Roll and Reanimate does not make me feel lively

I’m just going to start out by saying that I did not enjoy Roll and Reanimate. 

And a good chunk of that lack of enjoyment had to do with rules ambiguities. Even worse, I was able to figure out quite a bit of what I think the designer wanted to tell me because I have played a lot of roll and write games. I think that it would have been an even worse experience for someone who wasn’t familiar with these kinds of mechanics.

The idea behind the game is that you are trying to create your own Frankenstein monster. Or, as the rules, describe your potential creation.  Franken-dice monster. I’m a dad. I dig dad jokes. Works for me.

The core of the game is dice drafting. Each player has their own pool of six dice and there is one Franken-die for the whole group. You can roll your own pool of dice multiple times, but you have to set aside at least one die in your laboratory each roll. And the first player to scream ‘Eureka’ gets to draft the Franken-die but they can’t draft any more dice.

There are three main parts of the play sheet: a mob track, the monster and the coil. Each body part on the monster has six boxes, each part with a specific die pip. 

You can spend three or more of the same pip to work on a body part. A run of three dice lets you improve the power coil. You can also discard dice to adjust other dice, reduce decomposition (which I’m not going to go into but makes sense as a mechanic) or erase check marks on the mob track.

If you complete the monster, you get a chance each turn to bring it to life. Roll all six dice and get at least the number of sixes on the coil to win.

The mob track basically makes your life difficult. Every unused die you have and every turn you don’t adds to the coil checks off boxes in the track. As the track fills up, you lose dice when you try to bring your monster to life. And when the track completely fills, you lose.

At least, I am very sure that’s how the game plays. I found the rules a bit murky and I have a lot of practice reading rules. And I also often read prototype rules that aren’t the final version for publication and they are usually better than this.

I also played the game solitaire and that’s where the real confusion kicked in. When playing solitaire, you are to mark off the mob space on the number of the Franken-die. Does that mean you mark off spaces irregularly and how does that affect the penalty? 

You also take a two mob box penalty if you use the Frankenstein-die but that makes sense. After all, there’s no competition for it. That rule also applies to large group play (but large group play doesn’t have the other penalty)

Not only is the first penalty confusing, it also doesn’t seem balanced. It’s not like playing solitaire makes the game any easier, other than no competition for the Franken-die and the other penalty accounts for that.

Honestly, Roll and Reanimate has the bones of a good game. However, it desperately needs at least a good copy editor to straighten out the rules and make them clear.

To add to my displeasure, it was a Kickstarter project, meaning I did pay for it. Not much but I am a _lot_ more forgiving of a free download or a contest entry. The moment you ask me to treat a download as a piece of merchandise, I expect the standards of a piece of merchandise.

I do think there’s a decent game hidden in Roll and Reanimate. However, I have a big backlog of games that I haven’t tried yet and a bunch of games I enjoy and want to replay. I don’t think I’ll be going back to Roll and Reanimate.

K-Pop Demon Hunters made me cry like it was a Pixar film

After enough people recommended it to us, we watched K-Pop Demon Hunters as a family. I mean, a work called K-Pop Demon Hunters would have to be pretty bad for _me_ not to like it.

But I’m going to argue it’s pretty good.

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I went in expecting fun songs and the movie had them. I was expecting stylized but strong animation. Yup. Solid and emotional voice acting? Had that too.

In other words, I went in expecting high production quality and I got it.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

The actual plot structure was pretty boilerplate. You knew the girls were going to fall apart and get back together stronger. You knew the handsome demon boy would redeem himself. You knew the heroes would win and save the world.

But the individual beats were very strong. The way K-Pop Demon Hunters kept raising the stakes and convincing you to buy into the stakes? That’s good stuff.

At the start of the film, I was more invested in Mira and Zoey than I was in the protagonist Rumi. The other two hunters felt like they had more interesting quirks and personalities.

However, as Rumi was steadily developed as not just a workaholic but a half-demon whose demonic heritage was becoming more prominent, the film got me behind her as a protagonist. As the film explored the issues and traumas and flaws that her heritage brought her, it just kept making her a better character.

In Pocahontas and Moana, right before the finale, the protagonists meet with their maternal teachers who support them. In contrast, Rumi meets with her teacher and surrogate mother Celine before the final battle and their relationship completely falls apart. It’s a powerful scene and sets up Rumi having to go face the king of demons all alone. 

We all knew that she was going to turn it around but they really brought her low before she could start winning.

Two works ran through my head while we watched the movie. Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks (which makes sense since magic and music) and the web comic Sleepless Domain. A love letter and deconstruction to the magic girl genre, Sleepless Domain becomes much darker than it seems while remaining sweet, similar to K-Pop Demon Hunters.

Yeah, we all agreed we understood why people love K-Pop Demon Hunters.

My Perfect City uses familiar ideas to challenge us

My Perfect City from Dr. Finn’s Book of Solitaire Strategy and Word Games is an example of drawing a map on a grid. Between published Roll and Writes and design contests, I feel like I have seen dozens of games that could be described that way.

However, I also remember when I first saw Welcome to Dino World back in 2017, I felt like someone had handed me Carcassonne on a sheet of paper. That was when I really realized that the medium of Roll and Write could be so much more than different flavors of Yahtzee.

So, what does My Perfect City do to make it stand out and make it worth playing?

You are filling in a six by six grid with five different symbols/city areas (which are government buildings, banks, parks, houses and apartments, by the way) They each have their own scoring conditions and any empty spaces at the end of the game are negative points.

Okay, that’s all pretty boilerplate. So what did Steve Finn do to make My Perfect City interesting?

What I have normally seen is a symbol assigned to a die pip. In My Perfect City, each pip has three sets of symbols in specific shapes, made of one to four squares, each unit called a tile. (If that sounds confusing, it automatically makes sense when you see it)

The first placement has to touch the edge of the grid. Every placement after that has to touch a previously placed tile. And you are not allowed to flip or rotate the tiles, except through one-shot powers. There are three one-shot powers, letting you flip a tile horizontally, vertically or remove a square.

You cross off a tile when you use it. If you have crossed off every shape in a pip, you can pick any remaining tile when you roll that number. When no more tiles will fit, the game ends and you figure out your score.

So. What makes My Perfect City stand out, what makes it work? I’m going to say the variety of different tiles. 

It’s definitely an example of limitations and restrictions creating tough choices and tension. The board becomes claustrophobic. While there are eighteen tiles, the total number of squares in those eighteen is greater than the board. You can’t use every one.

That makes My Perfect City less granular. You don’t slowly fill up the board, square by square. Each move dynamically changes the board. You don’t have as many moves as you would if every tile was only one square but that means the decisions are bigger.

And that does make My Perfect City enjoyable and worth playing. The elements may be familiar but they are crafted into a thoughtful, engaging experience.

Shut the Box has a place in pubs and toy boxes

 I was surprised to see I’d never written about Shut the Box, even though it’s one of these games that I’ve played every once in a blue moon for years. 

Shut the Box is one of those pub games that can be played when you are blind drunk and the components can survive having drinks spilled all over them. There are different versions of the game but they all break down to rolling dice and flipping over numbered levers equal to the sum of the dice.

The classic version of the game has the levers in an actual box that you can close if you flip over all the levers. However, I have also seen instructions to just write the numbers on a sheet of paper and cover them with buttons. (That was in a book of kids games) 

I first came across it as a heritage edition-style game that was bigger than a Ticket to Ride box. The back, which also included the rules, said that the game originated on fishing boats where it could be played despite waves. Which is a delightful story but I haven’t actually found any evidence to back to up. It was a charming and pretty object but that couldn’t hide that there’s really not much to Shut the Box and it didn’t stay in my collection for long.

When you get past the novelty of flipping the levers, Shut the Box doesn’t offer very much. When you compare it to other pub-style dice games, like Farkle, it barely has a decision tree. The game makes more sense when you figure that its origins are in gambling. Money on the line always makes things more interesting. 

Despite that, I have gotten in the odd play, be it online or a simpler homemade copy since that heritage edition took up too much space on the game shelf. There is an odd fascination to Shut the Box for me, particularly as a historical item.

Recently, I made a set of Shut the Box cards because it amused me. More than anything else, it reminded why I don’t play it much. Yes, I play  brain fog games that I can play in a daze but Shut the Box is really too slight for even that. But a tiny handful of cards is something I can keep around.

Shut the Box is a game that will probably never be in my wheelhouse but it seems to have kept it’s home as a pub game and found one as a children’s game.

My July Gaming

July was a solid month for learning games for me. I finished going through Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games. I got in some play testing, which always feels like a privilege. And I learned some other games.

I learned:

My Perfect City (Dr. Finn)

Paper App Galaxy

Cosmic Run: Mission Run (Dr. Finn)

Aqua ROVE

ROVE JR

Aqua ROVE - Dangerous Depths expansion (playtest)

Monster Dinner Party 

Around the World in 10-15 Minutes (USA and Europe maps)

I’ve really enjoyed Dr. Finn’s book. The games are really strong for casual play. They don’t last longer than ten, fifteen minutes and they’re easy to learn. At the same time, they deliver a definite game. I’ve been going back to them and I think I will keep doing that.

However, exploring the ROVE family was my big July experience. As I’ve said, I appreciated the design of the original ROVE, I didn’t actually enjoy playing it. Since I decided to play test an Aqua ROVE expansion, I had to learn Aqua ROVE and I decided to learn JR as well.

Both Aqua and JR meaningfully shift the movement rules in a way that are easier for my brain to handle. Aqua ROVE is arguably harder than the original game but being able to process it makes it more fun. JR is simpler, enough that it’s now on my casual play list.

Although it’s not on the list, I also tried out the dice-free variant of Paper App Golf. I appreciate that it exists but, unsurprisingly, it removes everything that’s interesting about what is already a very simple game. Paper App Galaxy, on the other hand, promises to be an interesting campaign game.

With some games, after I’ve learned them, I figure out what I’ve learned from them and I’m done. Which isn’t that unreasonable with PnP and prototypes. But last month, just about everything I learned, I plan to go back to.

My July PnP

 Huh, August snuck up on me. Well, time to write about what Print and Play Projects I made in July.

I made:

Dungeon Post

Concealed (zen mode board)

Par Out Golf demo

Rollway Station (basic map)

Aqua ROVE

Aqua ROVE - Dreadful Depths (playtest)

Battle Crest - Fell Woods

Battle Crest -Imperator 

Monster Dinner Party

One Card Maze

My original ‘big’ project for the month was Dungeon Post. I haven’t actually learned it yet but I know that I won’t play it if I don’t have it made lol

However, playtesting for Button Shy was what actually ended up being my crafting focus. I realized that I hadn’t actually ever made a copy of Aqua ROVE so I had to make a copy to playtest an expansion. And while I didn’t think I would playtest the new Battle Crest module, I made a copy of the base game and the solo module/AI so I could learn the system if I felt like it. (So far, I haven’t but having a copy makes it much more likely)

I can already see with the school year kicking in, my crafting time will be limited. But July let me make stuff that will be seeing some play.

Exploring new places in Around the World in 10-15 Minutes

 Last year, I tried out Around the World in 10-15 Minutes, a print-and-play game from No Box Games about world travel. My initial impressions of the game was that the mechanics were a little weak but it was rich with theme.

And, to be honest, my opinion has remained pretty much the same. I don’t find it hard to get a good score, at least while playing it solitaire. Having said that, it hits the table at least a couple times a month.

TransAmerica and Ticket to Ride were a big part of my early board gaming experiences and I still feel they are essential gaming. Around the World in 10-15 Minutes isn’t even vaguely in their league but it definitely has a similar flavor, which isn’t bad for a one-sheet Roll and Write. And since you sightsee and buy souvenirs as well as travel, the game just has chill, decompressing feel overall. 

I had been saving the expansion maps for a good occasion but I realized that it is human nature to always have more games than time. So I have now played the USA map and the Europe map, both of which have their twists.

The USA map is broken down into six areas like the original world map. However, it has four bonus cities (Anchorage, Honolulu, Washington DC and San Juan) They only have two paths each, cannot be used for souvenirs or exploring, but they are worth a fourth set of points. I can usually hit every city in the world map but adding four more cities ramps up the difficulty in a good way.

While the Europe map has 18 cities like the world map, it only has four regions. The twist is that you compete for who has the most cities in each region.

The USA map has become my favorite map of the series. It does what I want with an expansion map. It adds a new mechanic that seamlessly fits in with the mechanics and the theme. It also ups the difficulty, keeping the game from becoming too formulaic. 

On the other hand, as someone who is playing the game solitaire, the Europe map doesn’t interest me as much. Its twist is only for multi-player games. On the third hand, by adding a layer of player interaction (albeit indirect interaction), the Europe map is the one for multi-player. To the point where I’d skip the world map and go straight to it if I was playing the game with other folks.

I am actually surprised that I haven’t seen any fan-made maps. I think the system would be ripe for fan expansion. If they are out there, point me their way. 

The expansions of Around the World in 10-15 Minutes have the system continue to do what keeps me coming back: remind me why I got into board games while being engaging in its own right.