Thursday Game Night
Last night I went to the Dallas Games Marathon's weekly Thursday night gaming event.
I played a few games of Crokinole, and I did quite well considering I probably hadn't played since Board Game Geek Con in 2010. I own a board, but it's decorative, so I have it hanging on the wall in the front room. I love the game, though - it's a classic disc-flicking dex game.
I also played Nefarious, a simple little mad scientist game that I absolutely love. We used a couple of twist cards that I hadn't played with before. It's amazing how different the game can be from one time to the next, just based on which pair of twist cards you get.
Then I played Sneaks and Snitches. The idea is that everyone is a thief, and you're all trying to steal from various museums, while interfering with each others' larcenous efforts. It's designed by Vlaada Chvatil, who's made some really cool games that I generally like (Space Alert, Galaxy Trucker, Dungeon Lords). This one, though, I can't quite wrap my head around. It's all about figuring out what everyone else is going to do, but with very little to go on. Ideally, you want to steal from a museum where no one is snitching, which usually means going for less tempting treasures. But not always! Sometimes, you'll have someone choosing to snitch on a museum with three or four gems, while someone else gets off Scott free with five gems. Maybe no one blocked the five, because everyone thought someone else would do it. See, it's like that. I feel like there's some skill involved in predicting people's actions, but the game also seems pretty random. In my first game, I won with nine points (which is a really good score). In the next game, though, I had three points. One of the other players had zero. Yes, getting any points at all is kind of hard, and that's partly because of the unusual scoring mechanism. Points aren't based on the number of items you steal, only on who stole the most. Only the top thieves get any points at all. With blue items, for instance, only the person who stole the most gets any points for blue, and they only get a fixed number (3), no matter how much they stole. With green and red items, the top two and top three thieves score. Winning in multiple categories is very hard, because of all the competition. (The actual scoring chart is adjusted, based on the number of players.) After playing this game several times, I'm still not sure what I think of it. Although, I do enjoy playing it, and I guess that's what matters most.
After a couple games of Sneaks and Snitches, I noticed Kevin had a game in his stack that said it was "Real Time". Well, real time games are generally pretty interesting, and the good ones (like Space Alert) are pretty few and far between. So we cracked out Escape: The Curse of the Temple, and gave it a shot. And then another, and another, and another. We wound up playing it six times, I think. Why? 1) We were determined to finally beat it (even if it meant turning down the difficulty). 2) Being a real-time game it literally played in 10 minutes flat. Boom. The End. Try again. And the reset time was pretty minimal as well. 3) It was a heck of a lot of fun.
Escape: The Curse of the Temple is basically a cooperative real-time dice game, where you're trying to find your way out of a cursed temple. The box makes it look a lot like an Indiana Jones game, and that's the basic theming with the curses and the treasures and exploration in general. You've got 10 minutes total to explore the temple, find the exit, and get out. But you can't just explore constantly, because twice during the 10 minute interval (cued by the soundtrack), everyone has to run back to the safe room at the start. Fail to make it back by the time the doors slam shut, and you lose one of your dice. That's not good, because you start with only five, and you desperately need as many as you can get. And once you find the exit, you can't just leave, because of the curse. You also have to complete various tasks to unlock gems. That usually means rolling several matching symbols in a special gem room, say, ten keys, for example. Well, you can't roll ten keys with five dice, so the tasks are generally going to involve working together.
Every time you roll a die, there's a 1-in-6 chance of rolling a black mask, which represents damage that you take. Once you've rolled a black mask on a die, that die is stuck until you get healing, so you can quickly go from five dice down to one or two with a bad streak of evil rolls. With only one die in play, you can't even move from room to room. So, some amount of sticking together and playing as a team is absolutely necessary. (Of course, that runs counter to the goal of spreading out for maximum exploration, but isn't that always the case?) Each black mask can be healed by rolling a gold mask (also a 1-in-6 chance). Even with one die, it's possible to roll a gold mask, so there's a chance you can rally on your own. Your other option is to get healing from someone else in the room (another good reason to stick together). When everyone is down for the count, there's also a mechanism to heal everyone by locking in more gems (which makes it harder to get out), but you can only do that twice. If you're playing with treasures, there are also treasures that can heal. (And we never made it out, until the game where we included the treasures.)
The more gems you unlock, the easier it is to get out, but you've got to unlock something like fourteen gems or you can't possibly roll enough keys on five dice. The roll to escape the temple has to be done individually - you can't team up to help each other, although, once someone gets out of the temple, they can hand off one of their dice to a player who's still inside. Getting the final roll down to the realms of possibility means completing lots of gem tasks, in addition to exploring, running around, getting injured, healing, and everything else you've got to do in 10 minutes. If that's not bad enough, there are also curses that can be included to complicate matters. Seriously, it was hard enough without them, but if it ever got too easy, there's plenty more difficulty that can be added in.
This is probably not the game for hardcore strategists, but if you like frantic, chaotic, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants gaming, Escape: The Curse of the Temple is totally awesome. On the downside, it's fairly new (it was a Kickstarter project) and I don't think it's widely available yet.
On the totally unrelated tangent, Steak and Shake currently has its seasonal caramel apple shakes available. One of my favorite shakes on the planet. I highly recommend trying it if you like caramel apples.
I played a few games of Crokinole, and I did quite well considering I probably hadn't played since Board Game Geek Con in 2010. I own a board, but it's decorative, so I have it hanging on the wall in the front room. I love the game, though - it's a classic disc-flicking dex game.
I also played Nefarious, a simple little mad scientist game that I absolutely love. We used a couple of twist cards that I hadn't played with before. It's amazing how different the game can be from one time to the next, just based on which pair of twist cards you get.
Then I played Sneaks and Snitches. The idea is that everyone is a thief, and you're all trying to steal from various museums, while interfering with each others' larcenous efforts. It's designed by Vlaada Chvatil, who's made some really cool games that I generally like (Space Alert, Galaxy Trucker, Dungeon Lords). This one, though, I can't quite wrap my head around. It's all about figuring out what everyone else is going to do, but with very little to go on. Ideally, you want to steal from a museum where no one is snitching, which usually means going for less tempting treasures. But not always! Sometimes, you'll have someone choosing to snitch on a museum with three or four gems, while someone else gets off Scott free with five gems. Maybe no one blocked the five, because everyone thought someone else would do it. See, it's like that. I feel like there's some skill involved in predicting people's actions, but the game also seems pretty random. In my first game, I won with nine points (which is a really good score). In the next game, though, I had three points. One of the other players had zero. Yes, getting any points at all is kind of hard, and that's partly because of the unusual scoring mechanism. Points aren't based on the number of items you steal, only on who stole the most. Only the top thieves get any points at all. With blue items, for instance, only the person who stole the most gets any points for blue, and they only get a fixed number (3), no matter how much they stole. With green and red items, the top two and top three thieves score. Winning in multiple categories is very hard, because of all the competition. (The actual scoring chart is adjusted, based on the number of players.) After playing this game several times, I'm still not sure what I think of it. Although, I do enjoy playing it, and I guess that's what matters most.
After a couple games of Sneaks and Snitches, I noticed Kevin had a game in his stack that said it was "Real Time". Well, real time games are generally pretty interesting, and the good ones (like Space Alert) are pretty few and far between. So we cracked out Escape: The Curse of the Temple, and gave it a shot. And then another, and another, and another. We wound up playing it six times, I think. Why? 1) We were determined to finally beat it (even if it meant turning down the difficulty). 2) Being a real-time game it literally played in 10 minutes flat. Boom. The End. Try again. And the reset time was pretty minimal as well. 3) It was a heck of a lot of fun.
Escape: The Curse of the Temple is basically a cooperative real-time dice game, where you're trying to find your way out of a cursed temple. The box makes it look a lot like an Indiana Jones game, and that's the basic theming with the curses and the treasures and exploration in general. You've got 10 minutes total to explore the temple, find the exit, and get out. But you can't just explore constantly, because twice during the 10 minute interval (cued by the soundtrack), everyone has to run back to the safe room at the start. Fail to make it back by the time the doors slam shut, and you lose one of your dice. That's not good, because you start with only five, and you desperately need as many as you can get. And once you find the exit, you can't just leave, because of the curse. You also have to complete various tasks to unlock gems. That usually means rolling several matching symbols in a special gem room, say, ten keys, for example. Well, you can't roll ten keys with five dice, so the tasks are generally going to involve working together.
Every time you roll a die, there's a 1-in-6 chance of rolling a black mask, which represents damage that you take. Once you've rolled a black mask on a die, that die is stuck until you get healing, so you can quickly go from five dice down to one or two with a bad streak of evil rolls. With only one die in play, you can't even move from room to room. So, some amount of sticking together and playing as a team is absolutely necessary. (Of course, that runs counter to the goal of spreading out for maximum exploration, but isn't that always the case?) Each black mask can be healed by rolling a gold mask (also a 1-in-6 chance). Even with one die, it's possible to roll a gold mask, so there's a chance you can rally on your own. Your other option is to get healing from someone else in the room (another good reason to stick together). When everyone is down for the count, there's also a mechanism to heal everyone by locking in more gems (which makes it harder to get out), but you can only do that twice. If you're playing with treasures, there are also treasures that can heal. (And we never made it out, until the game where we included the treasures.)
The more gems you unlock, the easier it is to get out, but you've got to unlock something like fourteen gems or you can't possibly roll enough keys on five dice. The roll to escape the temple has to be done individually - you can't team up to help each other, although, once someone gets out of the temple, they can hand off one of their dice to a player who's still inside. Getting the final roll down to the realms of possibility means completing lots of gem tasks, in addition to exploring, running around, getting injured, healing, and everything else you've got to do in 10 minutes. If that's not bad enough, there are also curses that can be included to complicate matters. Seriously, it was hard enough without them, but if it ever got too easy, there's plenty more difficulty that can be added in.
This is probably not the game for hardcore strategists, but if you like frantic, chaotic, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants gaming, Escape: The Curse of the Temple is totally awesome. On the downside, it's fairly new (it was a Kickstarter project) and I don't think it's widely available yet.
On the totally unrelated tangent, Steak and Shake currently has its seasonal caramel apple shakes available. One of my favorite shakes on the planet. I highly recommend trying it if you like caramel apples.