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.

Boxing Day and Moriarty the Patriot

 I’m posting this on Boxing Day, December 26. One of the associations of Boxing Day is the wealthy people kn England giving boxes of stuff to tradesmen and their servants on the day after Christmas.

Which is actually a fun segue way for me to talk about a Manga series I’ve been reading, Moriarty the Patriot. Because the distinction between classes in Victorian England is a major element in the series.

And, yes, it’s a reimaging of Sherlock Holmes. I don’t think even Cthulhu has as many reimagings as Sherlock Holmes.

In Moriarty the Patriot, the actual goal of Moriarty isn’t crime but social revolution. Moriarty wants to end the aristocracy’s abusive relationship with the common people.

The series is also hilariously full of Bishōnen, pretty androgynous men. In fact, one of the most prominent female characters transitions to male so the Bishōnen count just keeps growing.

The two questions I find myself asking about Moriarty the Patriot are ‘Is it a good story?’ and ‘Is it a good Sherlock Holmes story?’ The answer to the first is a solid yes but I don’t know about the second.

Part of that problem is that there have been so many adaptations, revisions, pastiches, etc of Sherlock Holmes and their world. According to IMBd, almost 350 actors have played Holmes and that’s not even getting into novels, short stories, comic books, web comics and lord knows what other media. It’s crazy.

I’ve asked myself how big a difference just changing all the names would make to Moriarty the Patriot. And, despite having adaptions of specific stories like the Hound of Baskervilles and A Scandal in Bohemia, I’m not not sure it would make a big difference.

William James Moriarty is a really fun character. Yes, he is ridiculously brilliant. On top of that, he has amazing physical skills. He’s Batman without the mask. At the same time, he will sacrifice anything, particularly himself, to make the world better. All of his dreams have an undercurrent of self destruction.

Amusingly, his brothers are Louis James Moriarty and Albert James Moriarty. The three together are the composite James Moriarity, Napoleon of Ctime. And, while William is the most crazy awesome one, the other two are no slouches. If William is Batman, they are Nightwings.

Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, is really only interesting for me when he’s dealing with the brothers. When he gets his own story arcs, the story drags for me. I think I’ve just seen so many versions of Holmes that this one doesn’t bring anything new to the table while this version of James Moriarty is actually different. 

(Holmes does speak in a cockney accent. I once read a short story where Holmes is a brash, underclass cockney who tells Watson to write him as a stiff upper crust or no one will believe  it. And I can’t figure out where I read that or wrote it! Does anyone reading this know?)

Moriarty the Patriot is a very postmodern work. I mean, a major character is transitioning isn’t something I’d see in Victorian era work. The social views are also very 21st century.  Some of the conspiracy theories would seem bonkers if it wasn’t for some of the real life conspiracies out there.

If you approach Moriarty the Patriot not as a Sherlock Holmes story or a story about Victorian England but as a very 21st cebtury story about social issues with a Victorian backdrop, it’s worth reading.

Sack Stackers - A PnP for the holidays

I had wanted to try out a holiday-themed game before Christmas and Sack Stackers ended up being what fit the bill. And Sack Stsckers did a good job doing something fun with the formula of filling in a grid :)

The theme of the game is that you are one of Santa elves. The automatic sack stuffer is off and you need to sort out the presents. Okay, from there, it’s abstract all the way.

You have a six by six grid with numbered columns. You have six numbered boxes that each have  five different patterns and one wild. Yeah, you know how it’s going to work. Roll two dice. Pick one for the column and one for the pattern.

So, here’s how Sack Stackers does its own thing:

You score points by making specific four-square shapes with each specific pattern. A line of four blocks with the horizontal pattern, for instance. Yes, you build up from the bottom. Yes, the five shapes are the Tetris shapes.

So Sack Stackers has you play Tetris to make Tetris shapes. 

You also get some ways to mitigate luck. In addition to the aforementioned wild pattern, you also get ten -1/+1 uses. You can even use more than one at the same time. For every two you use, you need to add a lump of coal to the grid. Which can be helpful in and of itself. Not only are isolated lumps worth a couple points, coal can fill in spaces you need filled to form shapes. You also have to add a lump of you can’t add a pattern square.

I also have to mention the graphics of the patterns each one is only two lines so they are super easy to duplicate and draw. From a graphic design, that’s well done.

Okay. So what do I think of Sack Stackers?

On the one hand, I have seen a lot of fill-in-the-grid Roll and Writes. I tried three this month alone and this isn’t even the best one. (The Blob That Ate the City has one  heck of a hook) It isn’t a bad game at all but it has a lot of competition.

Sack Stackers gives you a lot of wiggle room. Between six wild patterns and ten dice adjustments, you have a lot of control. It might even be too forgiving. (Which is a whole lot better than dice games where you have no control)

That said, the shape building is a fun mechanic and I don’t remember seeing it before. The game is easy to learn but the decisions are still there. Frankly, Sack Stackers is fun enough that I immediately played it again.

Sack Stackers is a game that can definitely work for casual gamers but I think it will also click for non-gamers and more dedicated gamers. The Christmas theme doesn’t hurt if you’re playing it during the holidays. 

Part of me wants to knock Sack Stacking for being yet another Fill-in-the-Grid Roll and Write since I’ve seen so many. But the fact is that I keep on having fun with Sack Stacking and plan on sending it to friends.

After a five year gap, Brandon Sanderson finished the Alcatraz books

I am quite lucky because I only had to wait a year for the last Alcatraz/Evil Librarian book by Brandon Sanderson to come out. That’s because I was late to the party and didn’t have to wait the full five years that OG fans had to wait.

Okay, I’m talking about the last book in a series so you’d better believe there are spoilers. Even the title is a spoiler lol

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Is that enough? Nah…

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The last book is Bastille and the Evil Lbrarians. Because Alcatraz had a Heroic Blue Screen of Death at the end of the fifth book (so that’s what Heroic BSoD stands for, huh), his bodyguard and love interest has to take over narration.

I’m not going to talk too much about the plot. Look, Alcatraz saves the world. It’s not a surprise, particularly since he clearly survives to write the first five books. 

As I’ve written before, the Alcatraz books are a celebration of the unreliable narrator. The books don’t just play with literary tropes, they gleefully point out that they are doing it. I would argue that the heroic fantasy story is just an excuse for Sanderson to talk about how narratives work.

In all honesty, the fifth book, Alcatraz versus the Dark Talent is the high point of the series. That book explores why Alcatraz is such an unreliable narrator and is also the high point for the drama. It’s the Empire Strikes Back of the series, including the bad guys coming seriously out ahead.

Bastille versus The Evil Librarians is a more straight forward book, which makes sense because Bastille is more straight forward than Alcatraz lol In fact, the book is practically one extended action scene. Looking at the series on a whole, Dark Talent is the climax while Bastille vEL is the denouement.

One element that does come to forefront in the last book is the romance between Alcatraz and Bastille. Considering that Bastille is more reluctant about that than Alcatraz, it is more interesting from her point of view.

And it actually makes sense that Dark Talent is actually more intricate than Bastille vEL. The point of the series, in many ways, is Alcatraz’s moment of crisis. But Bastille vEL needed to happen to we could see Alcatraz’s crazy guile heroics from outside his own head. And, you know,  the story actually having an ending is nice.

Plus, Kaz Smedry unleashing a vast horde of kittens during the battle to save the world justifies the book’s existence all by itself.

Bastille versus the Evil Librarians mat not be the best book in the series. However, it does what the series needed, pulled us back to the actual narrative.

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.