AKA Goldfish is a flawed early work but still delivers devastating gut punches

Humble Bundle recently let me go down a rabbit hole and revisit the past with their Brian Michael Bendis bundle. 

Back in the day, I picked up the collected Goldfish from Caliber. I remember that there had been some buzz about it, that it had led to the well regarded Jynx series. It was also set in Cleveland, a city I was familiar with. I also remember how I wasn’t able to get through the thing.

So Humble Bundle gave me a second chance. I found it much easier going this time. This edition was called AKA Goldfish. Apparently, the title has flip flopped over the years.

AKA Goldfish is a crime story. It’s also very much film noire. And it’s a tragedy. Those three things tend to go well together. It’s far from perfect and I think it’s reputation is partially based on nostalgia and the fame Bendis justifiably earned farther down the road but there’s some heft to it too.

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Conman Dave Gold, AKA Goldfish, comes back to Cleveland after ten years away to take custody of his son. The mother is his estranged lover Lauren Becall, who has become a crime boss during those ten years.

And, yes, it all falls apart and ends horribly. So horribly that it manages to be emotional gut punch to the reader even though you can see it coming a mile away.. And, no, she isn’t the real Lauren Becall. 

Bendis does his own artwork in AKA Goldfish and it is a fascinating mixed bag. It’s black and white but it isn’t line outlines. Instead, it is full of huge slabs of black with lots of negative space. One reviewer compared it to making a comic book out of movie posters and I can’t give a better description than that.

And when it works, it’s good. Striking still images. However, too often it is so dark and muddy, it’s hard to figure out what it going on. In particular, I had problems figuring out what character was on the page at times. Bendis as an artist, particularly in his use of black ink, makes Mike Mignola look like Charles Schulz. And I mean that as a compliment to both Mignola and Schulz. It’s just so murky and unclear.

Bendis’s strength is his writing and that’s the strength of AKA Goldfish. It manages to be compelling even though every single character is a terrible person, even though you know from the start that it will all end in tears. The hook is how broken everyone is. 

One of the through lines in the book (major spoilers) is the gun Becall gave Goldfish when they were younger and he refused to use. In ultimately ends up in their son’s hands and he uses it to kill Becall. Not because he is lashing out or out vengeance of her abusive parenting but just to stop her from killing. And the kid gets killed almost immediately afterwards. It’s so bloody obvious but Bendis manages to make it work. Possibly through sheer audacity.

In many ways, AKA Goldfish is clearly a very early work. But it also feels so world weary. It reminds me of how I always do a double take when I’m reminded that Tom Waits was in his twenties when he recorded albums like Nighthawks at the Diner and Small Change.

AKA Goldfish is not my new favorite Bendis work. Far from it. It is so bleak I can’t recommend it in good faith to a lot of people. It is too often confusing and clunky. However, when it hits, it makes your head spin.

Koala Rescue Club is a series of knife fights in phone booths with just one die

Koala Rescue Club is the second collaboration between Joey Games and Postmark games. It’s a Print and Play, Roll and Write game for as many players as you can cram in. It’s designed by Phil Walker-Harding, the same guy who designed Sushi Go, Imhotep and Barenpark. And part of the proceeds go to real life koala conservation.

Well, that’s a lot to unpack.

Okay. The idea behind the game is that you are planting trees and rehoming koalas in them. The actual boards are collections of irregular grids connected by bridges.

The mechanics are very simple. Roll a die to determine a polynomial (or is it polyhedral?) shape. You then use that shape to either plant trees OR rehome koalas. No

mixing and matching. You can also disregard the roll and fill in one space. The rules say to draw a circle for a tree and an inner circle for a koala. I have ended up marking a slash for a tree and a back slash for a koala so a completed space is an X. 

On each board, you initially only have access to one area. You get bonuses by filling in rows and columns with koalas (meaning you have to fill in trees first) One of these bonuses is bridges to new areas.

The other bonuses include filling in a tree, filling in a koala, gaining a volunteer (which can be used as +/- 1 to a roll) or filing in a circle on a small group of hospitals on the edge of the map. Fully completed hospitals are worth points. And getting to fill in a bonus tree or koala is actually a big deal. You will end up with holes.

The game lasts two rounds of fifteen turns. You score at the end of each round. You get one point for each area completely filled in with trees, one point for each area completely filled in with koalas. Completed hospitals are worth varying points. Each map also has three bonus goals which just get scored at the end of the game.

I went into Koala Rescue Club with mixed impressions. On the one hand, both Walker-Harding and Post Mark Games have solid track records for me, including their previous collaboration Scribbly Gum. On the other hand, drawing shapes on grid is a very heavily used mechanic and only using one die flattens the odds and limits the possibilities.

(And, yes, Waypoints, also from Post Mark Games, also only uses one die. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule)

It took a bit for Koala Rescue Club to grow on me but it did grow on me. The game is all about tight spaces and tight margins. Each space is its own little knife-fight-in-a-phone-booth. And because you have to fill in every area entirely before it scores any points, every single point is tight.

But if that is your jam, and sometimes that’s exactly what I am in the mood for, having your plan come together in Koala Rescue Club is very satisfying. And you definitely have to maximize the use of the bonuses.

However, while I have come to definitely enjoy the game, I also know that it is designed for classroom use. And, having run games in classrooms, I can definitely see a lot of students getting really frustrated with Koala Rescue Club. It is honestly more of a gamer game.

(On the other hand, I can see the other Joey Games game I’ve played, Scribbly Gum, working much better in the classroom. It has a much more open decision tree.)

Koala Rescue Club might not be for everyone but it is a solid, top tier Roll and Write. And it has the bonus of going to a good cause.

Die rollers versus actual dice

 I had already overcome my initial resistance to Roll and Writes when the 2020 lockdown hit but  that really pushed me further into that particular niche of gaming. Not that I am alone in that.

But that did lead to me using die rollers more often instead of physical dice.

Looking back, there were a number of games that were being developed to be played while social distancing (via video conferencing, for instance) like Rolling Realms or Pointree. And those games are designed to be played with little to none dice manipulation. No rerolls or dice flipping or the such.

And one of the ways I often play R&Ws is via clipboard. When playing without a table, die rollers are practically key. My smart phone or my smart watch are my dice when I’m playing on a clipboard.

However, I found also started actively looking for R&Ws that were die roller friendly. While there is a time and place for those games, that was extremely limiting. Even games like Yahtzee or Bunco don’t qualify for crying out loud.

Not including the very valid argument that if you are playing a physical game with paper and pencil, you should go the whole nine yards and play with physical dice, actually having physical dice expands the toolbox that designers have to work with. 

Depending on the sophistication of your die roller (and the one on my smart watch is quite limited), basic mechanics like rerolls or flipping or banking dice can be tricky to impossible. And some games, like Battle Pages, have you place dice on the page. Trying to draw in dice would just be asking for trouble.

Now, I’m not reversing course and condemning die rollers. When a clip board or the equivalent are what you have to work with, die rollers become essential. However, when I have the time and space, I now reach for a dice bag.

Die rollers are very useful tools. They are just not an actual replacement for dice.

Katrielle Layton deserved a better video game

 When my wife, then fiancé, wanted to bring me back to the world of video games, two of the things she did was get me a DS and a copy of Professor Layton and the Curious Village.

Worked like a charm.

The game is a collection of puzzles that are strung together by the story of Professor Hershall Layton (an archeologist, gentleman and the possessor of one devil of a top hat) and his assistant Luke Triton investigating a mysterious town. Unlike many games that have puzzle-like elements, the action stops in the Layton games and you actually solve a puzzle that has little to do with the actual story.

For me, at least, the Layton games were right hot stuff.

Earlier this year, we decided to try out Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy, the seventh main game in the series. Professor Layton has mysteriously disappeared and his daughter Katrielle has taken up the mantle of the detective and puzzle solver. It started out on the 3DS but was also released for the Switch.

Critics viewed it as one of the weakest entries in the series. And I have to agree.

From what I read, it is the first game that didn’t have Akiro Tago work on the puzzles, on account of him passing away. And the puzzles are definitely weaker. More than that, instead of one fairly serious story, it’s a collection of fairly light hearted stories. The story elements lack the weight and gravitas of the earlier games.

But…

We did still have fun.

And it comes down to this. Even a weak Layton game is still a Layton game. Better than nothing is a very weak argument but it is an argument. 

But, while the puzzles aren’t the best, I could forgive that. The story is what really drags the game down. While the Professor Layton stories were bizarre to the point of nonsensical, they still had drama in the context of the settings. Not only is this game broken down into individual, only loosely related, stories, some of the cases would fit right into Richard Scarry’s Busy Town Mysteries. While a couple of the cases are more serious, the overall tone feels like the intended audience is small children, not a general, all purpose audience.

The funny thing is that the three main characters all have the potential to carry a much stronger story. The story we were given made both my wife and I rush through the story elements so we could get to the puzzles.

All said and done, I’d recommend the first two Layton trilogies to anyone who likes puzzles without qualification. Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy, on the other hand, gets lots of qualifications. It is okay as our seventh Layton game but it shouldn’t be anyone’s first.

My May Gaming

 While May was a month where I made a lot of Print and Play Projects, it wasn’t a month where I learned a lot of new games. To be fair, I was making fresh copies of games or systems I was already familiar with. 

I learned:

Mysticana - Sorcerer’s Showdown

Advent of the Wyrms

Paper Pinball - Ski ‘93

Super Dice Heroes

99 (traditional card game)

Out of those games, the most interesting one I learned was Advent of the Wyrms, a Decktet solitaire game. And that was still pretty light. But worth playing again.

Ski ‘93 had the biggest impact, though, since it made me take a deep dive into the Paper Pinball system. Each individual game isn’t much but taken as a collective, the system becomes a lot more fun.

Super Dice Heroes checked the box for learning a new Roll and Writes game. Honestly, it was one of the most basic R&W I’ve seen in a long time but I want to look into its sequel in June.

And I learned 99 on BGA just to learn a game. And that’s about all that amounted to. 

Some months are not gaming heavy months. 

My May PnP

May ended up being a month with more PnP crafting than I had expected. A lot of them were small projects, laminating Roll and Writes pages. Still, it added up.

Mysticana - Three Spires

Decktet (minimal art deck)

Paper Pinball - Ski 93

Flip Freighters

Letter Snake

Paper Pinball - Sherwood 2146 (vol 1&2&2.5)

Paper Pinball - Wave Wizard

Paper Pinball - Squishington Goes to Venus

Dungeon of Gems

Judgement: A Nine Card Deck Building Game

Ukiyo

Paper Pinball - Wolf Hackers (vol 1&2&2.5)

Paper Pinball - Laser Sisters (vol 1&2.5) 

Paper Pinball - Goblin Circus (vol 1&2)

Paper Pinball - Championship Boogerball

Paper Pinball - Sorcery School Sleuths

Paper Pinball - Fight Back the Winter

Paper Pinball - Space Marines vs Dragons

Super Dice Heroes

Delve - Starter Adventure

Devil Bunny Needs A Ham

Some Kind of Genius?

One Card Mazes

Shut the Box Cards

Escape of the Dead

Mysticana - The Queen’s Interests

Flipword 

My big project was making a copy of the Decktet since I wanted to mess around with that game system and I’m not sure where any of the other copies I’ve made are. I found a low ink variation, which isn’t as much fun as the proper Decktet but used a lot less toner.

I also did a lot of house cleaning, laminating Roll and Writes sheets that I’d printed out at some point or another and told myself I’d get around to laminating. I also swear that I make fresh copies of Devil Bunny Needs a Ham and Escape of the Dead every few years.

My decision to make the Ski ‘93 board for Paper Pinball ended up having me kicking off making copies of almost all the Paper Pinball boards I’d played before. (A couple survived the last move) Paper Pinball had been a guilty pleasure for a while but each individual board isn’t able to support binge play. But it occurred to me that a stack of them would. I guess twelve boards was the critical mass.

I did not expect to make more than a couple projects in May. And I have no idea what June will bring.

Advent of Wyrms doesn’t push any boundaries but I had fun

 Advent of the Wyrms was one of the games that made me want to revisit the Decktet. It’s a soliatire game that was released in 2020 so it gave me a way to see what people have been doing with the Decktet more recently. For a certain definition of recent. I suppose.

The theme is that you are trying to prevent the revival of world destroying dragons. Wyrms are one of the six suits of the Decktet and this game revolves around that suit. Oh and you use the extended deck so 45 cards.

To win the game, you need to place four sets of three ascending cards. Each set needs to share a common suit. Remember, most of the cards have more than one suit. You can be working on up to five sets.

Shuffle the deck and deal out a hand of four cards. If you get a Wyrm card, shuffle it back in and deal out a new card. A turn is play a card/discard a card, then draw a card.

If you draw a card that includes the Wyrm, you have to discard a card that matches its rank, matches one of its other suits, the suit-free Excuse card or two cards from the top of the deck (which is the worst option) You discard the Wyrm card too.

If you make four sets before you run out of cards, you win. If you don’t, you lose.

I can’t help but compare Advent of Wyrms to Adaman, one of the first, if not the first, solitaire games for the Decktet. Both games definitely feel games originally designed for traditional cards adopted for the Decktet. 

Adaman is more intricate and I think it’s more difficult. I have managed to win Advent of the Wyrms and I haven’t won Adaman yet. I feel safe saying it’s the deeper game.

On the other hand, Advent of the Wyrms is a more fluid game with a definite tempo of play. It’s definitely simpler but that also makes it easier to 

just get a game rolling. Advent of Wyrms is, at least for me, more fun.

Mind you, I don’t think Advent of Wyrms really pushes what you can do with the Decktet. Not it has to. Innovation is not a requirement for quality.

Advent of the Wyrms is a fun game but more of one I’ll probably use to warm up before playing another Decktet game than on its own.

http://wiki.decktet.com/game:advent-of-the-wyrms

I won’t spoil Fire Force but, trust me, it’s far weirder than it looks

Thanks to Bundle of Holding, I have read through the entirety of the Fire Force manga by Atsushi Ohkubi. My initial impression of it was My Hero Academia as fire fighters. Which isn’t remotely accurate but I love me some My Hero Academia so that was enough to get me on board.

Of course, in this case, the fire fighters in question almost all have pyrokinetic powers and fight fire monsters called infernals. In world that should be a whole lot more dystopian than it appears to be on the surface.

Around two hundred and fifty years earlier, there was a cataclysm that nearly destroyed the world. The Empire of Tokyo has risen up from the almost literal ashes. However, the world is haunted by spontaneous human combustion, which doesn’t bit turn people into dead ashes but infernals which are rampaging fiery beasts.

Fire Soldiers, most of whom have some kind of pyrokinetic powers, are a special division whose purpose is to put infernals down. A very important element of their job is that these are innocent people who they have to kill. Each squad even has clergy to administer last rites after or during the battle.

Killing infernals isn’t presented as a moral quandary per se. Eldritch fiery abominations killing people is an issue society has to address. However, it is presented as a moral burden. It has to be done but it is horrible.

Our hero is Shinra, a young fire soldier with the power to generate fire from his feet. This gives him the ability to fly, super speed, an unbelievable kick and a distaste for shoes. And I intentionally do mean our hero since being a hero is Shinra’s goal in life. 

Which would make him sound like a simple, naive character. However, he is a grounded by childhood tragedies that just get worse the more we learn about him. In fact, one of his greatest feats is being a functional, caring person after all he’s been through.

(As long as I’m talking about characters, I’ll address the elephant in the room, Tamaki, a fire soldier who is cursed to fall out of her clothes. It’s kept PG but seriously? To give Atsushi Ohkubo some credit, it is treated as a serious condition and something Tamaki has to struggle with socially and emotionally. On the other hand, her nemesis is a guy who passes out every time he sees her in her underwear and it’s treated as comedy. That’s trying to have your cake and eat it too. Yeah, it’s a problematic.)

Fire Force doesn’t have a monster-of-the-week formula. Instead, it is clearly big story arc pretty much from the beginning. And, without giving away any spoilers, boy do the plot twists keep hitting.

Now, I pretty much assume that all Shonen works are going to have major turning points where the status quo is not going to be coming back. If the words Jujutsu Kaisen and Shibuya Incident don’t make any sense to you, trust me, they are a darn good example of this. But Fire Force just keeps having them. 

The series keeps on having points where I told myself ‘ah, this is where everything changes’ And everything does change. But then we’d get another point where everything changes. Again, I want to avoid spoilers but near the end, I became convinced that if Atsushi Ohkubo and Grant Morrison ever met, it would destroy the universe.

I also want to note that many elements of Fire Force that I wrote off as only existing because of the rule of cool or silly fun end up having profound in-universe justifications. And from the aforementioned Jujutsu Kaisen to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures, I’m used to in-universe explorations and explanations of weird powers. Fire Force still takes it to places most creators rarely go.

If I had only read one or two volumes, Fire Force wouldn’t have had much impact. But being able to read the whole series to the end made me appreciate what a crazy, mad fever dream it is.

Adaman is a good but not to my taste

 When I decided that I needed to revisit the Decktet with a focus on solitaire games, I knew that my starting place was going to be Adaman, It is one of the earliest Decktet games, developed by the same guy who developed the Decktet itself, P.D. Magnus. Now, I had played it before, about twelve years ago. On the one hand, I remembered almost nothing about the game. On the other hand, I did remember playing it, which is still something.

The Decktet is broken down into two groups, the basic deck, which uses ranks like conventional deck of cards; and the extended deck, which has Tarot-like trumps. The deck has six suits but most of the cards have more than one suit on them, All of the cards have Tarot-like artwork, not unlike what you might expect if Pamala Smith had been possessed by Sir John Tennial while he was on a laudanum bender. Adaman, at least as it was originally designed, only uses the basic deck. The cards are also broken down into subcategories, indicated by the artwork. Your goal in Adaman is to discard/score/claim the eleven personage cards, ie, the cards that have 'people' on them.

The theme of Adaman is that you are one of the heirs to the throne and are building up power via palace intrigue. Gameplay takes place in three rows that can only be five cards long. The bottom row is resources, which functions as your hand. The middle row is the market and the top row is the palace. 

Shuffle up the basic cards. Deal out five to the market. Then deal out five to the resource row. However, if you deal a personage to the resource card, you move it to the palace row and deal a replacement card. So, the market can have any card in it. Resources cannot have any personages. The palace can only be personages.

Gameplay goes as follows. You discard cards from resources to claim cards from the market or palace. The discarded cards have to equal or be more than the rank of the claimed card and each card has to share suit with the claimed card. If you claim a personage, add it to your scoring pile. If it's any other card, put it in the resource row. Deal out cards to fill in any gaps in the market or resources and keep going.

You win if you score all eleven personages. You lose if you have to add a sixth card to the palace or you run out of moves.

All right. I would honestly describe Adaman as "just okay', at least for me. Mechanically, it definitely works. In fact, I'm finding it to actually be a tough game to beat. The royal cards, which are rank ten and have only one suit, are particularly tricky and help make the game interesting. However, there wasn't anything that really made the game sparkle for me. It doesn't have a hook, at least not for me. Adaman feels like a solitaire game for a regular deck of cards that has been adjusted for the Decktet. (In fact, that game may be Portraits)

There is a caveat. If you view Adaman as an introduction to the Decktet and a way to familiarize yourself with the cards, Adaman does an excellent job of doing that. It gets you used to the idea of a card having more than one suit and which cards are which. Another one of the early Decktet games, Bharg, was a two-player rummy game that felt like it had a similar goal and Adaman does it better. It forces you to examine the cards more closely and it makes use of the artwork. I feel no need to go back to Bharg while I still like there's some fun left in Adaman.

Now, on the third hand, I decided to revisit the Decktet because I've been playing a lot of Mysticana games. And the direct comparison to Adaman is Nine Perils, which also functions as an introduction to the core concepts of the deck. And that is a game I go back to a lot. In fact, I usually play a game of it as a warm-up before playing other Mysticana games.  Adaman doesn't have that kind of umph.

Adaman represents, more than some other Decktet games, using the game system like a regular deck of cards. Which isn't a bad thing. The standard deck of cards has to be one of the most, if not the most, successful gaming system in history. (Now someone will argue with me using dice as a counterexample) 

Adaman is a solid, good game but it's not why I like the Decktet. 

One Card Mazes is back on Kickstarter for a third season

 One Card Mazes is currently running their third Kickstarter for a third set of their puzzles. Well, I got to do my part to get the word out.

Each One Card Maze (so far) is a maze that fits on both sides of a card. They aren't designed to be written on but to be followed with your mind's eye. There are two ways to manipulate the maze. Arrows leading off the edge that let you flip the card to the other side and spins that let you change the orientation of the card. There are doors on the mazes that you can only pass through if the card is oriented correctly. (You see, the doors are arrows and you can only pass through ones that are pointing up)

My first exposure to One Card Mazes was through a design contest. Well, they've come a long way since then. I was concerned when I first saw them that the core mechanics would be too simple. Instead, over the course of a whole bunch of mazes, I have come to the conclusion that the core mechanics are super accessible, allowing room for mazes that at least I struggle with lol

However, they built on that formula in the second season by adding bosses, who you have to defeat. As well as fledgling mazes so people like me could have mazes they could solve in only a couple of days.

The third season, well, they just keep on stepping it up .

One of the two sets of cards will be an interconnected maze. Cards will have connections from one card to another. The other set of cards is going to take the jump from being puzzles to being a two to four player game. I think they’ll be able to played as a regular mazes too.

How will it all work? i have no idea. I am really curious, though. One Card Mazes keeps exceeding my expectations. Seriously, making a game where you have to mentally follow along is surprisingly hard and they've done a bang up job of it.

Oh, there's also a stand alone, in hand game about Cthulhu on the Kickstarter. Palm Island was a transformative experience for me so I'm excited about that as well. 

I usually keep at least one or two One Card Mazes in my bag or wallet. They've come in handy to keep my sanity. When we had a flat tire, One Card Mazes helped me make the hours go by. I'm on board for their latest Kickstarter and doing my small part to spread the word.

And if you're reading this years after the fact, hunt them down. They're good.

The Decktet’s vast potential

For years, I have said that if you were to only make one PnP project, it should be the Decktet. And, to be honest, I haven't changed my mind yet about that. It is one of the versatile one-and-done projects I can think of.

The Decktet is a game system that consists of a deck of 45 cards with six suits. The clever bit, and this is honestly clever, is that almost all of the cards are mulit-suited.

I have seen decks that add extra suits and ranks. The Decktet, having the cards be more than one suit? That I hadn't seen before and I'm not sure I have seen it since. Added to that, the deck is divided between 36 basic cards and nine extended cards. And eight of those extended cards are triple suited while the last one has no suits at all. 

And the Decktet has some crazy artwork, which I would describe as Tarot-adjacent, cartoony  and grotesque. It's definitely memorable.

A game system is just a concept without actual games. And the Decktet has some that I quite enjoy. The three that really stick with me are Magnate, a resource management game; Emu Ranchers, a Lost Cities variant that I like more than Lost Cities in some ways; and Jacynth, a Carcassonne-style tile laying game. All three very different games and, if they were all there were, the Decktet would still be worth it.

As I wrote that list out, I realized that those three games are like a snapshot of a slightly earlier time in gaming, a time when German Family games had more of the market share. And, frankly, when I first got into designer board games. So I might be a little biased.

I have been looking back at the Decktet because I have been actively exploring the Mysticana game system. To the point where half my blogs for the spring might be about it. It's a very different approach, only three suits that are interlocking and module expansions. Its also much more solitaire focused, which plays more to my current gaming.

I have only lightly looked into the Decktet's solitaire options and, quite frankly, I wasn't interested in what I saw. However, that was before I had any real interest in solitaire gaming. I really need to go back and take a second look. 

While Decktet games are still being developed, its heyday seems clearly in the past. And I think that is really because here isn't a company driving its development. Sadly, that’s a real thing. Support makes a difference.

That said, the Decktet remains a very versatile gaming system with a game library worth exploring and plenty of untapped potential.