I appreciate that it takes a really considered and informed eye to be 'harsh' in the ways you tend to be - it always feels constructive and it's clear you love the property. I hope they see that and take your feedback on board. Also, personally I'd like to hear more about your thoughts on the gameplay, since it mostly just went right to pack/set discussion right after the rules explainer. I know it's nothing revolutionary but I am curious how well they actually executed a lot of the ideas and systems they're using (w.r.t. game pace, snowballing, variance/randomness frustration, degree of variation in strategies and deckbuilding options etc (I know you went into that last one a bit but I'd love to hear more!)
Given that this is squarely for nostalgic zillenials and is going to last a year or two tops, it makes sense that they're churning out basic neopets. UD and Neopets wants to sell as much as they can before it dries up and making sure to hit every species in the first couple sets is the way to do it. Seems like an interesting light game. I could see a Neopets fan really enjoying it but I'm not sure there's enough to convert anyone.
You were a lot kinder to this game than I was, which is not unwarranted. There's a lot to like, even if I will admit I bought the starters at GenCon mostly for the dice. I collect dice and they're a great addition to my giant chest of specifically d6s. Also, I didn't realize the game was under new management now, thank you for letting us know that! I just think the game seems so much more boring narratively. Originally it was a game about doing contests, it felt more like a triathlon, some sort of grand sporting event where different pets excel in different categories, but you can't leave a category open or your opponent will rack up free points. It was interesting and clever. Now the game is just a bog standard "here's my monster, there's your monster, every turn we can attach one thing to our monsters to generate resources or stat boosts and we just keep hitting each other". None of the pets really feel distinct, they're just different stats that all get used in the same way; combat. It feels like the same thing every monster collecting or pet raising game inevitably does; "maybe if we just act like Pokemon everyone will love us as much as Pokemon". And they WON'T! Pokemon has like 30 years of nostalgia and the absolute chokehold in pop culture it gained in the 90s! You can't just manufacture that! Also I don't know balance very well but I'm very worried speed is once again the god stat, letting you reroll so many dice on any given turn. As a certified liker of big boys and tough, slow attackers, I am always so irritated by games saying to me, the player, "no that's stupid and you're wrong, you're supposed to get a small light weapon and attack 16 times to do a bunch of damage just by sheer action economy".
The og cardgame was amazing to emulate the idea of a 'competitive Neopets thing'. This one is trying to evoke the idea of a Battledome focused owner and I can respect that by a lot. It brings several idiocracies you would only find on the wacky Battledome game so even if its a 'more of the same' monster battler, having a paper version of the battledome concept is rad as hell.
I actually built a neopets [2003] cube! with a few rule adjustments and some card curating we made it work in a 4 player drafting format and it was great!
Also, a Neopets TRPG got Kickstarted a while back. I got in on that on a whim, I'm really interested to see what they do with it because they said they specifically had to change the rules of the game to make it less 5e in the wake of the OGL thing. Anticipating that has really gotten me back in the Neopets mood, but I'm struggling to reclaim my old account...
After recently looking into printing one of my prototypes, I totally get why they put the board on the back of the rules. Fold outs are cheaper than binding/stapled rulebooks and there's not much else you can use the backside for - so most figure, hey why not throw in a mat to seal the deal. The problem, of course, is 3:53, to which point is it just better to not print the mat at all and use that back of the rules for lore or something? Obviously the ideal situation is to have both of them, but you can tell something like this was trying to beat out margins
I get it, but it's a cut too far in my opinion. You don't need a fancy stapled book. If the rules WOULD fit on the back of the mat, put a tip-guide on the back of the mat instead and do a two-sided rules page in half the size.
@@Kohdok Yeah for established companies it's too much. For indies I like your idea - or honestly just 2 copies of rules/mat like you've mentioned before.
Second! Will edit when I'm done with the video. EDIT: I'm SO glad to see that Neopets is still doing well (My Bori is definitely starving, unfortunately). That NFT phase was pretty disheartening, so seeing them do successful rollback and trying to move even further beyond is super cool. Unfortunate to see that this product is $20 (that's pretty pricey for me), but it seems like a pretty solid start so far. The depth seems shallow for now, but the engine itself seems like it could allow for some creative cards in the future. Two decks offering almost every card is super promising, but that Lab Ray thing (four copies of a Super Rare being required for an archetype is a real bummer, for sure).
Padding out the set with palette swaps is probably for budgetary reasons. 4 cards for the price of 1 art adds up. Also, I do want to note that I am more forgiving of the starter deck costing a bit more if you do not have to purchase 2 of them to get a playset of the exclusive cards. The dice add to the price, but you aren't getting wrung out by needing to buy EVEN MORE DICE and a pile of redundant garbage just to get like... 2 cards.
I saw some people play this game in a video, and one of the house rules they decided to add was that after the battle was over, you would draw back up to 5 cards before the next battle. They just kept running out of cards because everything kept getting discarded at the end of the battle. Does this come down to resource management? Maybe, but they were beginners.
No shade to the game, but I don't see it getting more than 2 sets before Upper Decks losses money on it and cancels the game. The biggest issue with the game is the lack of a clear target audience. The game cost too much to get into for most young kids who would be interested in Neopets to convince their parents to buy for them. But, the mechanics are too simple for most adults to pick it up as anything more than a nostalgic novelty. Also outside of seeing it at GenCon and the occasional UA-cam review, I have not seen any marketing for this product at all online so 90% of the people who would be interested in playing this probably don't know it even exists. This game probably should have been some kind of self contained deck building board game instead of a TCG. A board game with everything included in the two starter decks probably would have been enough to interest Neopet fans to buy it as a novelty product with decent gameplay. As a TCG, there's no point in even buying product for it unless you live in like 3 cities in North America hosting a locals or happen to find some people to play with on Discord or something. Otherwise I guess a few collectors out there want a few rare cards. The whole thing just doesn't seem like it'll go very far unless they just print to order for the small community interested in supporting the game.
I guess it's not entirely dead, but it's far from the most popular IP around. Most kids in the target age these days probably haven't even heard of a Neopet.
While I agree the number of pets is excessive, I'm reluctant to say cutting too many of the base pets or even limiting it to 2 colors. Maybe quickly release 2 expansions or have a supplemental set of just the base pets to get the 4 colors out of the way, then down the line experiment with limited purple (+red and blue, -green and yellow), unique actions or traits, and cycle what base colors are included. They're in a strange position where they gotta add all the pets but they just went ahead and printed them all at once. I hope this decision didn't break someones bank account or they'll move on to picking and choosing the pets featured or expand on what 'color' means.
Are there other people like me who can't grasp the rules of any card games besides the one they are used to? In my case, it's Yu-gi-oh! That I'm used to but I can't learn any other card games for some reason lol.
The easiest way to learn a new game is just to physically sit down and play the game. Most games have fairly intuitive mechanics so as long as you have someone there to guide you through the basics, you'll catch on pretty quick. I used to only know Yu-Gi-Oh but I learned other games just from playing them with my friends and watching other people play on UA-cam.
@Lord_Nexus14 MTG was probably a tough place to start. It has 30+ years of cards and mechanics to learn so something a bit more straightforward like Union Arena would probably be easier to pick up.
That's kinda funny to me, because I think Yu-Gi-Oh is hands down the most overcomplicated card game 😅 MTG's Commander format is technically worse, just 'cause there's 30 years of keywords and such to deal with, but playing a sealed set of MTG isn't bad (not the simplest game, but not too much). But like, missing the timing, chain blocking, inherent summons, etc...the basic rules of Yu-Gi-Oh are just complicated, and the way cards are written just doesn't communicate it clearly at all. Problem-Solving Card Text helped a lot, but it was more to make the game actually functional for experts than for it to make more sense for beginners. So while I can understand learning a new game feeling like a big hurdle, fwiw, it won't be as bad as learning Yu-Gi-Oh.
Aesthetic and story wise, seems like a more kiddy version of pokemon. Which is a weird thing to say, since pokemon is supposed to be for kids, but it targeted Japanese Kids. Our Power Rangers is more censored than theirs.
LOVE Neopets and im a total sucker for 2000s nostalgia so I'll probably pick it up but i really wish they just adapted the Wizards game with a few modern edits. Im gonna give this game a try but it kind if just seems like a "I'll attack because thats the only thing I would want to do, now you go" type of game. Just taking turns politely punching each other. I'm guessing the old game was too "casual" with the dice mechanic and they wanted the game to be more versatile with casual play and competitive play. I hope it does well and theres room for growth, at least it isnt another Magic rip-off.
This concern about drawing in more boys is interesting cuz I've never really seen you say that about drawing in more girls. IDK it seems probably fine if a card game is intentionally trying to draw in girls a demographic largely ignored in the TCG space marketing except by like Lorcana.
it's more being a starter deck really since you are trying to draw in as much audience as you can you think maybe drawing in boys and girls would be a better approach. but i mean if that's what they're going for, nothing wrong with that, usually companies would rely more on targeting the biggest demographic which makes sense why they want to target boys.
Mainstream board games are already thought of as a more feminine hobby in general. Conventions and online communities tend to look more like well, people like Kohdok, because they're targeted at the socially awkward boys that end up obsessing with games and getting preyed on by the TCG/Wargame model. But every girl owns a Scrabble, Guess Who, Pictionary, Dixit and more recently Wingspan, Villanous, King of Tokyo or Smash Up. And they're not bullied for it. There's also a very harsh divide among female gamer camps regarding aesthetics and what "targeting girls" means. Some want bombshells that'd make the boys blush, some want all female characters to look like ugly men. Some want glitter and cute animals, some think Catan looks too scandalous.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I appreciate that it takes a really considered and informed eye to be 'harsh' in the ways you tend to be - it always feels constructive and it's clear you love the property. I hope they see that and take your feedback on board.
Also, personally I'd like to hear more about your thoughts on the gameplay, since it mostly just went right to pack/set discussion right after the rules explainer. I know it's nothing revolutionary but I am curious how well they actually executed a lot of the ideas and systems they're using (w.r.t. game pace, snowballing, variance/randomness frustration, degree of variation in strategies and deckbuilding options etc (I know you went into that last one a bit but I'd love to hear more!)
3:53 He gets so much mileage out of this clip lol
it's a tradition at this point
And?
Yellow seems like the most important Neopet Color for this game. Free rerolls are quite powerful in any game with dice.
Given that this is squarely for nostalgic zillenials and is going to last a year or two tops, it makes sense that they're churning out basic neopets. UD and Neopets wants to sell as much as they can before it dries up and making sure to hit every species in the first couple sets is the way to do it.
Seems like an interesting light game. I could see a Neopets fan really enjoying it but I'm not sure there's enough to convert anyone.
Neopets Loona isn't real, she can't hurt you
Neopets Loona:
20:59 Yes Kohdok. The legs are absolutely necessary. Just ask Beast-Boy.
In space they aren't just ask that one Zeon Engineer.
You were a lot kinder to this game than I was, which is not unwarranted. There's a lot to like, even if I will admit I bought the starters at GenCon mostly for the dice. I collect dice and they're a great addition to my giant chest of specifically d6s. Also, I didn't realize the game was under new management now, thank you for letting us know that!
I just think the game seems so much more boring narratively. Originally it was a game about doing contests, it felt more like a triathlon, some sort of grand sporting event where different pets excel in different categories, but you can't leave a category open or your opponent will rack up free points. It was interesting and clever. Now the game is just a bog standard "here's my monster, there's your monster, every turn we can attach one thing to our monsters to generate resources or stat boosts and we just keep hitting each other". None of the pets really feel distinct, they're just different stats that all get used in the same way; combat. It feels like the same thing every monster collecting or pet raising game inevitably does; "maybe if we just act like Pokemon everyone will love us as much as Pokemon". And they WON'T! Pokemon has like 30 years of nostalgia and the absolute chokehold in pop culture it gained in the 90s! You can't just manufacture that!
Also I don't know balance very well but I'm very worried speed is once again the god stat, letting you reroll so many dice on any given turn. As a certified liker of big boys and tough, slow attackers, I am always so irritated by games saying to me, the player, "no that's stupid and you're wrong, you're supposed to get a small light weapon and attack 16 times to do a bunch of damage just by sheer action economy".
The og cardgame was amazing to emulate the idea of a 'competitive Neopets thing'.
This one is trying to evoke the idea of a Battledome focused owner and I can respect that by a lot. It brings several idiocracies you would only find on the wacky Battledome game so even if its a 'more of the same' monster battler, having a paper version of the battledome concept is rad as hell.
It's a miracle, like a Phoenix from the ashes, Neopets has been reborn!
Excuse me! Naeia is the Fountain Faerie. I hope someone got lego'd for that blunder
I actually built a neopets [2003] cube! with a few rule adjustments and some card curating we made it work in a 4 player drafting format and it was great!
That actually sounds so fun
I recognize the MNOG soundtrack anywhere! Im getting flashbacks to that Nui Jaga kohlii ball battle
The Zafara card has a freakin' Red Dwarf reference on it!
Also, a Neopets TRPG got Kickstarted a while back. I got in on that on a whim, I'm really interested to see what they do with it because they said they specifically had to change the rules of the game to make it less 5e in the wake of the OGL thing. Anticipating that has really gotten me back in the Neopets mood, but I'm struggling to reclaim my old account...
The random shot at Lorcana 😭
Good
Wasn’t even really a jab???
After recently looking into printing one of my prototypes, I totally get why they put the board on the back of the rules. Fold outs are cheaper than binding/stapled rulebooks and there's not much else you can use the backside for - so most figure, hey why not throw in a mat to seal the deal. The problem, of course, is 3:53, to which point is it just better to not print the mat at all and use that back of the rules for lore or something? Obviously the ideal situation is to have both of them, but you can tell something like this was trying to beat out margins
I get it, but it's a cut too far in my opinion. You don't need a fancy stapled book. If the rules WOULD fit on the back of the mat, put a tip-guide on the back of the mat instead and do a two-sided rules page in half the size.
@@Kohdok Yeah for established companies it's too much. For indies I like your idea - or honestly just 2 copies of rules/mat like you've mentioned before.
Reminder that your Neopet is still starving.
*I will wait for you starts playing*
I’ll feed it rainbow dung
5:36 holy crap is that the strategy music from Bionicle MNONG II? what a wild pull!
Think its from the first mnog
Second! Will edit when I'm done with the video.
EDIT: I'm SO glad to see that Neopets is still doing well (My Bori is definitely starving, unfortunately). That NFT phase was pretty disheartening, so seeing them do successful rollback and trying to move even further beyond is super cool.
Unfortunate to see that this product is $20 (that's pretty pricey for me), but it seems like a pretty solid start so far. The depth seems shallow for now, but the engine itself seems like it could allow for some creative cards in the future. Two decks offering almost every card is super promising, but that Lab Ray thing (four copies of a Super Rare being required for an archetype is a real bummer, for sure).
fastest click in the west
Copy that.
Same
So much nostalgia - i feel like many of the mini games could themselves be adapted into the tabletop space
Padding out the set with palette swaps is probably for budgetary reasons. 4 cards for the price of 1 art adds up.
Also, I do want to note that I am more forgiving of the starter deck costing a bit more if you do not have to purchase 2 of them to get a playset of the exclusive cards. The dice add to the price, but you aren't getting wrung out by needing to buy EVEN MORE DICE and a pile of redundant garbage just to get like... 2 cards.
Aisha is still a wild design even by 2000's standards
the only time i ever heard of neopets was from doki bird
I saw some people play this game in a video, and one of the house rules they decided to add was that after the battle was over, you would draw back up to 5 cards before the next battle. They just kept running out of cards because everything kept getting discarded at the end of the battle. Does this come down to resource management? Maybe, but they were beginners.
100% resource management. There are plenty of draw power cards that make this problem dissappear unless you or your hand are bad
You don't generally discard anything after a battle phase, unless it's something like an equipment you played that you can discard to reduce damage.
0:29 This snippet is going to sound much worse out of context.
No shade to the game, but I don't see it getting more than 2 sets before Upper Decks losses money on it and cancels the game.
The biggest issue with the game is the lack of a clear target audience. The game cost too much to get into for most young kids who would be interested in Neopets to convince their parents to buy for them. But, the mechanics are too simple for most adults to pick it up as anything more than a nostalgic novelty. Also outside of seeing it at GenCon and the occasional UA-cam review, I have not seen any marketing for this product at all online so 90% of the people who would be interested in playing this probably don't know it even exists.
This game probably should have been some kind of self contained deck building board game instead of a TCG. A board game with everything included in the two starter decks probably would have been enough to interest Neopet fans to buy it as a novelty product with decent gameplay.
As a TCG, there's no point in even buying product for it unless you live in like 3 cities in North America hosting a locals or happen to find some people to play with on Discord or something. Otherwise I guess a few collectors out there want a few rare cards.
The whole thing just doesn't seem like it'll go very far unless they just print to order for the small community interested in supporting the game.
This franchise just won't die
This game has a lot of accessory cards & power ups, which is interesting.
I see that Princess Luna play matt. RIP in peace My Little Pony CCG. You deserved better. rip
it's in the community's hands now & very actively getting support!! they released a new set based around g5 just last year
where can i find the TCG archive project?
14:03 Kohdok isn’t it obvious. It’s doing a double jump
I thought the Neopets brand was dead.
Nah, it got life support and now has the money to pay the hospital bill, merica.
I guess it's not entirely dead, but it's far from the most popular IP around. Most kids in the target age these days probably haven't even heard of a Neopet.
I have that same McDonalds Yellow Aisha!
While I agree the number of pets is excessive, I'm reluctant to say cutting too many of the base pets or even limiting it to 2 colors. Maybe quickly release 2 expansions or have a supplemental set of just the base pets to get the 4 colors out of the way, then down the line experiment with limited purple (+red and blue, -green and yellow), unique actions or traits, and cycle what base colors are included. They're in a strange position where they gotta add all the pets but they just went ahead and printed them all at once. I hope this decision didn't break someones bank account or they'll move on to picking and choosing the pets featured or expand on what 'color' means.
Nice ❤
the random furrybait card is so out of left field
I love your channel
Are there other people like me who can't grasp the rules of any card games besides the one they are used to? In my case, it's Yu-gi-oh! That I'm used to but I can't learn any other card games for some reason lol.
The easiest way to learn a new game is just to physically sit down and play the game. Most games have fairly intuitive mechanics so as long as you have someone there to guide you through the basics, you'll catch on pretty quick. I used to only know Yu-Gi-Oh but I learned other games just from playing them with my friends and watching other people play on UA-cam.
Yeah I tried to do that with Mtg but I can't grasp it, probably just a skill issue though
@Lord_Nexus14 MTG was probably a tough place to start. It has 30+ years of cards and mechanics to learn so something a bit more straightforward like Union Arena would probably be easier to pick up.
That's kinda funny to me, because I think Yu-Gi-Oh is hands down the most overcomplicated card game 😅 MTG's Commander format is technically worse, just 'cause there's 30 years of keywords and such to deal with, but playing a sealed set of MTG isn't bad (not the simplest game, but not too much). But like, missing the timing, chain blocking, inherent summons, etc...the basic rules of Yu-Gi-Oh are just complicated, and the way cards are written just doesn't communicate it clearly at all. Problem-Solving Card Text helped a lot, but it was more to make the game actually functional for experts than for it to make more sense for beginners.
So while I can understand learning a new game feeling like a big hurdle, fwiw, it won't be as bad as learning Yu-Gi-Oh.
@ So real
Aesthetic and story wise, seems like a more kiddy version of pokemon. Which is a weird thing to say, since pokemon is supposed to be for kids, but it targeted Japanese Kids. Our Power Rangers is more censored than theirs.
LOVE Neopets and im a total sucker for 2000s nostalgia so I'll probably pick it up but i really wish they just adapted the Wizards game with a few modern edits. Im gonna give this game a try but it kind if just seems like a "I'll attack because thats the only thing I would want to do, now you go" type of game. Just taking turns politely punching each other. I'm guessing the old game was too "casual" with the dice mechanic and they wanted the game to be more versatile with casual play and competitive play. I hope it does well and theres room for growth, at least it isnt another Magic rip-off.
Can we get a video where you just yap about Neopets?
So I guess you're never reviewing the spooktacular submissions
I am definitely delegating the work if I ever do this again.
@Kohdok I understand, but you should let us know so we aren't in the dark
Sounds interesting but not inspiring. The pack distribution pretty much destroyed any interest I had in actually buying these cards.
I love the rules but don’t care for the art
The art is horrendous
This concern about drawing in more boys is interesting cuz I've never really seen you say that about drawing in more girls. IDK it seems probably fine if a card game is intentionally trying to draw in girls a demographic largely ignored in the TCG space marketing except by like Lorcana.
That's actually a really fair point.
it's more being a starter deck really since you are trying to draw in as much audience as you can you think maybe drawing in boys and girls would be a better approach. but i mean if that's what they're going for, nothing wrong with that, usually companies would rely more on targeting the biggest demographic which makes sense why they want to target boys.
Mainstream board games are already thought of as a more feminine hobby in general. Conventions and online communities tend to look more like well, people like Kohdok, because they're targeted at the socially awkward boys that end up obsessing with games and getting preyed on by the TCG/Wargame model. But every girl owns a Scrabble, Guess Who, Pictionary, Dixit and more recently Wingspan, Villanous, King of Tokyo or Smash Up. And they're not bullied for it.
There's also a very harsh divide among female gamer camps regarding aesthetics and what "targeting girls" means. Some want bombshells that'd make the boys blush, some want all female characters to look like ugly men. Some want glitter and cute animals, some think Catan looks too scandalous.