Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns was pitched to me as if Mass Effect had a board game baby. What a hook! My interest was immediately roused, but I was also skeptical. Comparing your game to a critical juggernaut like Mass Effect is quite the gamble; if it fails to deliver on the rich narrative that made Bioware’s space opera such a beloved experience among millions of players, myself included, then you’re setting everyone up for disappointment.
The longer, more technical description of Rogue Angels is that it’s a cooperative sci-fi legacy game containing a strong narrative with multiple paths, tactical combat with fluent turns, action management and asymmetric abilities. If that description catches your attention, read on as I detail my experience with the first couple missions.
The preview box I received contained 3 characters to whet my appetize (over 20 characters are promised to be included in the full game). Players assume the role of a rag-tag crew of freelancers or mercenaries as they traverse the stars and interact with various characters and factions. Missions can vary from gun blazing all-out battles, to stealthy subterfuges. As each mission progresses, players may be forced to make choices that directly impacts how their story develops.
The introductory mission has players escaping a hanger as they’re being hunted by guards of the Hellfire faction. The mission is broken into small chunks, giving players room to explore each of the main mechanics of Rogue Angels one-at-a-time before submerging themselves into the system. This method offers the person tasked with teaching the rules a very easy on-ramp to the system. The introduction goes as far as to take away all the players equipment at the start so no one gets overwhelmed by the myriad of options their cards present.
The mission begins by simply moving a single character adjacent to a point-of-interest, and continues by having other players interact with a door and a console. Interacting with objects, like trying to pick the lock on a door, or hack into a console, is achieved by drawing tokens out of a bag, and trying to match 3 colours together. This may take several actions as tokens of the wrong colour are returned to the bag. Finally, the mission gives you all your equipment back, and introduces enemies. This has players managing interacting, attacking, and moving simultaneously. At the same time, players are managing the scripted behaviour of enemies. Finally, players have arrived at the full Rogue Angels experience.
The core of Rogue Angels gameplay is the card action system; each card has a cost, and when you play a card for the action, you slot it into the appropriate spot under your player board. At the end of each of your turns, you ‘rest’, which slides all your action cards one slot to the left. Any cards that happen to fall off the track are returned to your hand and are able to be used again.
In addition to playing cards to the action row, most cards allow you to roll dice to accent your action. The die can boost the listed effect of the card, regenerate your shields, or offer you extra movement. Initially I was worried about the potential for bad die rolls to screw me out of achieving victory, but in Rouge Angels, dice are only ever positive; they always enhance your card actions. In some situations you may be really hoping to get a specific benefit, but the base effect(s) of your card will always trigger, and that’s a really nice feeling. No critical misses here!
One more aspect to the card play is some cards can gain even further benefits based on the personality of the one the wields it. As your characters go through the campaign and make choices, they’ll gain personality tokens. These personality tokens can be played to enhance a card action, and can change how a card functions significantly.
Rogue Angels is quite forgiving. Should you have multiple potential targets during an action, you get to roll any applicable die, see exactly how well you did, then get to decide who you want to target. The gameplay is very flexible.
The Rogue Angels rulebook is extremely intimating, clocking in at 44 pages long. I found that there are several pages of examples, walking you through how every action works and covering many of the edge cases that we experienced during the first few games. It was a lot of pages to get through, but I found a fairly straightforward rule-set underneath.
The other (massive) book involved is the Campaign book. At the time of writing the campaign has 8 missions, and is already over 100 pages long. Every mission has several checkpoints and updates where the stated goal may suddenly change, or you and your players are forced to react to an unexpected event. It makes for a lot of reading, but once you get past the initial shock factor of just how many pages exist for this game, there’s a well executed system for progressing the mission without interrupting gameplay too dramatically.
My initial impressions of Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Sun is that it’s a deep game – much deeper than I initially expected. I can tell that designer Emil Larson LOVES the universe that he has created, going as far as to create a Wiki to aid the players in submerging themselves in the lore. The campaign book is already over 100 pages long and filled with story and dialogue. The full version of Rogue Angels is advertised to have a spiral bound book containing a large number of maps, making the game fast to set up.
While playing Rogue Angels I kept thinking about Gloomhaven. While I’m not proclaiming that this is going to be the next Gloomhaven, the best way I can describe Rogue Angels is if Gloomhaven and Mass Effect had a board game baby, this would be it. If you know either (or even better, both) of these games, you’ll know that this is high praise.
It’s difficult to tell just from the demo missions I played, but I do have very high hopes for the story and legacy aspects. All the groundwork has been laid for the consequences and call-backs that made Mass Effect so popular. I would love to see the decisions we made early in the campaign return and affect players later in the game. The systems seems to be in place for this to happen, but I didn’t experience any payoffs during my short playthrough. That being said, I have only scratched the surface of what Rogue Angels has in store for it’s players.
I played Rogue Angels solo. While there is a lot of reading, the action stays on the table for the bulk of the playtime. It’s quite easy to manage three different characters when playing solo, and I would recommend playing multiple characters, as each one is quite different and has wildly different strengths and weaknesses. The enemy AI is straightforward, and I enjoyed seeing the different stratagems or rules to control the enemies in simulating different situations, such as patrolling, a disorganized attack, or tactical retreat.
I am excited to see where this project goes and what Emil Larson has in store for players. I eagerly anticipate seeing the project grow and evolve, and cannot wait until I get my hands on the full-fledged product. I’m sure I can easily sell this experience to a couple of my sci-fi loving friends to form a crew and dive deeply into this excellent system. The gameplay is smooth, and the story has hooks that will have you and your friends eager to play again.
Artist: Jaroslav Jurica, Marek Loskot, Pavel Richter
Intro
Let me tell you a bit about my mom. Some of my earliest memories of my mother is of her morning ritual; she would sit at the kitchen table, steam pouring out of her coffee mug, and smoke lazily rising from the end of the cigarette gently held between two of her fingers of her left hand. In her right hand she held a pen, and on the table in front of her, a PennyPress puzzle book.
We had dozens of puzzle books in every room in the house.
My mom loves games and puzzles. When she wasn’t doing puzzles on paper at the kitchen table, she’d often be playing puzzle video games. Yoshi’s Cookie (SNES) and The New Tetris (Nintendo 64) were some of her favourites. As a child I also loved video games. Some of my first memories of Tetris were of my mom and I playing The New Tetris in the versus mode. She would mercilessly kick my butt to the curb. The phrase ‘git gud’ hadn’t been popularized yet, but that was the sentiment in our household.
Years later, I got my first job at the local video store. I used my first paycheque to buy a silver Nintendo Gamecube and Tetris Worlds. I practised and practised and practised at Tetris until I felt like I had improved significantly. My mom still kicked my butt, but less badly than before. I continued to practise until I finally emerged victorious! To this day my mom and I adore the memory of Tetris, and hold the versus mode in a special place in our hearts. However, when we play now I grind her into the dirt.
No, this is not candy
Why am I telling you all this? What does my hundreds of hours playing Tetris have to do with board games?
Let me introduce you to: Project L
How to Play
Project L begins with two stacks of tiles, differentiated by their different coloured backs. Next to each these stacks sits four face-up tiles, making up the offer row. Every player is given 2 pieces to begin their game, a single 1×1 yellow square, and a 1×2 green rectangle.
On your turn, you have three actions:
Take a new level 1 piece
Upgrade a piece
Take a puzzle tile (you can have up to 4 unfinished puzzles)
Place a piece on your puzzle
Master action (only once every round) — put a single piece on all your puzzles!
Should you complete a puzzle, remove it from the top of your player board, return your pieces to your supply, and place the puzzle in your scoring pile and take the reward from the top right corner of the (now completed) puzzle.
These tiles are wonderfully thick
Gameplay continues around the table until the black deck of tiles is depleted. Once that happens, you finish the round (so all players receive an equal number of turns), then everyone has one more turn. After that you may continue to put pieces on the puzzles from your personal supply, but at a cost of 1 point per piece placed.
Once everyone has completed their finishing touches, you total your score from your completed puzzles, subtract any points you lost doing the finishing touches and the player with the most points is the winner!
Review
The very first thing I want to talk about is the box cover. Project L‘s box is visually clean and aesthetically striking. The bold blue L on the matte black background stands out on a shelf. The lack of art here creates a mystery, “What is Project L?” you wonder, picking up the box and checking the back.
This is where my first criticism comes in. I appreciate the effect of having a stark black box and it looks fantastic. But I hate that there is no designer credit on the box. In the case of Project L, the people who make up Boardcubator (the publisher) are also the designers and have obviously made the decision to keep all logos and credits off the box. But I don’t like precedent this sets. Iworry that any other designer wanting to work with Boardcubator in the future will be strong-armed into a box cover without credits. Further, I don’t want any other companies using this as an example or an excuse to keep designer credits off the covers of boxes.
Designer and artist credits should not be relegated to the fine print
I get weirdly passionate when it comes to crediting creatives appropriately. I know the history of workers’ rights is rife with owners using every dirty trick in the book to oppress and keep from paying their creatives fairly. I’d hate for my favourite niche hobby to fall victim to terrible employment standards.
Moving on from that criticism, Project L is an excellently produced game. The acrylic tiles are glossy and rounded perfectly. They don’t feel cheap or too light in the hand. A few people have commented that they look like candy, which may or may not be a positive, depending on your proclivity for sweets and the number of small children in your life. The player aids are made of very light card stock, but that’s fine as they exist only to remind players of the few rules in the game.
So many options!
The final component are the pattern boards, which come in black and white and have inset grooves to lock your pieces in place. These tiles are thick, glossy and look fabulous. I’m less of a fan of how they’re rectangular, which also feels like an odd nitpick. I find it slightly tedious to re-orient all the tiles, and having a stack of tiles that isn’t aligned is simply not an option for me.
This bothers me to absolutely no end
Getting into the gameplay, Project L starts players off with a mere two pieces. The first few rounds of the game you are slow, taking puzzles, maybe taking more 1×1 pieces, or spending all of your actions to finish a single 4 piece pattern. After your first few puzzles and with more than 4 pieces in your personal supply, Project L falls into a predictive pattern. Take puzzles, do master action. Take puzzles, do master action. Repeat. The game lies in your ability to utilize the variety of pieces you have in your supply in a way that doesn’t waste actions or using 3 small pieces where one large piece would fit. Being able to spin multiple plates efficiently is the key to victory here.
During my first play of Project L, someone at my table exclaimed “This is just like Splendor!” which initially I agreed with. It had the same gameplay beats of choosing easy puzzles to build up your engine to effectively to accomplish the much harder goals. But after a few more plays of Project L, I’ve changed my tune. While Project L is reminiscent of other engine building games (like Splendor), it lacks the persistent benefits, which I feel is a very significant part of Splendor’s appeal. In Splendor you can amass a dozen or more gems and just take bigger and bigger cards for free, or at a steep discount. Project L on the other hand only gives you more pieces to play with (with the biggest pieces taking up 4 squares in a puzzle). Having more pieces is absolutely useful, but if you spend too much time just getting pieces, you’ll be left in the dust when it comes to scoring points at the end of the game.
It’s almost impossible to see the pattern on the back of the white tiles
The end of Project L arrives quickly. By the time players start pulling from the harder (or rather, larger) black tiles, everyone generally has enough pieces to play with and have settled into the routine of “take puzzles, master action”. The stack of tiles depletes quickly and suddenly the end of the game is triggered. Everyone gets one last action, then finishing touches, then the game is over.
When you first get your hands on Project L you expect solving each of the puzzles to be the crux of the game, but it isn’t. The game is effectively managing your pieces and actions. I’m glad the turns move quickly between players as it’s painful when you have a perfect plan that relies on a specific puzzle, but it gets snapped up by the player before you, forcing you to reconsider your entire turn. This however, is the entirety of interactions between players; there’s hardly a limit on the number of pieces (I’ve never run into a specific piece running out), there’s no way to slow down other players progress, and there’s no reason to even look at the other players until the game comes to an end. If strong player interaction is important to you, steer clear.
In summary, Project L is a fast, light, puzzle game with excellent production values. I find the latter half of the game a little predictable in that the only actions that seem worth taking are the ‘master build’ and the ‘take more puzzles’ actions. Project L is an excellent game to start or end an evening with, and anyone with a fond memory of Tetris will instantly like this game, even if it’s only due to the colourful pieces.
Mechanics: Push your luck, Dice Rolling, Area Movement
Release Year: 2017
Designer: Scott Almes
Artist: Miguel Coimbra, Adam P. McIver
Intro – In where I try to not talk about The Legend of Zelda
If you walk around my living space, one thing will become apparent very quickly. I love video games. I have knick-knacks and memorabilia adorning my shelves, giving brief glimpses into my nerdiness. The franchise represented most prominently is The Legend of Zelda, as the Zelda games are amongst my most favourite video games ever. Most games I wait to pick up on a sale or second hand as the price of buying new is a pill that I have a hard time swallowing. The exception to that rule is a new Legend of Zelda game. If you doubt me, ask me about the time my wife woke at 6am with me frantically hitting the refresh page on Best Buys website the day the Nintendo Switch and Breath of the Wild were launching their pre-orders (spoilers – she wasn’t pleased).
I can hardly be blamed for my obsession however. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of my most played video games. Back in 1995 when I could barely hold a controller, my mother and I explored Hyrule together. I vividly recall running through the green fields, sword thrust forth to parry any foes, getting the guards called on me in Kakariko village, and my tiny mind being blown wide open when the Dark World was introduced.
When Gamelyn Games launched their Tiny Epic Quest kickstarter in November of 2016, I was immediately enthralled with the aesthetic of the game. While the art assets were vaguely generic fantasy, the items looked like they were ripped straight out of The Legend of Zelda. I backed that project immediately without a further thought. Come Summer of 2017 when the game was delivered, I delighted in the ITEMeeples and the tiny items arranged on the item rack. Aesthetically, I was already in love.
Nostalgia always knows how to get me to open my wallet
Components and Play Space – Hope your table is epic, not tiny
Like all of the Tiny Epic games, they boast a large game experience, crammed down into a tiny box. Foolishly, at the time I also thought that meant the play space would be small, perhaps I could play this game on my coffee table. Not the case here, as the components sprawl out, demanding nearly as much space as you’re willing to give to it.
Setup for a solo game
The art on the cards is bright and colourful, full of the promise of adventures to come. The ITEMeeples are cute too, made of plastic and slightly larger than your standard meeple. I never thought of myself as a meeple connoisseur, but I found myself wishing they were made of wood instead of the cheaper feeling plastic (not that your wooden meeples is a ‘deluxe’ component).
The items that go into the ITEMeeple’s ‘hands’ are absolutely tiny, making some of the more delicate ones difficult to manipulate (I’m looking at you, Bow and Arrow). Luckily you won’t need to manipulate them too often, as once they’re acquired, you stick em in someone’s hand and then there’s rarely a reason to move it.
My wife tells me size doesn’t matter.
Gameplay – A Gamblers Journey
A game of Tiny Epic Quest is played over 5 rounds. In each round players are trying to accomplish tasks to accrue the most victory points. It’s all the normal, heroic acts you accomplish during the dead of night that get you victory points (sounds sketchy). How many spells you can master, how many quests you can accomplish, and how many goblins you can smack into the ground will all affect your heroic rating and win you the game (also bonus points for pillaging the Legendary Items).
During the day phase, one player you will choose a method of travel, then move one of your meeples according to the card. A raft lets you sail up the perfectly vertical and parallel rivers, a Horse can take you as far east or west as you’d like (you all know of horses natural aversion to north and south movement), the griffon can take you diagonal, and the travel by boot option can take you one step in any direction. Once you’ve made your move then everyone else gets to make a movement of their own, following the same card. No matter how many players are at the table, this phase of the game has 4 turns, meaning one of the movement types will go unused.
And no, you can’t put your horse on the raft. We tried that once, it didn’t go well.
Once the Day phase ends, night descends. During the night each player decides if they want to adventure, or rest. Every player who chooses adventure is IN. The lead player rolls the 5 custom die, and then the die results are resolved.
First, the goblin heads represent the total damage inflicted. Each player takes 1 damage each clockwise around the table until all the hits have been distributed. If there are more goblin heads than players, it overlaps, hitting the lead player again and continuing on.
Then power is gained based on any power symbols, and where the mushroom marker is. Then the mushroom marker moves down its track based on the number of mushrooms that have been rolled. If the mushroom is at the end of its track, it just deals damage in the same way as the goblins.
Once those are out of the way, all players can use the torches, scrolls, or punches to complete their objectives. Torches and scrolls advance your adventurers along their track, inching them closer to acquiring their treasure, while the punch symbol lets you pummel into the sleeping goblin who had the misfortune of being on your space
The one time you didn’t need any goblin punches…
After all the die have been used, the active player passes the die to the next player who now has to choose to adventure, or to rest. Should they choose adventure, all players are dragged along, like lackeys in a gang.
The dice rolling is the crux of the push your luck mechanic that is the core of Tiny Epic Quests gameplay. Sometimes you’ll find your meeple on a dungeon that requires torches and all you roll are scrolls. You’ll sit in anguish as your friends march up their tracks, pilfering the treasures, equipping their new items that bestow special abilities to the meeple that holds it, while you grumble that yet another torch has been rolled. There is a bit of mitigation in the form of Power. You can always spend 2 power to gain an extra Scroll or Torch for a meeple, or to block a hit from a goblin.
Two of my adventurers finished their quest. The third one had to sleep in a cave.
As the players turns go on, health will begin to dwindle and the risk of death will loom ever closer. The Mushroom track I mentioned earlier will pass thresholds that will make the game riskier, like increasing the amount of damage goblins do, or removing the ability to recover power via die rolls, eventually causing extra damage if there is no space left on the mushroom track. The benefits of the mushroom track going up is the higher it is, the more potent the magic is in the night and allows you to learn even greater dark magics (with only 5 turns and 10 levels of magic to learn, you’re expected to skip a couple lessons).
Should you fail in your quest of murder, thievery, or sorcery and become exhausted, all of your meeples are returned home, health and power restored, but empty handed. You only get to keep the spoils of your exploits if you choose to stop during the night phase, returning to camp before your metaphorical parents catch you out on a school night.
Crafting the legendary weapons requires finished two specific dungeons in order. Hopefully you’ll have some overlap with the other quests
Tiny Epic Quest bills itself as a push your luck game, and it absolutely is. Some bad dice rolls can throw the entire experience for you. In my plays, I’ve found the luck factor is much lower in lower player counts. You may be taking more damage, there are more opportunities to rest. In a 4 player game you may find yourself with only 2 health left, your goblin punching meeple has won their combat, the spell learning meeple has finished studying, but your dungeon crawling meeple is only two torches away from grabbing that precious loot. If you choose to roll, you may be committing to 4 rounds of die rolls, and should you accomplish what you needed during your rounds, you’ll sit in terror as the other three chuck those misery cubes and flinch as somehow the player before you rolled a full round of goblins, pummeling you right back to the start.
I understand that is the draw of push your luck games, trying to get as far as you can and if you go bust then you’re kicked back to the beginning. I love Can’t Stop, but the salient difference is Can’t Stop takes 10 minutes to play, while this goes on for an hour or more! And the cascading failure of missing out on a whole round of adventure, when your friends may now have gear that makes their subsequent heists easier is a rough feeling.
Final Thoughts – Are we the Baddies?
Is it wrong to complain about luck in a push your luck game? Maybe. While I did enjoy my play of Tiny Epic Quest, most of that enjoyment came from the aesthetics. Seeing my ITEMeeple run around the map with a bomb and a rupee filled my heart with joy. I recently gave the solo mode a try, and barely managed to achieve the lowest score acceptable, 40 points to be a peasant. Because you only have 3 meeples and 5 rounds, you’re expected to complete a quest with 2 of your meeples, if not all 3. The scores ramp up the more you achieve of each objective (beating 3 goblins is 3 pts, while beating 10 is 30). Achieving 15 tasks is about the best you can hope for, and it’s not THAT hard to accomplish, but if you fail early quests it can leave you feeling like it’s impossible to catch up. Looking at amigoodat.games, the average winning score is in the low 30’s. With no catch up mechanic to speak of, The winner will more often be the player who got the best loot the earliest.
All that said, I am keeping this game, and would pull it out of I knew someone was a huge fan of The Legend of Zelda. The aesthetic is strong enough to keep the box on my shelf (and it helps that the box is tiny, getting rid of it wouldn’t free up much space on my overflowing shelves). Also, I don’t have very many push your luck games, so it’s a small niche that’s being filled.
I begun this review with the fresh innocence of a Kokri boy waking up to the cries of a fairy, ready to go on a quest to save the Kingdom. I’ve come to realize that while this is indeed a epic quest, we just might be the bad guys. After all, we’re tearing across the kingdom by day, and wreaking havoc over the night, punching sleeping goblins, casting demonic spells, and stealing treasures. At the end of the game, we’re not coming home to a waiting princess, we’re going to face trial for the crimes we’ve committed! If the authorities found me with standing in a magic circle with a sword in one hand and a bomb in the other, I don’t think they’ll give me the benefit of the doubt.
Artist: Nikoletta Vaszi, Naomi Robinson, Benjamin Shulman
Publisher: Gamelyn Games
Banana for scale
One of the games I spent over 100 hours on in my youth was Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced. That game kicked off an addiction of an entire genre that I’ll hereby refer to as “Tactics” Other games in this Tactics genre that I loved: Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Pokemon Conquest, XCOM, Into the Breach, Banner Saga, Fae Tactics, Fire Emblem (every English release to date)… you get the idea
Side note here, I’ve never been a fan of the Advanced Wars style of tactics games. I’ve tried a few Advanced War entries, as well as Wargroove and it just doesn’t jive with me. I think (speaking specifically about Wargroove because I played it most recently) the big problem is that the specific units don’t have any kind of growth. There’s no level ups, no managing equipment or spells that make the units unique to you. You don’t affect any change to make the units yours.
It’s important to hold the high ground
Tiny Epic Tactics designed by Scott Almes and published by Gamelyn Games is a 1-4 player take on the tactics series. This entry in the Tiny Epic series is specifically designed to appeal to the gamer with a nostalgic feel for the aformentioned Tactics games. The main map is a scroll with 5 sturdy boxes stacked in various spots to create elevation. The rulebook has several modes of play (2-4 player competitve, 2 v 2 player team play 2-4 player free-for-all, 1 player solo adventure, and 2 player solo adventure. As I’ve only played the 1 player solo adventure, that’s what I’ll be focusing on here
To begin the game, you will have 4 characters to control, one from each of the 4 classes (warrior, rogue, mage, and beast). Variability here feels high as there are 8 options for each class, theoretically offering thousands of different combinations. Once your heroes are selected you set up 4 more (one of each class) as your opponents and leave the rest to the side (they can get subbed in if you successfully beat down the opposition).
8 characters for each class
You begin the game with the party split, two characters in each corner and 4 enemies randomly spawned in 3 spots closer to the middle of the board. On your turn you can do 3 actions that can be taken with up to 3 different characters. If you elect to use two actions with a single character, they’ll be put into a weakened state where they either need to not move next round, or lose two HP.
This mechanic makes it so you can’t just run up and attack in the same turn, but try and predict where your opponents will be so you can maximize your actions. it also prevents you from favoring one character too often, which you probably shouldn’t be doing if you want to win the solo game
The goal of the solo game is to explore 5 caverns, collect each of the crystals, and then fight your way through the final cavern to win the game. You lose if all 4 of your characters die, or if the game timer runs out. You start out with only 7 turns to get all of this done, but each time you defeat an enemy you regain 2 turns. This leads to a cost/benefit analysis in your head, trying to decide if it’s worth your time to spend the actions necessary to get the reward of time back on your side.
Gotta get them crystals
There are some times where you will need to knock your opponents off a cliff before you can enter the dungeons (the dungeons are the 3d terrain tiles flipped upside down), but this leads to one of the biggest challenge of the solo game. Getting everyone off the final box. When you kill an enemy character they are removed from the board. But the next turn you respawn them at one of the three spawn points with one of those spawn points being on the final dungeon. This would mean you need either to get lucky with the spawn point, kill the enemy with 2 ranged actions and one move into the dungeon, do a hit and run melee attack (either killing them or pushing them off the terrain, or lure the enemy off the box. In my (one) experience, this portion of the solo game grinds to a halt and just frustrates you against the RNG of the solo game.
The mechanics of Tiny Epic Tactics do manage to evoke feelings of the tactics games that I referenced before, but lacks any personalization beyond assembling your initial team. During the solo game I found my thought pattern following the same path that I would when playing a proper Tactics video game, such as considering elevation, or moving one character before another to take advantage of their positioning. That part of the game does feel good, but it also lacks depth. There is no character progression, no way to change the abilities of your characters, or modify the party composition to deal with changing situations.
The image quality on the boxes are much higher than the playmat
I do have a small complaint with how the dice are used in the game. Each attack uses the die in a different way. The Melee attack uses die to determine how far the target is pushed. The Ranged attack uses die to determine how many ammo has to be used before the attack is successful, and the magic uses the die to spend more mana to possibly do more damage (in my experience). This is a mild annoyance and the fact that I need to think “Is rolling dice good or bad for this action?” adds to the mental load of playing the game.
From someone who is not a Solo gamer, this solo mode felt fairly well done to the point where I will likely try to play it one more time. This time with a better understanding of what each attack does and if/when abilities could be useful. It did remind me that I’m not really a solo gamer, as a lot of the time I spent playing this on the table, I found myself thinking “I never did get around to playing Fell Seal”. It’s hard for a solo board game to make me want to play it instead of a video game, but I believe one day I’ll find the right solo system that will let me in on what makes solo gaming special.
Tiny Epic games don’t waste a lot of space in their boxes
