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.

Those staunchly in the ‘technology has no place in board games’ camp will baulk at the Chronicles of Crime series. Despite having a board and a load of cards, the game is unplayable without the app. The app is the game. The counter-argument I’ve seen is for not using an app is ‘but Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective did it with a book‘, and while that’s true, there’s plenty that Chronicles does, that a book never could. If you’re tech-dubious, read on, you might find your mind made up one way or the other by the time you reach the bottom of this review.

QR Cuties

The entire game of Chronicles of Crime: 1900 is in the app. Once you’ve installed it and started the scenario you want to play (four scenarios are included at the time of writing), the app takes control. It’ll tell you to place a location card and some people cards, tell you who the people are, and what’s happening in the story you find yourself dropped into.

Gameplay revolves around scanning QR codes on cards. If you want to go to a location, scan its QR code. Once you’re there, you can scan more codes to talk to people, ask about objects and clues you’ve found (all by scanning more QR codes), or even jump into a VR-style 3D crime scene. When you’re whirling around the crime scenes, you’ll see clues which you can claim and add to your board, giving you more avenues to pursue your Columbo-style “Just one more thing” questioning.

You’re a journalist with a Jonah-J-Jameson-style editor, who’s got a stick up his backside. He’s obsessed with crime reporting, presumably in the absence of a 1900s L’Homme araignée. Every action you take eats precious minutes off the clock, and the deadlines he sets you can get pretty tight.

Vive la difference

If you’ve played the previous Chronicles of Crime games, there might be a few differences from what you’re used to. There are escape room puzzles this time, stacked face-down in an ever-tempting pile. You need to combine them with other cards and clues you’ll uncover during your investigations to drive the story forwards. Not everyone is going to like these, but I do. It’s another layer of fun, and a slight change to the formula which stops things from getting stale.

The flip-side of these very specific puzzle cards – figuratively speaking – is that they’re one-and-done. In the Chronicles of Crime original game every card was reusable in official and fan-made mysteries. I would say I don’t like this change in ethos to make something single-use, but in all honesty I’ve never downloaded a fan-made mystery, so it makes no difference to me.

The biggest difference I’m happiest with is the absence of the team you work with. In the original game you had people like hackers and forensic experts you could ask for help, and in 1400 these were replaced by family members. They were the weakest part in my opinion, and it felt unnecessary to have to figure out who you ask about what, especially when you get stuck. It broke the flow of the game for me. Replacing this mechanism in 1900 is a puzzle editor who works at your newspaper, who’ll tell you if you have all the cards you need for a puzzle, and can even give you hints. It makes that game much more approachable to non-gamers.

History mystery

The most important things in these games are the mysteries you’re trying to solve. As in the previous games, the story-telling is really good. The characters are just that – characters. Not quite caricatures, but not far off. It’s important that these characters are so memorable, because you’ll often end up with a cast of 15 or so to remember. The mysteries are very solvable too. Not easy, not in any sense of the word, but less obtuse than some of the previous cases.

In the original game there were a couple of cases I did really badly in, because I missed one thing at a crime scene, or didn’t ask a particular question. That all seems to have been tightened up and moulded into a more friendly package in Chronicles of Crime: 1900. Clues in crime scenes seem easier to find for a start. I don’t mean a day-glo knife engraved with “Pierre’s favourite stabber” levels of obvious, just a little clearer.

Final thoughts

Chronicles of Crime: 1900 is my favourite in the series. The changes are small when you compare them to the previous games, but they make for a better game. You’ll get the ‘purists’ who tell you that they should be difficult, and while I don’t mind a tough case to crack, there are differing ways in which a game can be difficult. Difficulty because you need to pay attention to the story is a good thing, difficulty because you missed something obscure but crucial, that’s not good.

There’s a tiny nagging part of my brain which is telling me “You’re not better at solving mysteries, this game is just easier than the previous ones”, but you know what? Screw that part of my brain. I had fun playing 1900. I solved mysteries and the game made me feel clever. Sure, in one case three different people told me I should speak to the police about a particular thing, but that’s precisely what I meant above. It’s much more difficult to miss something important. The game made me feel clever, and that’s what a good mystery game should do. Not batter you over the head with your own stupidity.

If you’ve never played a Chronicles of Crime game before, I’d recommend starting with this one, Chronicles of Crime: 1900. It feels more refined, and loses the fussiness of the four ‘helpers’ from the first game. If you don’t think you’ll like an app-driven game, give it a go. The one big advantage these games have, is that the publishers can add new cases to the app all the time. You can’t do that with a book. I had a great time with 1900, and if you’re into murder mysteries, you’ll love it.

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

Chronicles of Crime: 1900 (2021)

Designers: David Cicurel, Wojciech Grajkowski
Publisher: Lucky Duck Games
Art: Matijos Gebreselassie, Karolina Jędrzejak, Mateusz Komada, Katarzyna Kosobucka, Aleksandra Wojtas
Players: 1-4
Playing time: 60-90 mins

The post Chronicles of Crime: 1900 Review appeared first on Punchboard.