Go Goa is vacation planning the R&W

Go Goa is a Roll-and-Write about planning a vacation in Goa, a coastal state of India. While I didn’t find it particularly challenging, I did think it actually evoked the feeling of a vacation evem though it’s just a hex grid.

Here’s the basic pitch. You’re drawing a line on a grid map of Goa that has thirty different tourist locations. Each turn, three dice are rolled. One will be what direction you will go in. One will determine how many hexes you go. The last one determines if you can change directions one or two times.

 

Rolling dice to figure out what direction you are going. Why does that seem familiar? Oh yeah. Avalon Hill’s Outdoor Survival used that. You know, the game whose infamous first scenario was really seeing how long it took you to die from thirst, starvation or exposure.

Honestly, the fact that you can change directions at least once a turn makes a huge difference. I’m fact, it makes the game possibly too easy. But I still have flashbacks of all the deaths from Outdoor Surivial so I’ll take it.

You have to stop on a tourist hex for it to count. No just passing through. You get points just for landing on one. You also get points for collecting sets of the same type of tourist hex and collecting sets of one of each type. You also get points for completing itinerary cards and bonus points for reaching Dudshagar, the most distant point on the map.

Okay. I found that a fairly basic strategy of making sure I ended every turn on a tourist hex and priorized completing the itinerary cards reliably gave me a high score. And because I could always make at least one turn, it would take really bad dice and particularly poor decisions for me not to pull that off.

So I don’t find Go Goa to be very challenging as a game. However, I think it does work as a casual gaming experience. If you are looking for a rough puzzle, Go Goa doesn’t deliver. If you’re looking for R&W vacation, I think it pulls that off.

Now, I’ve only played it on Board Game Arena and I’ve only played it solitaire. In multiplayer, each turn has an active player who locks a die for direction just for themselves. But the ability to turn makes picking a distance dice the most important choice so I don’t know how big a deal locking people out of a direction is.

Go Goa isn’t a brilliant game but I do think it makes really good use of its theme, enough to be engaging.

Network Effect explores AIs bickering like an old married couple and it’s wonderful

I was curious to see where Martha Wells would take the Murderbot Diaries with the fifth book, Network Effect. The first four novellas form an arc that could described as Murderbot Finds a Family.

(The Murderbot Diaries has a starships and lasers setting run by Cyberpunk megacorps who treat their employees the way the Imperium of Man from WH40K. Sentient machines like Murderbot have the basic social standing of pocket lint)

Network Effect, the first full length novel, could described as Murderbot Finds Love. Or, more accurately, Murderbot Finally Acknowledges Love.

I have written about the Murderbot Diaries before and I still hold that it is an in-depth character study clever disguised as an action adventure story. Murderbot is one cape shy of being a superhero but also struggles with crippling social anxiety and a trauma-filled past.

One review pointed out something that I hadn’t considered. Murderbot isn’t a some kind of assassin or soldier cyborg/robot/construct. It is specifically a security construct, a body guard. So it’s devotion and fierce protectiveness for the people it cares about makes perfect sense.

Network Effect brings back Perihelion/Asshole Research Transport. ART was already established as one of Murderbot’s most important relationships. It helped Murderbot transition to being non-factory model and gave Murderbot constant, if snarky, support. Their relationship is the center of Network Effect.

The book also continues the pattern of having Murderbot interact and react to dealing with other AIs. In this case, we get two characters who are effectively alternate Murderbots. More details would be too many spoilers but they are hilariously designated 2 and 3.

While 2 is the more important (and interesting) contrast to Murderbot, I find the idea of 3 being what Murderbot would be like without its traumatic past fascinating. When asked what it wants if it could have free will, it wants to help. 3 is a silver age hero to Murderbot’s hitter bronze age hero. (Murderbot is not an anti-hero. It may be snarky and fragile but it’s totally a hero)

Network Effect continues the series journey of being about emotional growth couched in a science fiction setting that allowed a comfortable distance for the readers.

At the Helm totally clicks

This is just my very first impressions of At the Helm. I have a feeling I will be revisiting the game again, particularly after I try out the first two expansions.

At the Helm is a solitaire deck builder that, in its base form, consists of eighteen cards. It’s themed around the era of tall ships, which is definitely evocative. (I can’t decide if I blame that on Moby Dick or Treasure Island or Horacio Hornblower)

If you’re familiar with deck builders (quite frankly, even just Dominion), At the Helm pretty quickly makes sense. You have a starting deck of five very basic cards with a marketplace of eight more advanced cards. In addition, there are four double-sided goal cards and a captain card which is just a place to track life points. (I guess you could replace it with a d8)

I know it’s a bit of a stretch but you can say the game has five currencies or resources. Which seems like that should be too many but it works. You spend gold, sail, damage and hearts to complete different goals. You also spend gold to buy market cards (every card costs one gold, which is a surprisingly effective simplification) and spend hearts to heal damage. 

The marketplace also serves as a resource, not just as a place to get cards but as a resource to manage. Randomly deal out the eight cards in two rows of four. When you need to shuffle the deck, you add a card from the bottom row to your deck. If there’s a card above it, it drops down. If you can’t add a card, you lose. It’s a timer and it makes the order you deal out the cards matter.

I’ve only played the base game and used the easiest goals. Even then, At the Helm is still both interesting and challenging. I not be only have more goals to work through, I have two expansions. (And neither of them have more goals so I am sure there are more expansions to come)

At the Helm creates a legitimate deck building experience with just eighteen cards. I don’t think it has the replay value of Friday (which I’ve been playing off and on for more than ten years) but it still have a lot of replay.

Well, at least Betta has pretty fish

 First off, I have to admit that one of Betta’s biggest draws for me was the theme. I like betta fish and we’ve owned more than one over the years. (Not at the same time, of course. The little colorful thugs will literally murder each other)

Second, I’ve only played it on Board Game Arena. Since it depends on transparent cards/tiles, I have no idea how well it physically works. (I had assumed that it was transparent cards like Gloom. Looking at pictures, it looks like the empty spaces are just cut out, making floppy cards. I really don’t like that)

The theme behind Betta is that you are creating a betta display at a pet store. What you are actually doing is  rearranging three-by-three grids with images of different colored betta fish.

Each card or tile is a three-by-three grid with mostly empty spaces and two to three different colored fish. At the start of the game, pattern cards are randomly drawn. You are layering cards to try and duplicate the patterns. You get points for both duplicating patterns and for your largest group of fish per pattern at the end.

It’s not bad but around the same time as I learned Betta, I learned Shifting Stones, another pattern/puzzle game. And Shifting Stones is better than Betta in almost every level. You have more control and make more deliberate changes in Shifting Stones.

The decisions in Betta feel simple and (thanks to luck of the draw) limited. I feel like I can make plans for the long game but then depend on luck for anything beyond two moves to work.

Betta’s biggest draw for me is the fact that I can casually play it online. That and I like the images of betta males. (Those are ones with the colorful, feathery fins) And I have to admit that that is enough for me to occasionally play it. 

But unless I was talking to someone who really loved fish, I’d recommend another game.

Six Billion Demons? Now that’s a lot of demons

Kill Six Billion Demons is…

… Very dense

… a web comic turned graphic novel series

…An awful lot of demons 

… what Planescape would look like if it had been designed by Hunter S. Thompson after he converted simultaneously to Roman Catholicism and Hinduism while on a legendary amount of mescaline 

… a parable about how who you are, who you want to be and who you can become might have nothing to do with each other 

… the story of a possibly ordinary young woman and barista named Allison who was given the key of kings and pulled into a multiverse of angels and demons and tons of intrigue 

Kill Six Billion Demons isn’t the easiest thing to explain but it does have some impressive and intricate artwork, some stone crazy world building and an interesting exploration of character development.

I have finished the third volume, knowing I will read the next volume, then read the unpublished pages online, and then be annoyed when there isn’t more.

And I am glad Image published the first four volumes because Allison really doesn’t have agency until the second volume. It helped to have that first chunk all in one place.

Allison is sympathetic but also very flawed and damaged and prone to impulsively making bad decisions. Start an apocalypse bad decisions. And she’s surrounded by companions who match that description. (Cio, a devil who writes fan fiction to try and control her worst impulses, is a standout example) I honestly wonder if any of them will actually survive the full story, including Allison.

While the story is initially framed around Allison trying to rescue her sort-of boyfriend who was kidnapped when she was given the key, it is really about her finding her place in a decadent and decaying world where good is dead. Particularly since she’s kind of inherited god’s power.

Kill Six Billion Demons is a slow burn but worth it.

Shifting Stones is very niche but it does its niche well

Shifting Stones is a puzzle game where, if you’re playing it right, the puzzle will be constantly evolving. Of course, if you make poor moves, you create a snarled mess :)

The board is actually nine double-sided tiles in a three-by-three grid. You have cards that show specific patterns of tiles. You can either use cards to score points by matching patterns or discard them to shift tiles around. You can either flip tiles or swap two adjacent tiles.

In many ways, Shifting Stones takes a sliding tiles puzzle and expands on the concept. In particular, you get a third dimension by having the tiles be double-sided.

I feel comfortably saying that, from a mechanical angle, Shifting Stones is a good game. While there is nothing innovative about it, it takes familiar ideas and ties them together into a very playable package.

 

The real question is: do you want to play it? You have to enjoy abstract games. You have to enjoy puzzles. You have to enjoy methodically planning things out. And if you don’t any enjoy every single one of those things, you will not enjoy Shifting Stones.

And I’ll be honest, there are plenty of times when I am not in the mood for those things. I definitely have to be in the mood for Shifting Stones. However, I think that it is a game that will work a family audience, a casual audience, that wouldn’t be interested in a lot of other games.

I learned it on Board Game Arena and, to be brutally honest, it is one of the few games I’ve learned there that I would think about getting an analog version. There are a lot of people who are not going to enjoy Shifting Stones but those who are in its niche will really like it. Yes, you can say that about almost any game but I think you can say it even more so for this one.

Hydroracers disappoints me

I’ve been poking around board Game Arena for quick little distractions lately. (At some point, I should find the time to learn some more complex games there) And some of the games have been pretty nifty.

Hydroracers, though, fell pretty flat for me.

It’s a card-driven racing game. (You’re flying sea planes but, honestly, I didn’t feel like it was any different than race cars. As opposed to Snow Trails, where having two different dogs is essential to the mechanics and the theme) Play cards with numbers on them to move that many spaces. 

You also get to place bets during the race and there are push-your-luck rules for damaging your plane due to things like tight turns or collisions. 

If you have played any of Wolfgang Kramer’s auto racing games (like Downthrust or Top Race or Daytona 500), it’s impossible not to compare them Hydroracers. It also made me think of Ave Caesar. And Hydroracers falls short of any of them.

There are a number of reasons. But the biggest one and the one I’m going to harp on is the track. It is too simple in every way.  

For one thing, it is too small. And by that, I mean there aren’t enough spaces. It only takes a few rounds to do a lap. And I played on every available map and they all suffered from this problem. Which is actually ironic since the historic race course was over 280 kilometers.

There is also only one lane on the track. That means there’s no jockeying about for position. And, while the whole track is technically a bottle neck, there is no penalty to passing another plane. If you would land on an occupied space, you go to space ahead and push-your-luck for damage.

While Hydroracers is technically more complex than Ave Caesar, Ave Caesar has a longer course with actual bottle necks and reasons to fight for lanes. That makes the actual play of the game deeper.

I was shocked when I saw pictures of the published version of the game. Since it feels so small, I was shocked at how physically big the game is. It feels like a micro game but it takes up a table.

I try and look at the positives of a game but Hydroracers takes an interesting historical event and an engaging genre and removes so much of what makes either element interesting.