A Gloom-y Ole Time
Originally published at Highmoon's Ponderings. You can comment here or there.
My friend Josh (who will be going to Gen Con with me, woohoo!) came over last night to prove that he was indeed still alive, and after dinner we busted out our newest game, Gloom. I had been after this game for months, and a few weeks back I popped into one of the local game stores for a quick look and found it. My wife and I have played a few games already, but fun as it was with 2 people, we knew it would be better with 3 or 4. Last night we confirmed it.
Gloom is a quirky, odd, weird, tragic and gothic little card game where the objective is to make your characters suffer as much as possible, thus accumulating Pathos points, and then kill them off. It takes a special kind of humor to appreciate it, and we revel in it. You can play the game straight up, but you can also do a storytelling version where you try to narrate the card effects as part of a little story of woe and tragedy that is also freaking hilarious. Also, the card design is just amazing: the cards are transparent with certain areas painted in, so that you stack all the modifiers on top of the character card, and whatever is showing at the top is what counts.
We played three games, and each of us won one, so it was all cool. I am already looking forward to getting the expansions, which bring more tragedies to foist upon your characters (or wonderful events to gift your opponents with), more dark and hilarious ways to kill a character, and new families (meaning more players). Kudos to Keith Baker for a great and quick party game. If you get the dark humor of Tim Burton and agree with the artistic sensitivities of Edward Gorey, Gloom is a great game to have.
