Project Hail Mary begins with an amnesiac astronaut waking up in a room with two mummified bodies, and needs to remember who he is and what he’s doing. Turns out, he’s on a space station hurtling through space. Through a series of flashbacks we learn that the hero, Ryland Grace, a high school science teacher, is humanities sole hope in what is surely to be a cataclysmic event causing the end of all life on Earth.
If you’ve read Andy Weir’s previous books (The Martian and Artemis), then you’ll be acquainted with his voice. Each of the characters are plucky, pun-ridden, and sassy, no matter the situation. While Weir’s writing style offers puns, jokes, and pop-culture references that inject levity and fun, they’re shoe-horned into characters in high leadership positions facing humanity ending crises, it just feels wrong in the end.
What starts as a space flu stealing the heat from our sun, and expanding to dozens of nearby stars, Project Hail Mary establishes the science that forms the bedrock for the rest of the plot. While the mystical astrophage is fantastical, I like that Weir establishes its properties quickly, then has those properties come back again and again to create unexpected problems for the characters to solve. I also like that it feels like Weir has done his homework, just like in The Martian. The Science feels researched and real, and inspires excitement when a character can take a scientific approach and apply logical steps to their situations.
Project Hail Mary is an approachable hard Sci-Fi, first encounter tale, as it’s filled with optimism. Curiosity and excitement are the main emotions the heroes feel and display, which is great for someone like myself who doesn’t read a lot of Sci-Fi in the first place. I got caught up in the adventure and discovery that Project Hail Mary promised, and I was enraptured when Blip-A first appeared. It never got mired down in fear, war, or politics, as many Sci-Fi books do. Rocky very quickly turned into a snarky human-esqe character instead of an alien with its own personality and culture, I nevertheless enjoyed the ride.
The parts that felt contrived were Rocky’s magical material that seemed to be able to fit any situation. On the other hand, I do like that its qualities came back to bite the characters in the ass. Also, once Grace remembered enough about his missions, I felt the flashbacks became unnecessary. It was establishing some of the character qualities that Grace no longer exhibited in the present story. He’s a coward, but he preforms death-defying EVAs without a moment’s hesitation. He’s selfish, but he very quickly sacrifices himself to save his friend. I felt the flashbacks went on just a little too long and near the end, I found myself really wanting to return to the present story.
I enjoyed Project Hail Mary. It was a fun, optimistic adventure, and I recommending it despite my criticisms, especially to anyone who enjoyed the Martian. I don’t think Project Hail Mary will convert those who bounced off Weir’s previous books, but for returning fans, this adventure tickled my love of discovery and was an incredibly fun read.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never been good at fighting games. I barely competent enough to beat M. Bison on easy mode while playing Street Fighter II Turbo on my Super Nintendo back in the day, but my button mashing sister still had a decent chance to beat me. I knew how to do a hadouken, but never grasped the combos of any other characters. Try as I might, executing Mortal Combat Fatalities has always eluded me.
As a teenager, my friends and I got heavily invested in some anime focused fighting games, like Naruto: Ultimate Ninja,Naruto: Clash of Ninja, or Dragon Ball Z: Budokai and Budokai 2. Fun fact, I’ve never watched or read the Dragon Ball series, but I have a pretty good grasp on the story, just from playing the myriad of video games. As an adult, my fighting game of choice has always been Super Smash Brothers. As for skill at these games, I exist in a weird state, where I’m better than my friends, but the few times I seek out other enthusiasts, I get utterly crushed.
All of this to say, I have enthusiasm for fighting games, but no expertise. It’s a genre of game that I’ve dabbled in, but never submerged myself in.
How to Play
Guilty Gear -Strive- is a two player, head-to-head fighting game featuring characters from the titular video game. Each character has their own persistent ability, and a set of 10 unique cards that are combined with 30 base cards, that makes each character deck unique.
The game board has a main track in the centre, and each player places their character card in one of the specially marked slots. During the game, players can choose to move forward and backward along the X axis, putting space between themselves and their opponent, or, closing the gap for hand-to-hand combat. That character card also shows what ability that character has, and if they move into Exceed mode, the card is flipped over showing a more powerful effect for the rest of the game.
Each basic card in the deck has two parts, an attack, and a boost. If the attack is used, the stats down the left side of the card dictate how the attack can be used (range, damage, etc). The boost prepares the card to be used on future attacks.
The game begins with the randomly determined first player drawing 5 cards, and the second player drawing 6. Then the game is ready to start. On a turn, a player takes one action, then ends their turn. If a player did not strike for any reason, they also get to draw a card. So let’s talk about what actions are available.
As a basic action, a player can choose to move any number of slots on the board. If they do, they need to generate force for every spot they wish to move. Force is generated by discarding cards from your hand, or from the gauge area. Each basic card is worth 1 force, while ultra attacks (denoted by the red banners) are worth 2 force. You also need to pay an extra force if you choose to move through your opponent. Many of the cards also have movement as part of their effect. Advance and retreat keywords will have to move toward or away from your opponent, pushing and pulling will move your opponent away from or toward you.
Striking is how you deal damage to your opponent, and ultimately, win the game. When you strike, you choose one of your cards, and place it face down. Your opponent must respond, by playing an attack of their hand, or, by choosing to ‘wild swing’, places the top card of their deck face down in response. Both players then reveal their attacks. The faster attack (higher speed) is resolved first (ties go to the attacker). Determine how much damage is being dealt (attacker’s power vs. defender’s armour), and adjust the health gauge accordingly. When any damage is dealt, you check to see if the damage done is higher than the opponent’s guard, and if it is, the opponent is stunned. A stunned character doesn’t get to counter-attack.
Any successful strike card gets placed into the gauge area, building up towards ultimate attacks. In addition to normal strikes, you can also choose to use an EX Attack, which has you play two cards of the same name face down. After the reveal, one of the cards is immediately discarded, and the remaining card gets a +1 to all its stats (except range).
Another basic action is Boosting, which allows you to play a card from your hand, to your Boost area. Boosts with lighting bolts are instant effects and are consumed immediately. Otherwise, the boost is considered ‘continuous’, and the effects of the card will buff your next attack. After the next strike where the boost is used, it’s discarded from your play area. It’s important to note that whether you hit or not, used boosts are discarded. Make your shots count!
Some boosts also give you the option to ‘cancel’, which lets you spend one card from your gauge area to take another action instead of ending your turn. You play multiple cancels in a single turn, if you have the gauge to pay for it.
All the actions I’ve talked about up to now will drain cards from your hand. The Change Cards action allows you to spend force to draw new cards. Discarding ultimate abilities, or cards from your gauge area are great ways to restock your hand. Alternatively, you can simply Prepare, which allows you to draw a card. In case you forgot, this would end your turn without striking, giving you a second card as well.
LET’S ROCK!
Review
Guilty Gear (the video game) has been slick as hell for the better part of two decades. With game after game of iconic characters, tight gameplay, and the slick visuals of the 2D/3D style, it’s the kind of game that grabbed onto a fanatical fan base and never let go.
If you’re not in the know, Guilty Gear -Strive- The Board Game is powered by Level99Games Exceed system, making this the 7th season of Exceed. I have no prior experience playing Exceed, but now that I’ve had a taste, I’m thirsting for more.
While the past seasons have adapted other fighting game staples, such as BlazBlu and the king of them all, Street Fighter, among other, less expected properties, like Shovel Knight. One thing to say for sure, if you’re a video game and anime fanatic, Level 99 Games is making products just for you.
If you’re like me and look at ‘7 seasons’ and feel a pit in your stomach, fearful of the investment that it would take to get ‘caught up’, there’s no need to fret. Cross-season play is fully compatible, and while the graphic design of each of the cards is tailor-made for the set it belongs to, they all conform to the same system. Curious if Shovel Knight could beat up Chun-Li? This is the way to find out! I don’t know if I would recommend mixing all the seasons together, however, as each season features its own twist, and the disjointed graphic design of the cards can be a bit jarring. But still, it’s nice to know that the option to do so exists.
I want to get my complaints out of the way first, which mainly have to do with the art on the cards. The portraits on the cards look like blurry screen-grabs from the video game, which don’t translate well to the printed media. The wide sweeping visual effects make sense and look slick when they’re paired with actual movement on a screen and timely sound effects, but when a wide green arc is static on a card, it just looks unimpressive. Some of the caracter models on the cards look like a blurry, muddled mess, and I feel like this is an aspect that could have really been improved on. To compare it to a completely different game, Disney’s Villainous feature cards with scenes right out of the films that those characters come from, but the art has been recreated in a dynamic style and framed appropriately for the medium of a playing card. The lacklustre character art is particularly frustrating, considering the source material is well-known for a stunning visual style.
That’s pretty much my only critique, because this game SLAPS! I’ve heard praise for the Exceed fighting system before, but I regret not getting into this game earlier. If you have a gaming partner who likes head-to-head combat games, pick up Exceed!
I wish I had a deeper knowledge of what came before Guilty Gear -Strive-, but from what I can tell this season’s twist is the cancelling, which is a mechanic I have a hard time imagining living without. The excitement of chaining actions together to do something wildly unexpected, at the expense of your gauge, is delicious. It’s exciting and visceral, harkening back to the adrenaline fuelled video game. I don’t know how Sol and Ky play on the screen, but on the table, Sol cancels into bone shattering powerful attacks, while Ky excels at dancing around his opponent. I can’t wait to explore how all the other characters interact with each other!
The gameplay of Guilty Gear -Strive- is fast and tactical. On your turn, take an action, then play passes over to the other player. Your hand will dwindle as your gauge grows, then, after a flurry of activity, players are depleted, and need to refresh their battle plans. Rarely does everything go according to plan, but when you manage to land a strong blow because your opponent was caught flat-footed with no armour cards, it feels utterly satisfying. A poorly planned Strike turns into an opportunity to punish your opponent, and stunning or taking the advantage does a lot to make you feel like you’re in control of duel of fates.
If you’re coming from the video game world, obviously some things had to be stripped out. There is no mechanic for smashing your opponents out of the ring, and air juggling is (thankfully) absent. Reducing the mechanics makes for a easier and faster game to play, one that is inviting for those who are used to only pushing buttons and letting the computer work out the timings. Level 99 Games’ Exceed system is a natural fit and has been adaped well to Guilty Gear -Strive-.
As I said above, if you have a gaming partner who enjoys head-to-head games, Guilty Gear -Strive- raises the bar for dueling games. Doubly so if you have any love or history with 2D fighting games, or the Guilty Gear franchise itself. The demo box is available for free (plus shipping) from Level 99 Games website if you want a taste of the action. I can’t wait to see what surprises each of the upcoming characters holds. Level 99 Games excels at making fun games (like Bullet❤️ or Millennium Blades), and with just this demo deck, they’ve converted me into a believer of the Exceed system. When Guilty Gear -Strive- hits my table, I put on the electric heavy rock soundtrack my hear immedately begins pumping. Win or lose, I’m always clammoring for a rematch!
One of the things I enjoy most about board games is their tactile nature. And nothing feels more tactile than laying some thick cardboard tiles. There’s a lot I love about games, but give me some tiles and an efficiency puzzle, and I’ll be happy until the cows come home.
A lot of my favourite games feature tile laying in some respect. Isle of Skye, Castles of Burgundy, Calico, Patchwork, Barenpark, I could go on and on. I just love the progression and sense of accomplishment that you get by building something in most of these games. So how does Akropolis stack up? Read on to find out!
How to Play
Akropolis, designed by Jules Messaud and published by Gigamic, is a tile laying game where you’re trying to build up a settlement. The game starts you off with a special starter tile, which has 4 hexagons arranged in a Y shape. A blue star sits in the centre and 3 white buildings surround it.
The rest of the tiles are city tiles. These tiles consist of 3 hexagons in a triangle pattern. Each hexagon on these tiles depict one of the 6 buildings types in this game. The blue buildings are housing districts, which want to be adjacent. The yellow market buildings detest competition, and must not be adjacent to any other market. The red barracks must have along the edge of your city, while the purple towers must be completely surrounded. The green have no requirements, but there’s very few of them. Finally, the white buildings offer no value in terms of points, but if you manage to build over the white buildings, you get a piece of stone which is a valuable resource. To add some complexity, each building has an alternate scoring method that I won’t mention here.
The city tiles are stacked based on the number of players (N+1), and any remaining tiles form the market row. A turn in Arkopolis is as simple as can be. Take a tile from the market row, and place it in your city. Now, you do have to take the left most tile, but you can choose to pay one of your stone to take a tile further down the line if you so wish. Placing the tile in your city is fairly unrestricted. Either place it so at least one edge is touching another edge, or, you can build on top of existing tiles, provided the tile placed on the higher level is sitting on three hexes from at least two different tiles.
Some of these buildings depict stars, which add to your score multiplier for that colour. At the start of the game, you only have 1 blue star, meaning that every other colour starts with a times 0 multiplier! You need to acquire the right buildings to earn the right to score any points!
If the market row gets picked down, so there’s only one tile remaining, you refresh it with one of the tile stacks you set aside earlier. If there is one tile remaining and no stacks left, the game ends. Each player calculates their score, and the player with the most points is the winner.
Review
It’s not something I admit freely, but I usually don’t like learning games from other people. I like to have the rule book in my hand and be the one to teach the table how to play a new game. I get cagey that an important rule gets missed, or that some exception gets missed. So when I met up with Ryan Rau of Mista Rau’s Gaming, and he taught me how to play Akropolis without ever touching the rule book, I was a bit nervous. And when he proclaimed that there were so few restrictions on tile placement, I was dubious.
But I’m happy my fears were unfounded! Akropolis is as simple as can be. Pick a tile from the row, place it in or on your city, and score at the end of the game. Get stone when you overbuild white buildings, and use the stone as a resource to jump the building queue to get the tiles you actually want. It’s clean, easy, and quick to get started.
The production on Akropolis is no slouch. The cardboard is thick, which makes the tiles feel great to hold, and gives your city a nice elevation when you start to reach that third level. The insert is just folded cardboard, but highly functional, holding all the tiles in place. There’s not a lot of art to talk about beyond the colourful cover on the box, the tiles just depict a bird’s eye view of little clusters of buildings. With the thickness and size of the tiles, your city sprawls out and up in a very satisfying way, like a loaf of sourdough bread.
I love building my city up, turning useless tiles into multipliers of helpful tiles. Yes, there are only 6 green tiles in the whole game, but by putting a green tile on level 3, suddenly I’ve extended my scoring opportunities for this game. It feels dynamic, as you need to hope the right tile comes out at the right time, and while it’s nice if the other colours on the tiles work for you, worst case scenario they serve as the bedrock for another tile to be placed on top of it.
One of the key aspects of Akropolis is that you cannot do everything. Each round you’ll look over the supply of tiles and want to take most of them into your city. You’re forced to niche yourself and while it would be great to hate draft a tile away from your neighbour, will denying them points make up for the points you’re missing out on by not taking the tile that you really wanted? The tiles that contain stars are coveted by everyone, after all, it doesn’t matter how many colours you have in your city if they’re all multiplied by 0.
The verticality and multipliers combined in Akropolis unlock amazing scoring potentials. Plopping a garden down on level 3, when you have 6 stars, feels amazing. Likewise, placing the perfect blue tile on the third level that connects your two separated blue districts into one massive scoring opportunity feels excellent.
At 2 players, Akropolis can get a little cutthroat. The hate drafting aspect is higher, as you only have one other city to evaluate when you’re considering which tile to take. At 4 players, you’ll only be tangentially aware of what your opponents are doing. You’ll be much more concerned with the flow of stone at higher player counts. When there are 3 players taking tiles between each of your turns, and the offer being drained nearly every time, you’ll be much more willing to drop 4 pieces of stone to ensure you get the tile you want
I am absolutely enthralled by the experience of playing Akropolis. Every move in this game fills me with immense satisfaction and excitement. The strategic placement of tiles, the exhilarating feeling of replacing useless tiles with ones that generate a plethora of points, and the sheer joy of denying your rivals the stars they have been waiting for throughout the game – it’s all incredibly gratifying. In fact, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Akropolis becomes a cherished favourite among tile laying games. It’s a game that captivates me, and I can’t recommend it enough!
If you’re looking for something to compare Akropolis to, it feels like NMBR9 mixed with Kingdomino. If you like either or both of those games, then I’m sure Akropolis will be a hit for you!
I’m at a weird inflection point on my board game hobby. Sometimes, I acquire a game, then, after some time passes, I completely forget how I acquired that game. Such is the case for Lost Cities: Rivals. I own it, but I have no recollection on how I managed to come into ownership of this game.
I’ve already talked about my love for Lost Cities by Reiner Knizia. The two player game is one that I adore, and after playing the four player board game, I was quite hesitant to give another Lost Cities branded back a shot. Much like the IP games of old, I assume spin-offs are bad and are using my adoration of an established property to catch my interest. So let’s take a look at what makes Lost Cities: Rivals tick.
How to Play
In Lost Cities: Rivals, players are embarking on expeditions to distant locations, but instead of playing cards from a hand, they’re auctioning off a pool of cards instead. To set up the game, the deck is broken into 4 equal piles, and everyone gets an equal pile of money. Then, everyone receives 2 wager cards, and the game can begin.
On your turn, your choices are to either reveal the top card of the deck and add it to the prize pool, or, call an auction by offering at least one coin. The auction goes around and around the table until everyone bows out. The last player pays their coins into the supply and takes their winnings.
Much like the original Lost Cities, cards are placed in a tableau in front of you. Cards of the same colour form stacks, and must be in ascending order, with the wager cards at the top. Once you place a card, you can’t place cards of a lower number in that expedition.
When one of the decks of cards runs out, play is interrupted. All the coins in the supply are divided amongst players equally, then, play resumes. When the final card from the final deck is reveals, the game immediately ends.
To score, simply count the footprints shown on all the cards of an expedition. If you have any wager cards, those will multiply your score (the first wager card doubles the score, the second triples, and so on). In addition, if you managed to get 4 number cards of an expedition, you get a bonus 8 points, but that bonus is not eligible to be multiplied. Any leftover coins are worth a point each, and the player with the most points is the winner!
Review
I have such a love/hate relationship with bidding games, but I can’t deny that Renier Kenizia knows how to make some fun games. I won’t start by comparing Lost Cities: Rivals to Ra or Medici, but, I’ll start by comparing it to its namesake, Lost Cities.
Lost Cities: Rivals comes in a small box with a regular sized deck of cards. Gone are the tarot size cards from the two player version that features a panoramic expedition as you ascend in the cards. Now, that panoramic art is still there, but it’s quite lost on these smaller cards. It’s functional, but not necessarily attractive. Considering that Lost Cities: Rivals has become a favourite pub game, I’m thankful for the portability.
I always go into my games of Lost Cities: Rivals with the strategies that I’ve honed over dozens of games of Lost Cities, and I generally end up doing poorly for it. My loss aversion kicks in, and I refuse to start an expedition on a 5 or a 6 because I feel like I need the lower numbers to make an expedition ‘worth it’. One rule I often forget is that there is no penalty for starting an expedition, so, other than blocking yourself off from the lower numbers, there’s no reason not to skip the lower numbers.
Further to that, the cards don’t score based off their number anymore, giving much greater importance to getting the 8, 9, and 10 to do well. Instead, the lower half of cards give 1 point, while the upper half of cards earn you 2 points. A 6 and a 10 are effectively equal, for the purposes of scoring. Again, my tendency to fall back on the original Lost Cities strategies do me a disservice here. I don’t need to overspend just because the 9 and 10 are up for bid, it’s only 4 points that I’m ‘giving up’.
The final place where my Lost Cities experience is failing me, is the expectation that I’ll acquire roughly half the cards in the game. It should be obvious, with more players, the fewer cards I’ll take. But my control over which cards I can acquire is quite a bit more chaotic. I can’t hold cards in my hand and wait for the lower values anymore. If someone else starts an auction, and there are cards that I want in that prize pool, I have to bid on them, and put them into my expedition right now.
Almost every card will be valued differently by every player. Thanks to the starting wager cards, and the restrictions on only being able to play higher numbers in your expeditions, as the game goes on, you’ll have a prize pool that two players fight over for very different reasons, and that feels exciting. Add to that, the winner of an auction gets to discard one card that they don’t take from the prize pool, giving you control to remove cards that you can’t take into your tableau, but don’t want other players profiting from.
The gameplay is dead simple. On your turn, either push your luck and add to the prize pool, or, call an auction. If you’re flush with cash, adding cards to the display sweetens the pot that you can guarantee that you’ll take, even if it costs you everything. If you’re strapped for cash, calling an auction with a single coin is a great way to drain the coins from the more wealthy players, assuming there’s anything in that prize pool that they want.
The ebb and flow of cash feels exciting, too. As the current deck of cards gets slim, the players low on cash are quick to flip the cards, giving more prizes to those who chose to bide their time. It makes me cackle with glee when I manage to win 5 or 6 cards with only 4 coins, while others need to spend 7 coins to win only 4 cards. I’m not saying I often win, I just love the feeling that comes when you score a good deal.
I’ve only played Lost Cities: Rivals at 4 players, and it does excellently at that player count. I imagine that 3 works fairly well, but I suspect 2 players is not where this game shines. Heck, at 2 players, you should be playing the 2 player specific version of Lost Cities, which you can actually do with Lost Cities: Rivals by removing one set of the 2–5 cards of each colour. Two games in one!
Lost Cities: Rivals wasn’t an immediate hit with me, but the more I play it, the more I enjoy it. Lost Cities: Rivals needs time to settle in your mind, especially if you’re constantly comparing it to its predecessors. It’s in no way better than RA, but it is much easier to teach and play in situations where RA isn’t an appropriate choice. I think the more stiff competition comes from For Sale by Stefan Dorra. Both are very portable, and both are really fun auction games. Lost Cities: Rivals does take a bit longer to play, but it also feels more interactive.
As I mentioned above, there are some significant changes from base Lost Cities, but you don’t need to have experience with that game to enjoy Lost Cities: Rivals. The inclusion of auctions into the Lost Cities gameplay isn’t something that I would have expected to work, or for me to enjoy, yet here I am. I quite enjoy playing Lost Cities: Rivals while on a patio. It’s a breezy, quick game full of tension and excitement. And what more can I ask for?
Full Disclosure: A copy of Aethermon: Collect was provided by the publisher for review
Introduction
I vividly remember the summer of 1999. I was 8 years old, my grandparents were taking me and my sister on a weeks long road trip across Manitoba, and down to South Dakota to attend a family reunion. At the outset, my mom gave us $100 each in spending money. At the first stop, I spent half my cash on Pokémon Red, and throughout the tip, the other half on triple A batteries for my Game Boy pocket. I don’t even remember why I wanted Pokémon, I just saw Charizard on the cover and felt inexplicably drawn to it (oh geez, a 8-year-old drawn to a fire breathing dragon, who would have guessed it.)
That summer, was my introduction to Pokémon. With dozens of hours in the back seat of my grandparent’s Toyota Corolla, I immersed myself into the world of Pokémon. And right from the outset, I was hooked. Charmander and I spend endless afternoons crawling through the world. With no friends to confer with, or strategy guides to consult, my experience with Pokémon was entirely trial and error. I remember levelling up a Pikachu to level 48, trying to make it evolve. Grinding against monsters half it’s level, the elation every time it levelled up, the anticipation, hoping against hope that this time, THIS TIME will be the level at which Pikachu evolves, only to have my hopes dashed as the battle screen gave way to the over world sprite, time and time again (for those who don’t know, Pikachu requires a special item to evolve).
What I’m trying to say is, I have sincere nostalgia for the olden days of Pokémon. So when I saw the art for Aethermon: Collect, I couldn’t help but be attracted to it. The kids in the forest, with magical mons by their side, I was ready to submerge myself into another adventure.
How to Play
Aethermon: Collect is a fast set collection game. All the cards are laid out on a grid, then players take a turn moving the acrylic group marker up and down the rows and columns of cards, collecting the one monster you choose to stop on. Around and Around the game goes until either all players cannot collect an Aethermon in succession, or in the cooperative version, any one player fails to collect an Aethermon on their turn.
Each Aethermon has a value, and many belong to families. Your score at the end of the game is simply the sum of the Aethermon you collect, with a bonus being applied if you managed to collect all the monsters in a single family.
A 4 player cooperative setup
Review
As I mentioned in the introduction, what pulled me into Aethermon: Collect was the art direction. The cover of the two pals, their robot and dog in the forest, ready for a grand adventure, had me sold from the start. The promotional images of the Aethermon themselves on Aethermon Studios website had me absolutely hooked on this franchise.
Aethermon: Collect itself comes in a small box, about as wide as a smart phone, a touch more than half as long, but deep enough to hold the 74 cards with room to spare. It’s travel sized for your convenience!
Everything in Aethermon: Collect is composed of these 60 mm square cards. From the 48 Aethermon cards (6 monsters of 8 elemental families), to the 12 artefacts, to the 14 cards that comprise the ‘rule book’. While I appreciate the convenience of portable size, I strongly dislike shuffling square cards. Furthermore, I harbour significant discontent towards the rules being put onto 14 double-sided cards. It would be far preferable if the rules were presented in a compact booklet instead.
Aethermon: Collect features both a cooperative mode, and a competitive mode, both play modes feature players moving a shared pawn along a grid of cards. In the competitive mode, players are given 2 artefacts, which they can use to break the rules and give themselves a surprise advantage. Players are trying to collect Aethermon and accrue the most points. If you happen to collect all the Aethermon of a family, their points are doubled. It feels painfully straightforward, where the only interesting thing that happens is when someone uses their artefact, and the winner is just the one who used their artefact most effectively.
The Co-op game feels less like a game, and more of a puzzle. Kind of like a Sudoku; the optimal path could be deduced before the first turn is ever taken. Depending on how strongly other people inject their input on other player’s turn, this could be a major problem. However, if you’re not of the min-max persuasion, then there are some fun moments to be had as the game slowly whittles down the choices available to you. You’ll have moments where you’ll take Matchka, which allows Bigfoot to take Fizzig, finishing that family, then Otter flies to the far side of the board to get Wahblaze, then Bear can collect Eleplant which is right next to it. It never makes you feel clever, but there is joy in finding the happy accident moments where everyone managed to get what they wanted.
Whether you play competitive or cooperative, the gameplay is lighting quick and straightforward. I would have no hesitation to introduce this game to my nieces, or use it as a quick casual game to kick off game night, maybe while waiting for others to arrive. Maintaining the grid of cards can be a bit of a challenge, though. If some cards get knocked askew, it can be tricky to know if they’re in one column or the other, which is a major gameplay consideration. I did see in the crowdfunding notes that they’re making a playmat available, but I’m not sure how that will be combined with the box. As with all crowdfunding projects, we’ll need to wait and see.
The Aethermon themselves should be the star of the show. They have dynamic poses, each one has a short biography on the back, and the character designs are top-notch. Their elements mean nothing in the gameplay of Aethermon: Collect, they’re just a way to shrink the deck for the 2 and 3 player game, which is kind of disappointing, honestly. It’s obvious that a lot of work and love and talent went into designing each of these creatures, which then to have them relegated to being functionally nothing but numbers and set collection bonuses, I’m left wanting so much more.
A lot of my negative feelings come from my own heightened sense of anticipation. I wanted so much more than Aethermon: Collect itself is supposed to be. On its own, Aethermon: Collect feels like a missed opportunity. I’m left praying that Aethermon: Collect is just an introduction to a franchise, an amuse bouche to whet the appetites before the real products start to roll out. And I know there is more on the horizon! The game includes a teaser card, promising a Rougelike RPG coming soon, with more details on the Aethermon website, and I’m so eagerly anticipating whatever comes next for Aethermon. I adore the art direction Aethermon Studios has established, and I will eagerly snap up whatever comes next.
