Galleons, Plots, Ancient Abilities all get thrown into the mix to give you more to think about and to contend with. World of Darkness mode is especially challenging, starting the game with every location on its Gloom side, asking the players to spend gold to bring light to the world.

Co-op isn’t really my thing, so I can’t comment on that too much, but in terms of a competitive and solo game, Call of Kilforth is great. It gives you that fantasy hit without asking too much in return, and it does it with style. As I’ve come to expect from Hall Or Nothing’s games now, the artwork throughout is gorgeous, and the writing is rich with lore and character. Kilforth is clearly a very real place in the minds of Tristan and the people who play his games, so the fan service on offer along with the continued world-building is appreciated. Some might bemoan the lack of a board for their £50 investment, but with similarly-priced competitors like Jaws of the Lion asking you to play on a book, it’s really not a big deal.

Quick, thematic, no-fuss fantasy from a designer who really knows his world. I probably ought to try the other two Kilforth games now…

Review copy kindly provided by Hall or Nothing Productions. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Call of Kilforth (2023)

Design: Tristan Hall
Publisher: Hall or Nothing Productions
Art: The Creation Studio, Jose Del Nido, Mikhail Greuli, Wietze Fopma, Roman Hodek, Ania Kryczkowska, Carlos Villas
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 45-180 mins

The post Call Of Kilforth Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Chip Theory Games, who make Too Many Bones, have a reputation for putting premium games with massive replayability out in the market. Was the hype justified? And maybe more importantly for my readers – is it a good game to get, even if you’re a die-hard Euro gamer? Can you still have fun without farming or running a fishery?

Knucklebones

Too Many Bones? More like Too Many Dice! Jeez, this game has a billion dice in the box. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. It has 130 by my reckoning, but it’s still a lot of cubes to throw. Dice fans, this game is practically pornographic, you’ll love it. Rolling dice, rotating dice, plugging dice into perfectly fitting holes in neoprene playmats – it’s enough to get anyone hot under the collar.

Too Many Bones is an adventure strategy game full of fantasy, steampunk and monsters. Although it’s staged as some kind of grand adventure, RPG-style, in truth the flow of the game is driven through a deck of encounter cards. Yeah, there’s flavour text, and the monsters and Gearlocs (your player characters) have great artwork and feel fleshed-out, but it doesn’t really feel like you’re going anywhere. Each turn of a card feels more like just finding out who’s next for a ride on the pain train.

As you work your way through the encounters, battling creatures and monsters, you unlock abilities in the form of new dice to add to your pool. This part of the game is incredibly satisfying and it’ll really get its hooks in you. Each of the Gearlocs has its own set of custom dice, and the player mats chart the upgrades and skill trees. Winning a fight is pretty cool, but the dopamine release that comes from picking a new dice and plugging it in to its hole, unlocking something new – hoo boy – that’s the good sh*t right there.

Box clever

Too Many Bones is a co-operative game about fighting baddies. It’s a full-on skirmish between the good guys and the bad guys, and it all takes place in a small arena. When I say small, I mean small, there’s only 16 spaces available, arranged in a 4×4 grid. That might sound a bit too compact, but it’s perfect here, because it means no running away. Your movement and placement is paramount in your quest to survive and smite yourself a few monsters. It feels like a fantasy bar fight.

You know, despite what I said about this game not feeling like a proper RPG, the combat and upgrading really feels like a Tactical RPG video game (TRPG). There’s this feeling of choosing how you’re going to upgrade your character, then getting into scraps with increasingly-dangerous monsters, and then upgrading again. Rinse and repeat until you’re ready to square off against the boss monster. In fact, the game stops you from even fighting the bosses – called Tyrants – until you’ve got enough Progress Points (think Levels, in RPGs). This all pulls together just like a video game RPG, with players battling mobs over and over until they feel ready to tackle The Big Nasty. It’s a very satisfying reward loop.

There’s some really clever game design in here to keep things feeling sharp. You can’t just keep smacking little things until you’re overpowered, as there’s a round limit. The Tyrant’s got to shuffle off this mortal coil within a pre-set number of rounds, or you lose. Each Tyrant has a different time limit, which in turn dictates the length of the game. This is great, as you can choose to play a shortish game of an hour, or really make an evening of it and play out an adventure that lasts two or three hours.

The small play area is the other thing which keeps playtime down, and forces your hand to an extent. There’s none of these ‘give them a quick poke then run away’, kiting antics. Take a couple of steps in any direction and you’re likely to feel a wall at your back. At the same time, the close confines mean you can work between yourselves to keep anyone with ranged weapons or healing abilities, behind your tougher Gearlocs.

Abstraction

What really strikes me about Too Many Bones is how it takes this action battle formula, but turns it on its head. If this was a video game, all of the focus and glitz would be poured into the fights. Elaborate graphical effects, combined with Leeroy Jenkins style action and hilarity. The abilities and tech trees you invest are only present in hotbars on the side of the screen, or upgrade screens after fights. In Too Many Bones, the player mats are where your interest lies. The rows of dice tracing your progress from grenadier newbie to lord of explosive stuff, for example, are really satisfying. There’s a big illustration of your chosen Gearloc, and you feel a huge investment in them. Combat, on the other hand, feels very abstract.

There’s no visual extravagance on offer when it comes to the fights themselves. There aren’t even any minis on hand. Absolutely everything from hit points to the biggest, fiercest Tyrant, is represented by poker chips. They’re nice, heavy chips (apart from the health ones, unless you upgrade them), and have pictures on them, but they’re still just poker chips. All of the action, if that’s what you want to call it, is moving piles of chips around a 4×4 grid. A grid that doesn’t even make an attempt to add scenery to proceedings.

It can be quite underwhelming to start playing your first game of Too Many Bones. To see all of the lore, and these amazing characters and baddies, and to have it all transmuted into rolling dice and moving poker chips around. If this sounds like it would be you, I urge you to go into the game with an open mind, and take it as it comes. If you do that, you’re going to have a brilliant time with it. Too Many Bones is very, very good.

Final thoughts

I probably could have just said “Too Many Bones is great, go buy it”, and saved you five minutes of your life. It’s hard to articulate exactly why it’s great. Is it the ridiculously high production values? No, but it’s nice to have. Is it the beautifully refined close-quarters tactical skirmishing? No, but it’s really well done. How about the clever character investment and skill trees? Again, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. What Too Many Bones does so well, however, is to take this individual pieces of silk and filigree and to sew them together like an artisanal dressmaker, with not a seam in sight. The whole is so much more than the sum of its pieces.

My worries about dice imbalances, with my Euro hat on, were completed unfounded. Yes, you can get bum rolls when they land on the bones symbols, but these get invested into the Backup Plan section of your player mat, meaning you can save them up for something really useful. Sometimes your Backup Plan will swing the fight at a crucial point, and you’ll be grateful for every last one of the polished turds.

There are loads of expansions and extra characters available for Too Many Bones, and initially it sounds like the included four Gearlocs and seven Tyrants would get old, quickly. They don’t though, the way different characters interplay, and the different tactics you need for each encounter really keep things feeling fresh and exciting. Even if you just stick to one Gearloc for your first few games, there are so many ways to tailor their skills that no two games will feel the same. There’s a ton or replayability in the base box.

I’m not going to lie to you and say “Even if you don’t like combat and direct interaction, you’re going to love this”, because you probably won’t. It is what it is. But if you enjoy strategy, and if you’re even remotely curious, you’re going to have so much fun with it. Josh and Adam Carlson have created a beautiful, rich, vivid game. A game that eschews all of the RPG cruft of something like Gloomhaven, and boils it down to a dice-flinging explosion of instant action, with a boss fight crescendo which will see your table cheer or groan collectively. Too Many Bones is brilliant. Pretty expensive, but for once, you really get what you pay for.

Review copy kindly provided by Chip Theory Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Too Many Bones (2017)

Designers: Josh J Carlson, Adam Carlson
Publisher: Chip Theory Games
Art: Josh J Carlson, Anthony LeTourneau
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 60-180 mins

The post Too Many Bones Review appeared first on Punchboard.

With each turn you make a decision about where you want to move, and whether you want to explore a new area, or visit a character or point of interest you’ve already uncovered. The app explains what’s happening in the story, with a cool atmospheric soundtrack playing in the background. Along the way you collect items, fulfil side quests for people, and learn more about the world you inhabit. As with the Chronicles of Crime titles before it, Destinies makes heavy use of QR codes. If you ask an NPC for a hint towards your destiny, you scan your card. Want to use an item at a location? Scan the card. It quickly becomes second nature.

Riding your luck

The system for combat and tests in Destinies is really clever. Each player has a board with three tracks on it: intelligence, dexterity and power. Your character begins with wooden markers at several points along each track, and through gaining experience and completing quests, you can move those markers to the left, to lower values. When you roll a number of dice to perform a test, you total their values and compare it to the markers on that track. The number of markers equal to or lower than that value, are the number of successes you make. The item cards you collect along the way can be expended at different times to mitigate bad rolls too.

It’s a really elegant system, and really lets you shape your character to the way you think you want to play them. It keeps the game ticking along at a quick pace, but it does get repetitive. If you don’t mind chucking dice ’til the cows come home though, you’ll be in your element. This streamlined approach runs through the whole game too. The rule book is very easy to read and understand, and it’s a game you can teach to new players in no time at all.

Competitive narrative

Destinies launched on Kickstarter selling itself as a competitive narrative game. It’s a type of game that’s very difficult to get right, with The King’s Dilemma being my favourite example so far. Within each scenario of the game, a story is unfolding, and a world is developing right in front of you. When I first played the game solo, to learn the ropes, I thought this was really cool. I was exploring, unlocking new locations, talking to new people, choosing where to go at my leisure. Playing competitively for the first time, was a different experience.

When the game starts, you know very little about the scenario you’re playing. There’s a couple of people and places to visit and four cardinal directions to start exploring. So what do you do first? You could head north, start exploring, talking to people, hoping to find something to further your quest. But what if there’s nothing relevant that way? What if your opponents headed in a different direction and are already on the right track? I found this frustrating at first, because once someone’s got a head start, it can be hard to overhaul them in Destinies.

However, having played it more, I tried re-framing my expectation of the game, and it really helped. The word ‘narrative’ is the important part here, not competitive. If you go into Destinies with a ‘must win at all costs’ viewpoint, you’re likely to come away disappointed.

Defining expectations

If you can accept the fact that the game is going to be exploratory and vague at times, I think you’ll really enjoy Destinies. It doesn’t hold your hand and say “You need to go west and investigate the old church” right from turn one. You will get hints like that, but they only come by exploring and talking to people. You never know if helping someone who’s asking you for something is going to give you something amazing towards your quest, or something unrelated. Frustrating and annoying at times, that’s just the kind of game it is though.

Once you abandon the competitive mindset, the game starts to become much more enjoyable. Now, I can understand if this sounds like I’m making excuses for the game here. A competitive game that’s best when you’re not being too competitive?! Maybe that’s a fair comment, but the point here is that there’s a really good adventure game waiting to be played. I just personally find that playing it with too much emphasis on the competition can be frustrating. All of that said though, I did play a couple of really tense scenarios where it came right down to the wire for who won.

There are two different solo modes in the box: Explorer and Challenger. I’ve played both, and I far preferred the Explorer option. It’s a game of exploration and doing things in your own time, soaking up the world. It’s not difficult, but it’s great fun. Challenger mode, however, is really tough. There’s time pressure, there are special events happening, and the whole thing feels much more stressful. I lost one scenario twice before I finally cleared it, and I’m not sure I’d have tried a fourth time.

Final thoughts

Destinies is a good game. The minis, components, artwork and app are all really good, and the whole thing feels high-quality from start to end. As I’ve mentioned above though, it’s not going to be a game for everyone. Really competitive players are likely to feel plenty of frustration when things don’t go their way, and it can really expose the luck that encompasses the early part of the game. The luck of starting in the right direction, and talking to the right person. If you can live with that though, or can play and not worry about who wins, you’ll have a great time.

It’s pretty decent solo, especially if you’re looking for something to scratch that RPG-lite itch. I think it’s most fun with two or three players though. You’ll see more of the map, and hear what happens to the other players while they’re off doing their thing. Maybe you’ll hear something to bank for later, a hint or a clue that helps you out. The stories are really good too. They’re not just the tried and tested medieval fantasy tropes, but involved, evolving storylines.

Where Destinies comes alive is in its world-building. It does things that you just couldn’t do without the app. The app allows the world to change around you while you play. Sometimes you’ll start a turn and it’ll tell you that something has happened somewhere, and that you need to update the map accordingly. Then you’re left wondering, “I wonder what I missed there”. In a game with inherently limited replayability, it gives you some impetus to go back and try a scenario again, but maybe with a different character.

Destinies isn’t going to be everyone’s idea of the perfect game, but with the simple setup, easy rules. and clever use of dice, it’s a game that you can teach to anyone. You’ll have a good time for a couple of hours in a rich, detailed fantasy world.

Review copy kindly provided by Lucky Duck Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Destinies (2021)

Designers: Michał Gołębiowski, Filip Miłuński
Publisher: Lucky Duck Games
Art: Karolina Jędrzejak, Magdalena Leszczyńska, Irek Zielinski
Players: 1-3
Playing time: 90-120 mins

The post Destinies Review appeared first on Punchboard.