Mulling over Dark Imp’s PnP catalog

Over the last couple years, I’ve been playing the PnP offerings of The Dark Imp. The fact that I keep going back to them says that at least I think they’re pretty good. So I decided to summarize my thoughts about the games.

The Dark Imp has two lines of Print and Play games, notepad and placemats. They are all Roll and Writes and designed by Ellie Dix. The notepad games are black and white, smaller (four game sheets to a page) and simpler. Placemat games are color, take up two pages and, while not complex, they are more complex than the notepad games.

Because I am stingy on ink, I played through the notepad games first. That said, I think the placemat games are the real hidden gems. That said, part of the mission statement is to design games for classrooms and other group areas and the notepad games definitely nail that objective.

NOTEPAD GAMES

Mini Town 

I have to admit, I find Mini Town to be the least interesting game in both sets. It’s a draw-a-map on a grid game, which is a pretty common format for R&Ws. And games like 30 Rails and Welcome to Dino World were big parts of me embracing R&Ws so I do like them.

I just felt like it didn’t do enough to stand out.

Lingo Land

As much as I love language, word games are a hard sell for me. There are some like Buy Word or Flipword I really like. But it’s not a genre I go for. So I’m not really into playing Lingo Land.

BUT, objectively, I think it is the best designed word R&W I have played. It is the Dark Imp game I would recommend the most for classroom use. Sometimes, you don’t have to be into a game to appreciate that it is good.

Bank or Bust

The elevator pitch is that it is Can’t Stop with special powers. It’s a Push Your Luck game where you can spend banked points for different abilities.

But here’s the thing. You roll one die and you bust on a six. The odds never change so you can’t gauge if it’s better or worse to stay in. I don’t like that. But I do like the idea and the application of special powers so I do have a fascination for the game.

Palatial 

Draw Tetris-style shapes in a grid. Honestly, I think this is an even more common format than drawing a map on a grid. Roll two dice and pick one for the zoje on the grid and one for the shape.

While there are some solid flourishes, like asymmetrical zones and the two-block shape being only one that can cross zones, it’s nothing new. Which is what I said about Mini Town. And yet, I keep on pulling Palatial out and sometimes even bingeing it.

The conclusion I came to is that Palatial is just so intuitive. It’s easy to understand how it works so you can just skip to trying to play well.

PLACEMAT GAMES

Castaway

The placemat games all have a lot more theme than the notepad games and Castaway is about being stranded on a deserted island.

Which is actually one of the biggest drawbacks of the game. That is a very well traveled theme so you have a lot of choices. And I would play Island Alone over Castaway.

Castaway also had a mechanic that I liked, replanting trees. Cool idea and cool theme. However, when playing it solitaire, it let me control the tempo of the game enough that there was no tension.

I am sure multiplayer would really bump up the experience but I would still pick Island Alone for that.

The Grand Opeining

Running a restaurant on its first day, this game really leans into its theme. There are three actions. Seating guests, making food and serving guests.

The Grand Opening feels like the decision tree is simpler than the other placemat games. However, it all slots together so well. The Grand Opening has tight, enjoyable play.

Beach Life

This was the first placemat game I tried and it was a revelation for me. The artwork looked like Highlights for Children (no offense to that august publication) but the decision tree is surprisingly robust.

It’s a collection of mini-games themed around shore life like crabs and clams. Roll two dice. You use one to pick a mini-game and use the other in the mini-game. This creates a lot of interesting, sometimes painful choices.

Restaurantrepreneur

Other than being a pain to type, Restaurantrepreneur is, in my arrogant opinion, Ellie Dix’s masterpiece.

It’s themed around setting up a restaurant (clearly a theme dear to her heart) and, like Beach Life, it’s a set of mini-games. However, honestly, the mini-games are more complex and interesting. (Not rocket science but more complicated)

But the real kicker is the bank. You roll three dice each turn. One is used to pick the mini-game and one in that game. The last die, that goes to borrowing money from the bank. Which is three separate tracks: 1/2,3/4,5/6. When one ends, the game ends. That makes the end game really tense and forces you to make choices you don’t want to make. It’s awesome.

Honestly, even the weakest Dark Imp game is worth playing. But Restaurantrepreneur is a game I’d take to a game night and I think would do well.

Restaurantrepreneur Is a weird name but a good game

 My journey with learning Dark Imp’s PnP games has come to an end with Restaurantrepreneur. Certainly not my journey of _playing_ them and if they publish more, well, I definitely be interested in learning those. But Restaurantrepreneur wraps up me learning all of the one currently published.

The theme of Restaurantrepreneur is opening up a new restaurant, which is thematically similar to another Dark Imp game, the Grand Opening, about a restaurant’s first day. However, Restaurantrepreneur involves things like buying fixtures, advertising and hiring folks.

 

The game consists of five different mini-games. (The Menu, Hiring Staff, The Location, The Fixtures and Fittings, and The Marketing) They all have their own rules, are pretty simple and none of them could really stand on their own.

 

Each turn, someone rolls three dice. Each player uses one die to pick the game (sixes are wild for this purpose), one die to use in that game and one die as money withdrawn from the bank.

Now, if Restaurantrepreneur just consisted of two dice, picking a mini-game and a die to use in it, it would still be pretty good. But the bank is what pushes the game to the next level.

There are three accounts (pips  1&2, pips 3&4, pips 5&6) They each have sixteen money bags. When you have to cross out a seventeenth bag in an account, you are overdrawn and the game ends for you. (You can’t force an end to everyone’s game)

The bank doesn’t just act as a timer for the game, although it does do that. It makes every turn more interesting. And, at a certain point, you have to make sacrifices to either keep the game going or end the game earlier than you might like to get crucial points.

No, none of the elements are new. Dark Imp doesn’t reinvent wheels but it makes good use of wheels that have been road tested. 

While I can’t say that the mechanics really reflect the theme (they are either crossing out numbers or marking spaces), the themes tie together nicely with the overall idea of trying to get a restaurant started.

Restaurantrepreneur is part of Dark Imp’s placemat line, which means that they take up two sheets of paper, have slightly more complex rules and are ink heavy. The ink heavy part kept me away from the placemat games initially but I’ve been quite happy with them after I took the ink plunge.

Restaurantrepreneur lands solidly in casual gamer camp. It has good choices and the thematic pieces click together. It’s a game that I would pull out for a low key family game night. Restaurantrepreneur captures the feel of a Euro family game in two pages.

Castaway: dice and desert islands

For the last couple years, I’ve tried to learn at least one Roll and Write game a month. And we are moving across the country this summer so both my game playing time and my game thinking power has been limited.

Enter Dark Imp’s playmat line.

I had already tried out Beach Life last year and found it better than I expected. Beneath artwork that looked like it had been designed for High Lights and the simple rules were some tight choices. I blocked out the rest of the line for May, June and July.

June was Castaway.

The title tells you everything you need to know to know about the theme. You are stranded on a desert island and trying to escape and survive.

The actual gameplay is roll two dice and then everyone gets to do something with the roll. The two basic actions are gather resources and use those resources to build stuff.

Let’s get a little more detailed. The play area is a five by five grid. Each square has four squares in it. The little squares either have a shipwreck, empty water, a tree or empty land in each little square.  You use the two dice to determine which set of four squares you’re working with that round.

Two details: when you harvest materials, you immediately assign it to a specific building project. To be fair, that does simplify the book keeping. Second, another action you can take is planting trees. Since wood is the most heavily used resource, that’s an interesting way of resource management.

The game ends when someone build the right combination of stuff for either self sufficiency or rescue or someone has three turns where they can’t do anything. There’s a variety of ways of getting points that all come down to how well you’ve developed your island.

Okay. I’ve been playing Castaway solitaire and I’ve been enjoying it. The game offers simple mechanics that let you build up your island in different ways.

Two mechanics I like in particular: the subdivision of the squares into four smaller squares and replanting trees. The first one gives you more choices and the second one gives you a way to manage resources.

I also think that playing it solitaire, I am missing out on the potential of Castaway. Playing alone, you can control when the game ends. Losing that would add a lot to the experience.

Ultimately, Castaway is a lowkey, enjoyable game that I think works well with a casual audience. It’s not innovative but it is accessible. It’s aimed at a family audience and I think it works for that. 

(I haven’t played Island Alone, another PnP R&W about being stranded on a desert island but it is high on my list to try. I think I will find it more engaging and fun. However, I think Castaway will do better for times when my brain is worn out :) )

The Grand Opening is good, gentle fun

I went into Dark Imp’s Placemat games with some reluctance. For one thing, some of them are ink heavy and I’m stingy with ink lol

I honestly expected the first one I tried, Beach Life, to be terrible. Instead, I found that its collection of mini games came together to be a series of interesting decisions.

So I went into The Grand Opening with higher expectations and it lived up to them.

The theme of the game is that you are running the grand opening of a restaurant. You have to see your way through breakfast, brunch and lunch, doing your best to not have unfed guests or wasted food.

Every turn, two dice are rolled and everyone uses the same rolls however they want to. You can use each roll for one of three different actions: seat guests, make food and serve food to the guests. Each element makes sense and ties together well.

Thee are other some other bits and bobs like VIP guests who can earn extra points and assistants that give you a little dice manipulation. However, the core is getting bums in seats and food on plates. If that doesn’t make sense, stay away from restaurants.

Now, every time I go back to Dark Imp, I talk about how accessible their games are,  how easy they are to learn, teach and play. The tablet games are designed for settings like classrooms and it shows. Low ink line art and very simple. Not bad but very simple.

The placemat games takes it up a notch in art and complexity. We are still talking Coloretto-level complexity. But the tablet games are ones I would use with a non-gaming audience or situation. I would use the placemat games for casual gaming situations.

While I have been enjoying Beach Life and The Grand Opening, I also have to say that they aren’t innovative. I can’t say they are top tier but they are reliable. They are pleasant, relaxed fun. And sometimes, that’s what you need.

We will be moving soon. Having games that are this space-mindful is really useful.

The surprise that is Beach Life

Dark Imp has two different categories of Print-and-Play Roll-and-Write games: notepads and placemats. While notepads are smaller and low ink, placemats needs two sheets of paper per player sheet and are in color. Beach Life is the first placemat game I’ve tried.

Beach Life is made of up five mini-games themed around the kind of aquatic life you find at the shoreline. (Oysters,  razor clams, starfish, sea snails and crabs, in case you’re curious) Each turn , someone rolls three dice. Each player picks two dice. One to choose a mini game (sixes are wild for this choice) and one to use in the game you choose.

Five times per game, you can use the third die as a second action in the mini game you choose. The first player to complete a mini game gets a bonus five points. If you can’t use a roll, you check off a No Roll box. When a player checks off their third No Roll Box, the game ends and high score wins.

Each of the mini games is pretty simple. Check off numbers or fill numbers in. The crab walking to the water is my favorite. Each successive number has to be plus or minus one to the last one. But the closer you get to the shore, the smaller the numbers have to be.

I went into Beach Life with low expectations. The artwork is child-friendly to the point where it would look at home in Highlights. Each of the mini-games would be too simple and limited to stand in its own.

However, having to balance the die rolls between the five games proved to be more interesting than I expected. Sometimes, the choices are obvious but balancing the rest of your play until you get the rolls you are hoping for is where the decisions are.

I expected Beach Life to be a game aimed at younger kids. Instead, it’s pretty solidly in casual gamer territory and in a fun way. In fact, it feels more original than any of the notepad line.

The biggest issue I have with it is that it’s ink heavy and ideally should be printed in color. (That’s pretty much the case for all the placemat games) That really limits it in my mind for larger groups, like classrooms. But I think that’s manageable for a smaller group.

Beach Life has left me more interested in Dark Imp and their placemat games in particular.

Lingo Land is a word game for anyone

 Lingo Land was the fourth game I tried from Dark Imp's tablet collection (which is separate from their playmat collection, which you also print off and play) and it might actually be the best game of the lot. 

Lingo Land is a word building game for as many players as you want to cram in. It's also a Roll and Write, which means you roll some dice and then write something down.

Print the game sheet off. Get a couple of dice. Make sure everyone has something to write with.

The game sheet consists of five boxes and five lines with ten dashes each. The alphabet is broken down into the five boxes. Every box has one of the vowels and the last box has X as an extra letter.

You can probably see where this is going. Roll the dice. One die is assigned to pick a letter box and the other is assigned to a line where you are writing a word. You can pick any letter in your chosen box and letters can be reused. This isn't one of those games where you can only use E once. Sixes are wild.

Okay, this is the touch that actually makes Lingo Land good. Well, not just good but able to be played at all. You can write the chosen letter on any open space on the line. Having that much flexibility lets you actually do some sort of actual planning and makes the game have fun and depth.

You know, every time I write about a word game, I note that I'm really not a word game person. At this point, I have looked at a lot of word games for a non-word game person. (I still hold that Scrabble is an area control game disguised as a word game) Lingo Land checks a lot of boxes for me, though.

Lingo Land is short. It offers some flexibility. And it really favors writing longer words. (You get one point for a three-letter word and fifteen for a ten-letter word) And, compared to the other games I've tried from Dark Imp, it feels more original. (I'm probably wrong and just haven't played the right word games)

There is one flaw. You don’t get any points for nonsense words but you can make nonsense words. I can see having one or two lines as sacrifices to avoid using a pass and keep the game going. (And I can see players hurrying to use pass boxes to shut the game down faster) Still, few games are safe from spoilsports.

My experience with Dark Imp is that they make games that designed to be very accessible for classrooms or non-gamer environments. And they deliver on that goal. I would run them in classrooms and similar environments. Lingo Land is a game I'd think about playing with folks who are into Scrabble or Buy Word or such. I think it can work for a broader audience.

I went into Lingo Land with low expectations. And I think it's a game that will work for the broader casual gamer audience.

Finding an old mechanic in a different medium

Bank or Bust is a Push-Your-Luck Roll-and-Write from Dark Imp. Their mission statement is to create multi-generational family games and they also have a focus on classroom viable games. That means Dark Imp focused on making accessible game that anyone could play.

This is the core idea of the game: you’ve got a track with spaces. (Everyone is moving along their own version since it’s an PnP multi-solitaire so you all have your own player sheet.) Each turn, a die is rolled. If anything but a six is rolled, everyone still in moves that many spaces. A six means you bust. And, of course, you can drop out before the roll and get the points for the space you’re on.

And if that were it, Bank or Bust would just be a bust. I mean, we are talking about a core mechanic that is the eptome of basic, bare bones push-your-luck.

So here’s the clever bit. When you decide to stop and take your points, you can either bank them (you know, as points) or you can spend them on special powers. These include one-time powers of flipping a six or ongoing powers like your pawn starting a five instead of zero.

Some of the special powers create some weird  possible gameplay circumstances. Players have five bust boxes and one game ending condition is one player running out. But you can buy more, changing that math. The special powers can add some indirect interaction in the game that otherwise is multiplayer solitaire.

So, what do I actually think of the game?

Well, even with the special powers, it is very, very simple. In particular, just rolling one die really flattens the odds and makes the actual choices less interesting. Can’t Stop is even simpler but pairing four dice and making decisions based on the bell shaped curve of two dice creates deeper choices.

I also think that theoretically unlimited number of players falls apart due to the indirect interactions. I think six players makes more sense. That’s not a criticism, that’s just a consideration for classroom use.

On the plus side, Bank or Bust is a very accessible game on multiple fronts. It’s easy to print off. It’s easy to teach. It’s easy to get a game going, even with folks who aren’t into gaming.

However, the biggest plus is that Bank or Bust isn’t filling out a grid or a check list. I have a lot of PnP multi-player solitaire options. But this one brings Push-Your-Luck to the medium.

Bank or Bust doesnt reinvent the wheel. It’s not an innovative game. It definitely has its flaws. But it gives me something new classroom, video conference and casual play.

Palatial covers familiar ground

 Palatial, a game that is allegedly about renovating a house but is really about filling a grid with polynomials, exemplifies what I have come to expect from Dark Imp Games. Pretty much no innovation but an incredible level of accessibility on almost every level.

You have a square grid broken down into six asymmetrical areas. You have a table of six different polynomial shapes, some of which would be right at home in Tetris. Each turn, you roll two dice. Pick one die for the area and the other die to be the shape. The game ends when any player has to pass three times.

Here's the two clever bits: Some squares have triangles and some circles. You get extra points for covering triangles but you lose points for covering circles. And the one pip shape is just two squares but it is the one shape that you can have cross over the line between areas.

In other words, Palatial doesn't cover any ground that I haven't seen before.

With that said, it uses all those elements to create a mechanically solid game. You get to make choices and you have to make sacrifices.

Dark Imp's mission statement is to create games that can work in family and classroom environments. Palatial is an ink-light Print and Play game that requires just hitting the print button to make. You just need two bog standard six-sided dice. It can handle pretty much any number of players. It's easy to teach, even if the student doesn't have much experience with board games or Roll and Write.

Palatial isn't a game I'd recommend for gamers. There are too many other games like it out there that have more interesting twists or themes. But I do think it would work very well with locations like classrooms, youth clubs or random family gatherings. Easy to make, teach and play.

As I keep finding, Dark Imp Games knows what they want to do and then they do it.