Nanga Parbat: Alone on the Wilderness - a tiny game about a HUGE mountain

Nanga Parbat: Alone in the Wilderness is the last game in the Kickstarter for Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games I’m looking at. I saved it for last because it’s not actually in the book but a bonus for backers. Steve Finn has said that he plans on releasing it in some format in the future.

And, truth to tell, it doesn’t feel like it would belong in the book. The eight games in the book use elements from games like Scrabble and Carcassonne and Yahtzee that make them feel intuitive and familiar. They are carefully crafted for a wide, casual gaming audience. Nanga Parbat, on the other hand, is its own thing.

Nanga Parbat sounds to me like either a cryptic or a spare identity for Bruce Wayne but it is actually the ninth highest mountain in the world and is part of the Himalayas. It’s known as the killer mountain, one of the hardest mountains to climb in the world. It is also known for its diverse wildlife and that part is the theme of the game. You are exploring the mountain, documenting the animals you see.

The game sheet has six areas, one for each die pip. Each area has six spaces, also for each die pip. Each space has one of four different animals. (Yak, Red Panda, Snow Leopard and Musk Deer, by the way) At the bottom of the sheet, each animal has six different scoring icons.

Oh, there’s are also some trails between areas but those are only for the musk deer scoring. 

0kay. At the start of the game, you roll a die. Put it on the marching mountain area. Choose one animal to circle in that area. Circle one of the matching animal’s scoring icons on the bottom of the page. Then, move to the die to the mountain area that matches that animal’s number. Roll the dice and cross out the animal that matches the roll in the new area. Then you move the die to the area that matches the new number.

At that point, you start over again but you don’t need to roll the die. You start over in the new area. Do that twelve times and figure out your score.

If you roll a number to cross out an animal that’s already taken, cross out the next highest number. If an entire area is filled, the roll becomes a wild number.

That might sound all cluttered but after one game, it all clicks. Nanga Parbat may not use ‘familiar game language’ but it is still a simple game.

Yaks score specific spaces in each area. Musk deer score specific completed paths. Red pandas score three or more connected circled spaces in an area. Snow leopards score for varieties of animals circled in an area. The rules include a scale for judging your score and I have yet to do well lol

Okay. Here’s the thing. I enjoy playing Nanga Parbat: Alone in the Wilderness. But I’m not sure it’s a ‘good’ game.

The way that the random elements kick into the game, in particular the fact that the areas you get to add a circle to are random, makes me wonder how much my choices matter. Am I playing the game or is the game playing me?

Mind you, I also half expect to have something click and how to play well suddenly make perfect sense. Heck, if someone told me that I was wrong and the game was actually solved, I would give them a listen.

At the end of the day, it is an interesting experience and takes very little time to play. That is enough for it to have some real value for me.

Pen Pals recycles old mechanics into solid gameplay

Pen Pals from Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games is one of the strategy games, although the name sounds like it could have been one of the word games too. Instead, it’s about making animal pens.

Like every game in the book, it’s a solitaire Roll and Write. The play sheet has six by seven grid with pigs, cows, ducks and sheep sprinkled in the squares and two spaces in each row for possible water bucket placement. At the top has a twelve by two grid of different fence shapes.

You set up the game by rolling to see which of the two water bucket spots you’ll use in each column. After that, you start fencing. The border of the grid is a fence. The first placement has to touch the border and every piece after that has to be part of the same network. You also can’t flip or rotate a shape. 

Choosing the shape of the fence is a little different than the usual R&W formula. The table has two columns for each pip and the two rows are for even and odd. Roll two dice. Pick one for the column and one for the row. You cross off a column after it’s been used. If it’s impossible to pick a column, the dice become wild and you can pick any available column. After twelve turns, game’s over and you figure out your score. 

Animals have to be in a pen with a water bucket to be worth any points. If a pen has only one water bucket, you choose either to score how many different types of animals or how many of one type of animal. The more, the merrier. If there is more than one bucket in a pen, you just score one point per animal.

Pen Pals uses a lot of well trod ideas. Thematically, it reminds me of Raging Bulls. It has a lot in common with 13 Sheep, my go-to for introducing Roll & Writes in the classroom. And, frankly, drawing shapes on a grid practically feels like the default idea for Roll & Writes.

And the tweaks Steve Finn added aren’t that crazy. The even-odd rows, the fact that you can’t rotate or flip shapes and some more unusual shapes aren’t dramatic changes. 

But they are enough to make an interesting decision tree and an engaging game. Pen Pals is a game that keeps me coming back. The short play time makes it easy to come back to and the tough choices make it worth coming back.

It doesn’t remake the wheel. Instead, it is a very good wheel. If you’ve played when a few Roll and Writes, the learning curve is practically a flat line. But that doesn’t change the fact that the game play is good.

Something I keep coming back to when I look at this book is that Steve Finn has made a collection of games that are extremely accessible and very suitable for casual gaming. It is a book for a wide audience.

My June Gaming

For most of June, our printer didn’t want to talk to any of our devices. And, while I have plenty of games already made that I could have learned, the annoyance got in the way of me wanting to. Wow, I feel petulant writing that. However, for reasons known only to it, the printer decided to connect to the computer near the end of June and my whole dynamic changed.

I learned:

Roll for the Goal (Gladden Games)

Hens

Crunch the Numbers (Dr. Finn)

Leftover Letters (Dr. Finn)

Paper App Golf

Spell It Out (Dr. Finn)

Word Wrap (Dr. Finn)

The Little Flower Shop: Open for Business (Dr. Finn)

Nanga Parbat: Alone in the Wilderness (Dr. Finn)

Pen Pals (Dr. Finn)

Looking at the list, I realize that my real frustration was that I wanted to get into Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games and wasn’t able to. In fact, I learned Hens on Board Game Arena just to learn a game.

I’m going to have plenty to save about Dr. Finn’s book as I go through it but I have to say that the best part is I want to keep playing the games. I go through a lot of Roll and Writes and a collection that keep me saying ‘let’s do that again’ is impressive and a joy.

It ended up being a good month for learning new games.

Dr Finn crunches some numbers

Crunch the Numbers is part of Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games. I am going to get so tired of typing that name out by the time I get to the last game in it. That said, Steve Finn does design a good game so I’m glad to have the PDF of the book.

Crunch the Numbers consists of three 4x4 grids. And each column and row has a scoring condition. Every number being odd or even or different or the same or being smaller than a given number. And if you fill out a row or column properly, you get points and, in a couple of them, a one-shot dice manipulation.

Oh, gameplay consists of rolling three dice in writing a number in each of the grids. When they’re full, the game is over and you figure out your score.

Crunch the Numbers was the first game in the book I tried. Honestly, because it looked like the simplest game and a quick way to start. (As I’ve continued through the book, it honestly isn’t the mechanically simplest but it was still a good place to begin)

Filling out a grid and having the numbers have to fit within specific requirements, that’s nothing new. I am not even sure if filling out multiple grids at the same time is all that new.

However, as I routinely say, innovation is not a requirement for quality. You don’t need to make a new wheel in order to make a really good bicycle. Steve Finn has taken pre-existing elements and put them together into a package that is accessible, interesting and fun.

I have steadily been going through Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games and I am not seeing a collection of games that are about breaking new ground. I see a collection of games that are easy to learn and that I think people will enjoy playing.