Entries by Danny Webb (138)
Zombies at Your Heels Review
Friday, June 29, 2012 at 11:08AM 
Zombies at Your Heels is a new game by Andrew Rowse that puts players in control of a group of “survivors” attempting to escape from a zombie horde. It is fast-playing, tactically rich, more than a little chaotic, and ultimately, very satisfying. I would recommend it in normal publishing circumstances, but given that the designer is donating all proceeds to a worthy charity, Zombies at Your Heels is nearly a must buy.
In Zombies at Your Heels, players are dealt identical teams of survivors. Each survivor has a speed value, a victory point value, and an ability that can be activated on a player's turn. The game begins with each player randomly placing a number of survivors (determined by how many players are in the game) in a line that runs from a zombie horde, on the left, to a escape bunker, on the right. The order of the line is determined by speed stat on the survivor card—fast guys move to the front of the line. So, the idea is the line of survivors is running to the safety of the bunker in I-don't-have-to-be-faster-than-the-zombies-I-just-have-to-be-faster-than-you mode. Experienced gamers will be reminded of Richard Garfield's Guillotine by the basic set up.
During a turn, survivors are played from a hand of three cards. After playing the card, a player has the option of activating that card's power, another card's power, both, or neither. Regardless, the turn ends with either the survivor at the front of the line escaping to the bunker (only if he belongs to the active player) or with the zombies eating the “survivor” in the back of the line. Though each player has an identical personal deck of survivors, the three-card hand means there is limited number of actions available on each turn which must be used to get survivors to the front of the line or out of danger for that turn and hopefully your opponent's turn.
Play continues until players are unable to draw a card and fill their hands at the end of a turn. The points on the survivors in the bunker (and the tragic teens in the graveyard) are scored—the highest score wins. The whole game plays in between fifteen to twenty-five minutes, according to how much analysis the group is prone to.
Being a big fan of Guillotine, I had high-hopes for Zombies at Your Heels when I first saw its page at indigogo. The hope was the theme and tweaks to Guillotine's basic game play would make for a different, but equally rewarding experience. Now that I had a chance to play the game in a couple of different situations, I'm happy to say Zombies at Your Heels is as good as I'd hoped it would be, even if it won't necessarily work for all groups.
The main appeal of the game is the interesting tactical decisions that face the player each turn. The need to either save one of your team of survivors or doom one of your opponent's survivors coupled with the equally important need to protect your guys for your opponent's turns (meaning—get them grouped toward at least the middle of the line) makes for tense rounds. I really like that the game gives you the option of activating two abilities. If you could only do the ability of the card you placed (making it more like Guillotine's one action-card limitation), the game would be too chaotic and the three-card hand too limiting. As it is, the game features a good balance of chaos and control, though I'm sure many players would say it errs on the side of chaos. If it wasn't such a short, fun time, I might agree. The tableau does change a lot between a player's turns, especially in a four-player game. The two-player game allows for a bit more planning ahead, but a player is still restricted by the cards they have in hand, so this isn't a deep strategy game by any means. It is a chaotic, tactical game that matches its theme perfectly.
As I mentioned in the introduction, Rowse has designed this game as part of a fund-raising effort for SpecialEffect, an organization that develops technologies and techniques that allow those with physical limitations to play and benefit from video games and computers. Follow the links here for both Rowse's Indiegogo page and SpecialEffect. It is a great cause and Rowse has come up with a great way of raising money while giving people a fun game to play. I seriously can't imagine why, if you have the money, you wouldn't go donate right now. The game is fun, the price is right, and profits go to a great cause.
Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Thursday, May 31, 2012 at 11:16PM 
I'm always a bit suspicious of any book that becomes a phenomenon, even if the phenomenon is limited to a certain group of readers. In the case of Ready Player One, that group tended to be anyone with an interest in video games and fond memories of growing up in the 80's. Before I got around to reading it, I had the book recommended to me by at least a dozen people, which set off alarms in my naturally contrarian brain. I don't think I've ever been the type of nerd that hates things just because they are popular (at least I haven't been that guy in a long time), but what appeals to a large number of people often doesn't appeal to me. My fear before starting Ready Player One was that all those “cool” 80's references I was hearing about would be too ham-fisted and googly-eyed to compel me to care. I wasn't too far into the book before I realized that those fears were unfounded. The basic conceits of the plot allowed any reference to be assimilated into the text in a way that was purposely showy. So, yes, the movie and video game (and television and toy) references are a bit obvious and on the nose, but it works as a function of the world Cline has created. More importantly, Ready Player One is a wonderful homage to 1st generation cyberpunk, and I had forgotten how much the tropes and conventions of that sub-genre appealed to me. The nostalgia I had built up for the early works of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Greg Bear and the rest of those in mirrored shades was much more powerful than my nostalgia for classic video games.
In the world of Ready Player One, society has nearly collapsed. The air is poisonous, the streets are dangerous, and cities are so overcrowded people have taken to living in trailers stacked one on top of another to dizzying heights. The danger and clutter of the real world have driven nearly everyone on to OASIS, a massively multi-player “game” where nearly any imaginable setting can be found. Users jack into this virtual world wearing eyewear and haptic clothing which enables them to touch and experience the virtual world in a way that evokes reality. The world of OASIS is so addictive, so inviting, that people basically spend every free moment online. Their online selves have become more important to them than their flesh-and-blood selves. As the book begins, the creator of OASIS, James Halliday (think a little bit of Bill Gates mixed with a little bit of Gary Gygax), has died and left behind a video detailing a contest, the winner of which will get his enormous fortune.
Ready Player One's protagonist, Parzival, is a “gunter,” the term eventually assigned to the players searching the virtual world for the ultimate video game Easter egg. Gunters spend their time immersed in 80's lore because that is where they feel they will find the answer to Halliday's riddles. As we are witness to the conversations between Parzival and his loosely connected crew (it is important to the the novel's basic set up that they are not a team, at least early on) we are inundated with references to things nerdy kids who grew up in the 80's would recognize. Really, there is nothing obscure in the references as far as I was concerned. The only place that I didn't immediately have nearly perfect knowledge of references was the Japanese television shows and toys, and, even there, most of the basic references were familiar. Still, it was fun to think back on those things that gave me a lot of joy during my childhood. Even better, when one of the works does become integral to solving Halliday's puzzles, Cline does a great job getting right to the essence of the objects appeal.
As science-fiction, Ready Player One is equally nostalgic. Cyberpunk has kind of faded from mainstream SF, but I can't help but notice that its themes and motifs are becoming more and more prophetic as we move through the 21st Century. It could be ripe for a comeback, and Ready Player One does its basic themes well enough to be on the vanguard of that movement. I know that when I finished the book, I immediately hit the Web and found a couple of bloggers to recommend recent cyberpunkish books for me to move on to. There is just something that appeals to me in the basic concept of an OASIS or a matrix (Gibson's, not Keanu's) or a Metaverse. I love the contrast of status and the concept of “self” between the meat person and the virtual person, and Ready Player One really does some fun things with it as Parzival and his fellow gunters become famous in the real world for the actions of their avatars.
Maybe Ready Player One isn't great literature. It is really the nerd version of a beach read, but it is a really enjoyable beach read that I can recommend to any science-fiction fan with even a hint of 80's nostalgia in his or her heart.
Last chance to get in on Shadow Days Kickstarter
Friday, April 20, 2012 at 08:44AM 
If you are in to fantasy card games, you might want to take a look at Shadow Days, which the creator’s describe as a deckbuilding fantasy game. It is in its last three days of a successful Kickstarter campaign, and the creators are offering some great incentives to those who donate. Though it didn’t turn out to be a game that appealed to my main game group (stinky Euro-gamers, all of us), Shadow Days is an interesting, dice-based combat game that could scratch the itch for players looking for a 100% confrontational card game where you win by one method—destroying your opponent. If that sounds like something you would be interested in, head over to the Kickstarter page and help bring the total up to the final incentive level.
Calling Shadow Days a deckbuilder stretches that term quite a bit. It actually has more in common with tableau games like Race for the Galaxy than deckbuilders like Dominion. Instead of drafting a deck, players draft a collection of five cards into a tableau in front of them. These cards are mostly creature, but can also include magic items to be used in battle and strongholds which can protect “bench” creatures and give bonuses to active creatures.
A quick description of game play should let you know if this is a game for you. Players take turns choosing one of their creatures to attack one of their opponent’s creatures. Creatures have an attack value that must be rolled on a twenty-sided dice in order for the attack to succeed. If the player rolls that number or higher, the opponent’s creature is killed and the player loses life points equal to the life-point value of that creature. The game continues until all but one of the players is reduces to zero health.
That is basically the game. There are items that provide alternative attacks and opportunities to switch out creatures, but the game is in its essence a back-and-forth dice fest. When I read the description it anticipation of receiving the playtest copy, my heart sank. This just isn’t the type of game that appeals to my main play group. It would be greatly appealing to my D&D group, but I knew that that wouldn’t be meeting during the Kickstarter campaign. My main game group likes heavier games and dislikes the randomness of dice rolls, so it simply wasn’t a good fit with them. They simply didn’t feel the game offered enough strategic decisions to make it feel like they had earned a victory rather than lucked into it.
I was ready to just pass on recommending the game until I got in a few games with my daughter. She loved the game and my young son even joined in. The strange thing was that I really enjoyed it also. I can’t remember the last game I played and enjoyed with so large a random element. Probably, only the classic Nuclear War, which comes to the table occasionally, is as dependent on dice rolls as Shadow Days among the games we play. But, for what it is, Shadow Days is an enjoyable romp. If you are a fan of Steve Jackson games and similar designs, I think Shadow Days will appeal to you. While struggling with how to express what I thought was good about the game without recommending it to readers who might not enjoy it, I was so glad to watch Shadow Days reach its Kickstarter goal. This is a well-designed and attractive game which, though maybe not for everybody, should be a big hit with its target audience.
Thunderstone Advance Compatibility Guide
Thursday, March 22, 2012 at 11:27AM AEG continues its tradition of paying attention to player's wants and needs with a handy compatability guide for mixing the previous Thunderstone cards with the new Thunderstone Advance. I have a shrink-wrapped copy of Thunderstone Advance staring down at me as I type this, but I likely won't get to play it until late Saturday, and I'm a long way from wanting to mix in all of the old cards. Still, it's great to know AEG has thought about this stuff and are willing to put in some extra work that has no direct financial gain attached to it. Thanks, AEG.
The Thunderstone Compatability Guide is here.