Potion Making: Practice - An Alchemical Review

While Russia might not be well known for producing games, it can’t be denied that the country has had a huge impact on gaming in general, through the creation of a single game. During the time of the former Soviet Union, a computer game was created in Moscow that would forever change the face of gaming, making ripples in the world of video games, and board games alike. The computer game, originally programmed on the Soviet made Elekronika 60 minicomputer by computer engineer Alexey Pajitnov, was called Tetris.

Even though Tetris was released on computers and consoles in the mid 1980’s, its influence can be found even to this day in modern board games: from Knizia’s geometric manipulation game Fits, to David Sirlin’s Puzzle Bobble inspired deck builder, Puzzle Strike. It was due to this influential history, that I was very interested to see how the gaming landscape was developing in Russia, and if there were more hidden gems being cultivated there.

Russian publisher RightGames, has been making games for the Russian market for several years now, but has recently chosen to print a handful of its more successful games in English, and selling them directly to the English speaking market through their website www.russianboardgames.com. As of now, RightGames has translated four titles into English - Potion Making: Practice, Evolution, The Kingdoms of Crusaders, and The Enigma of Leonardo. Of this collection, the title that jumped out at me first, and that I am going to review here, is the alchemy themed card game Potion-Making: Practice, designed by Sergey Machin.

In Potion Making: Practice, players are compete to retrieve cards from a common stock, which they use to complete alchemical recipes. Players not only make the potions alluded to in the game’s title, but also talismans, powders, and a handful of mythological creatures. These different items are created by combining simple elements, or sometimes, more complex potions and powders that have been created during the game. After all of the cards have been played, the player with the most points is declared the winner.

Components:

Potion Making: Practice is beautifully illustrated. The choice of colors, layout, and illustrations on the cards make for a wonderfully thematic experience. The whole package offers a medieval alchemy theme, and the subject matter might evoke thoughts of current fantasy literature like Harry Potter. But, with the choice of vivid colors and combinations in the potions and illustrations, players could just as easily place themselves in the position of a wandering Romany (Gypsy), mixing love potions, and crafting secret magick trinkets during his travels.

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Dominant Species - The Evolution of Worker Placement.

GMT games, a prolific publisher well known for its quality wargames, has been making grognards smile for over two decades. In 2010, GMT surprised a lot of people with the release of Dominant Species, a game about survival of the fittest during an encroaching ice age that appeared to have more in common with the worker placement mechanics found in Euro style games than GMT’s previous conflict oriented offerings. Designed by Chad Jensen, Dominant Species trades the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific for the glacial arena of the frozen tundra, where the deadly implements of modern war are replaced with the ruthless hand of mother nature and the wily twists of evolution.

In Dominant Species, players control a class of animals in a biological taxonomy, and attempt to evolve their class of creatures to dominate a world being rapidly changed by the encroaching glaciers of the ice age. Players must evolve their creatures to better adapt to the environment and change the environment to benefit their species, all while engaging the other players through direct tactical conflict and cunning strategic migration. While the core mechanic in Dominant Species is worker placement, it’s about as far from archetypal genre titles like Caylus or Agricola as you can get. Players will compete for various actions through the worker placement mechanic, but how they choose to utilize those actions, and where on the board they place their genetic army of species has an awful lot in common with conflict based combat games. As one poofy-haired singer from the 80’s once expressed: “Love is a Battlefield”, and the cutthroat natural selection of Dominant Species certainly supports that notion.

Components:

I was a bit late to the party in picking up Dominant Species, and although I may have thought mean, jealous things about those lucky gamers who acquired a copy during 2010 before it sold out, I was happy to pick up the second printing in 2011; a printing which received upgraded components, as well as the removal of the comic-sans font (the bane of typophiles everywhere) from the rulebook. That being said, the components in the second edition are stellar. From the super-sturdy box, to the thick tiles and board, everything in the box screams quality. And that’s not even mentioning enough wooden bits to shock a lumberjack – and that’s okay!

It’s important to note that the components that make up dominant species are all very minimal in design: wooden cubes; cylinders; cones; and very simple, minimalist illustrations that serve more as iconography than artwork. I have to admit that in general I am drawn to detailed miniatures and colorful artwork in games. The way a game looks and feels, and the mood that it conveys can really enhance my gaming experience. GMT could have easily gone this route with dominant species, but I can honestly say that it would have been a mistake to add such embellishments. The minimal presentation of the game fits the function much better than complicated artwork would have. There is so much going on in Dominant Species, and so many pieces on the board at any given time, that miniatures or fancy art would have detracted from the playability of the game. The minimal art allows the state of the game to be delivered in a clear, concise way and benefits the game as a whole.

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Dreams of a Fashion Reject

Last night I had a dream.

I was racing down a mountain road in a sleek blue sedan, weaving between cars as the engine purred with power. In the distance I could see the foot of the mountain, and a sandy desert valley opening up before me. But, as I approached the foot of the mountain, the car began to lose power, and its silk-like handling turned to that of a brick in molasses.

Looking through my rear-view mirror I could see black smoke billowing from the trunk. I pulled the limping vehicle to the side of the road, despite it's chugging objections, and quickly stepped out. I circled around to the rear of the car, and held my breath as I opened the trunk. The oily smoke poured out, but quickly dispersed, following the meandering path of a summer breeze. In its absence, I saw the source of the problem.

Sitting in the center of the trunk was a shiny black Barbecue Grill. Golden flames darted from cracks in the side of the grill, licking the surface, and leaving a powdery grey ash. I gingerly opened the grill, and stepped away as a ball of fire rolled out of the strange cooking apparatus. Even while stepping away, I could feel the inferno inside singe my eyebrows. I leaned forward to see what was inside - burning, crackling, and coughing out such a noxious and oily smoke.

Although the contents of the grill were charred and curling to ash, to my horror, I instantly recognized them. My entire wardrobe of clothes. Burned and blackened, my ragged collection of game related T-shirts were smoldering inside of a barbecue grill that was resting inside the trunk of a broken down sports sedan, on the side of a rocky mountain road.

What does it mean?

It means that I need to tell you about the new games being introduced by Ignacy Trzewiczek and Portal Publishing at this year's Essen game convention. Ignacy is the designer who brought us Stronghold, a board game which I reviewed earlier in the year, and gave very high marks.

The broken down car in a rocky desert wasteland is obviously alluding to the post-apocalyptic, "Road Warrior" inspired board game 51st State. Portal is revealing a new standalone expansion to the game at this years Essen, called The New Era, which allows for increased player interaction through the mechanic of invasion and treaties. I have been a fan of post apocalyptic settings ever since I first booted up the computer game Wasteland on my Commodore 64 as a kid, so I am really looking forward to The New Era.

Although people have been telling me I need to burn my clothes since high school, I'm sure that the destruction of my entire wardrobe is a hint from my psyche that it's time to enter the world of high fashion. Ignacy is also releasing the English version of Pret-a-Porter, a cutthroat economic game about the high stakes world of high fashion. Don't let he theme fool you - fashion is a serious business, and this is described as Portal's most ruthless game to date.

After Essen, more information about a potential North American release will likely be made available, and I hope to give both of these titles a closer look in the future to see if they really are the stuff dreams are made of.

Eaten by Zombies - A Review.

Kickstarter.com has been making waves in board game development lately. Its no-risk preorder model allows indie designers and larger publishers alike to take more risks when releasing games. When a designer has a project that he wants to fund, but doesn’t have the money up front to print the game, or fears that the game may not have a large enough audience, he can pitch his project on kickstarter.com.  Potential buyers can “invest” in this idea by pledging money to the project, and in return will receive a copy of the game when it is printed. Most kickstarter projects offer some nifty goodies that are exclusive to the kickstarter campaign.  If the project does not earn enough money to fund it, the investors are not obligated to pay anything. This is great for both the game publishers, and the consumers; the publishers don’t end up with a bunch of unsold stock in their warehouses, and the consumer doesn’t lose money if a game isn’t printed.

One of the many publishers to begin embracing kickstarter as a means of offering game preorders is Mayday Games. Until now, Mayday Games has mostly been known for manufacturing card sleeves for hobby and euro games, but Mayday is entering the game publishing business with a bang this quarter with no fewer than three kickstarter projects, all of which are either already funded, or well on target to be funded. One of these titles is an interesting Zombie themed deck building game designed by Max Holliday, called Eaten By Zombies, of which I was fortunate enough to play an advanced copy.

In Eaten by Zombies, players work to defeat a zombie horde, by fighting, fleeing, and scavenging for items. Notice I didn’t say the players are working together to defeat the zombie horde; the game may seem to be somewhat cooperative at first glance, and there are ways to achieve a cooperative victory, but the easiest, and most prevalent way of winning involves being the last player alive. In order to stay alive, sometimes friendships have to be sacrificed. Eaten by Zombies turns the act of throwing other players under the bus into an art form. It’s more like throwing the other players under the bus, tying them to the bumper, backing over them a few times, and then dragging them for a few miles. You may think that this is one of those fabled "direct conflict" deck building games. No, it's not. Eaten by Zombies could only be categorized as a “Passive Aggressive deck-building game”. Players never really directly attack each other, but instead modify the environment to benefit themselves, and if someone gets eaten in the process, that’s just life.. or death.. or undeath. Imagine a zombie apocalypse let loose during a family reunion, and you get the drift.

Although there have been a slew of both zombie themed games and deck building games, Eaten by Zombies manages to tackle both with a great deal of originality. The art style in the game is wonderfully distinctive, with its fusion of 1950’s propaganda and zombie horror that manages to be both sinister and humorous at the same time. And, while Eaten by Zombies utilizes deck building mechanics, it only shares some passing similarity with others in the genre, focusing on hand management and deck un-building just as much as deck building; delivering mechanics and gameplay that are just as unique as it’s art style.

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A review of Mansions of Madness

Mansions of Madness is fairly unique in the board game space, as it positions itself as a storytelling game. This started me thinking about story in board games, and how it impacts the play experience. Because Mansions of Madness is so closely tied to the concept of story, I want to give my take on story in games before I start in on my review of the game.

Story in games:

I enjoy a wide gamut of game genres, but when it comes down to it, I have a special affinity with those that are story driven. The game sessions that I fondly remember, and excitedly describe to my friends, always have a strong and compelling emotional element. This makes sense, because without an emotional component there would be no story to tell. When the human element is removed, what remains is no longer a story, but a series of empty machinations. People innately realize that there is a difference between abstract movement and meaningful movement – between description and story. This idea often manifests itself in discussion of board games as “Mechanics vs. Theme”. Mechanics are the movement of the pieces, and the rules that must be followed during play, whereas the theme consists of the art, player motivations, and the real or imaginary ideas that the pieces in the game represent. Many abstract games are accused of having a “pasted on” theme, which is often used as a thinly veiled way of saying the game does not deliver a story. This is where my opinion of story may differ from the mainstream.

Story can appear under many different guises outside of the typical cut-scenes in video games, or back-story narrative in board games, and is much more pervasive than may be immediately apparent. Even games like the epitomic abstract “Chess” can tell a compelling story through the give and take of positional advantage. In these instances, however, the story isn’t found on the board, or in the pieces, but instead manifests from the interaction between the players, and is facilitated by the mechanics of the game. Even when completely devoid of theme, games can tell stories of loss and victory; clever cunning and missed opportunity; and can hide within their simple interactions the gamut of human emotion. After all, most sports are abstract games that are watched and loved by millions, not for their mechanics, but for the inherent story that is created through the interaction of the players.

When refined into its essence, a game’s story comes from its ability to elicit this emotional response. Theme is often a key ingredient in facilitating these feelings, and does so by enhancing the player’s immersion in the game world, but in the end, theme is still only a tool to help develop the story. The players themselves fill the role of characters within the story of a game, and the emotion that makes the game’s mechanics meaningful must come from within the players. With this in mind, story becomes a non-corporeal concept that rises above simple mechanics and theme, and lives on its own as a separate idea. Story is the brass ring that game designers are reaching to grab, because story is synonymous with player engagement.

There is an ongoing discussion about what makes a good game. The term “Balance” is bandied about a lot in these dialogues. Balance is the perceived fairness in a game; the potential for all players to achieve victory, given the same amount of effort. Some go so far as to say that a game which is unbalanced is fundamentally broken. Unbalanced gameplay can elicit strong emotional response just like a good story, but in many contexts this response can be negative, and directed towards the game itself. The player who experiences this will still relate his gameplay story to others, but this story may very well consist of a string of colorful expletives, and end with the words “never playing again”.

It’s in this situation, however, that theme can actually turn a negative game experience into a positive one. An unbalanced abstract game gives the player no frame of reference as to why the game is unbalanced, and as a result, the player has nowhere to channel his emotional response. But when theme is added to the same game, the player gains a frame of reference which allows him to justify the difference in difficulty; and what was a negative aspect of the abstract game, can become a positive aspect of a themed game. If one player is representing a ragtag band of rebels, and another controlling an oppressive dictatorship, it would make little sense for both sides to be equally balanced from a theme perspective. In fact, by adding that element of skewed odds, the game experience is often made much more emotionally compelling for the players involved.

That’s not to say that theme fixes everything, though. The theme of a game is still just a tool to justify the game mechanics. The choices that the player makes must be interesting, and empower him to feel that he is driving the direction of his play experience. There is a term used in film study: “Suspension of Disbelief”. This describes the ability of a film to immerse the viewer so much that he doesn’t notice the limitations of the medium, or discontinuities in the story. This idea can be applied to games as well: A player has a very limited number of decisions that he can make during most games, and he must play within the confines of the game rules and components offered. What amounts to moving bits around a board, and generating random numbers transforms into something much more engrossing during play, because the player looks past the limitations of the cardboard and plastic that make up the game components, and instead becomes immersed within the confines of the game mechanics and theme. If those mechanics become too dull, or are overly complicated, that suspension of disbelief is broken, the game components revert back to being bits of cardboard and plastic, and the player can no longer justify his emotional reaction within the confines of the game.

Getting that perfect mixture of theme and mechanics can be a difficult proposition. There is no magical formula for creating a good game, yet there are a multitude of different paths to achieve compelling gameplay. Not every game hits that mark, but when a game does hit that sweet spot, the experience is sublime.

The Game:

Mansions of Madness is a game designed by Corey Konieczka, and published by Fantasy Flight Games. When it comes to theme, Mansions of Madness has it in spades, even more so than the typical Fantasy Flight fare – and that is saying a lot. Its story-driven design aspires to take that step beyond pure theme, and strives to deliver a marriage of balanced mechanics and story through a uniquely focused gameplay experience.

In Mansions of Madness, players take on the role of individuals who find themselves investigating strange, supernatural events in a creepy mansion.

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