@@boardgamebobby The ones that actullay use miniatures such as HeroQuest for example. Or a game that has two dimensional standees for the regular version but full miniatures for the deluxe version. Cube monster is all cubes and then you have these minis that look like they belong in another game. They are actullay clashing with the design of the rest of the game.
I talked to the guy doing the demo for Nocturne at Spiel last year and he said most people thought it was kinda "meh". " Very forgettable and kinda average" was the feedback apparently.
15:38 “But is it fun?!” Is the question I often find asking myself when playing some games these days. You can give me the most balanced, beautiful game ever but if it’s not fun… who cares?
I remember seeing theme park mania on Kickstarter and thinking I wanted it to be good, but the how to play video just made it look a mess. Feel like there were a few good ideas that were not fixed and made worth while through play testing and openness to feedback.
I saw Refuge at one of the conventions last year. I thought it looked neat, but I only played a turn just to see how it works. I'm not doubting Tom's overall assessment of it, but his explanation of why he thinks it's bad didn't really mean much, imo. The things he said could apply to pretty much any bag builder. I didn't really hear the distinguishing aspect that makes Refuge bad (as opposed to beloved games like Quacks, for example, where I believe all the things Tom said could still apply; there's a lot of luck, you could fail to pull the fancy tiles you bought, your round can end quickly, etc)
Quacks' theme reinforces the zaniness, a buncha half-baked alchemists throwing fistfuls of magic into a pot leaves us kinda hoping to see some explosions happen. I heard Tom saying that those aspects clashed with the theme for him here, he was primed for a cute lil walk so randomly getting hit by lightning and losing points getting mauled by critters felt jarring. One mechanical difference is the shared bust track, I heard Tom saying it was an aspect that lead to runaway games. Like, if a player has a fully dead turn that's already pretty punishing but if other players can further capitalize on that to gain more from their own turns because of the shared luck aspect, I could see how it could put too much weight on too few randomness events without much opportunity to prepare for it or mitigate it. I haven't played Refuge at all, this is just what I took away from the review. I'm curious to try it for myself, I tend to mind luck in games less than Tom does :)
I don't think he touched on this in the review, but, unfortunately, the pieces don't really lend themselves to being an interesting stacking experience either. We messed around after we finished playing trying to see what interesting builds we could put together and the shapes of the ingredients mean that almost everything you do needs to be uniform to actually get any significant height going. The cheese is swiss cheese and has holes in it, which we tried to use to offset the different shaped critters and whatnot, but they were all sort of the wrong size to do anything interesting with the cheese. It seems like everything was designed around your sandwich falling over rather than being able to stack in cool ways to mitigate weird/difficult dice rolls.
Where is Jimmy Vasel’s counterpoint video? We need balance!
🔥🔥🔥🔥
I see we're still doing that whole "add cool minis to a game that doesn't need them to help it fund on kickstarter" thing.
Out of pure curiosity, which games do need cool minis?
@@boardgamebobby The ones that actullay use miniatures such as HeroQuest for example. Or a game that has two dimensional standees for the regular version but full miniatures for the deluxe version. Cube monster is all cubes and then you have these minis that look like they belong in another game. They are actullay clashing with the design of the rest of the game.
Refuge feels like you walked out of your house and somehow walked into a Looney Tunes cartoon with all the random bad stuff happening to you
The first great theme park game will be Park Nova
I talked to the guy doing the demo for Nocturne at Spiel last year and he said most people thought it was kinda "meh". " Very forgettable and kinda average" was the feedback apparently.
15:38 “But is it fun?!” Is the question I often find asking myself when playing some games these days. You can give me the most balanced, beautiful game ever but if it’s not fun… who cares?
I remember seeing theme park mania on Kickstarter and thinking I wanted it to be good, but the how to play video just made it look a mess. Feel like there were a few good ideas that were not fixed and made worth while through play testing and openness to feedback.
Maybe if you lay the frogs and critters flat instead of standing up?
You can, but there seems to be bonus points for standing up
@@CmotDribbler Maybe they're bonus points cuz they don't expect people to do it normally
You're wrong about Cube Monster! That game is great!
I saw Refuge at one of the conventions last year. I thought it looked neat, but I only played a turn just to see how it works. I'm not doubting Tom's overall assessment of it, but his explanation of why he thinks it's bad didn't really mean much, imo. The things he said could apply to pretty much any bag builder. I didn't really hear the distinguishing aspect that makes Refuge bad (as opposed to beloved games like Quacks, for example, where I believe all the things Tom said could still apply; there's a lot of luck, you could fail to pull the fancy tiles you bought, your round can end quickly, etc)
Quacks' theme reinforces the zaniness, a buncha half-baked alchemists throwing fistfuls of magic into a pot leaves us kinda hoping to see some explosions happen. I heard Tom saying that those aspects clashed with the theme for him here, he was primed for a cute lil walk so randomly getting hit by lightning and losing points getting mauled by critters felt jarring.
One mechanical difference is the shared bust track, I heard Tom saying it was an aspect that lead to runaway games. Like, if a player has a fully dead turn that's already pretty punishing but if other players can further capitalize on that to gain more from their own turns because of the shared luck aspect, I could see how it could put too much weight on too few randomness events without much opportunity to prepare for it or mitigate it.
I haven't played Refuge at all, this is just what I took away from the review. I'm curious to try it for myself, I tend to mind luck in games less than Tom does :)
Live Tom’s description of Refuge!
Nocturne is one of the best filler games of the year.
I haven’t played the game so idk if I’d like it or not but I’d never call a 45min game a filler… 😂
Can barely hear the video
the art is the laziest part of theme park mania, its just AI so its not even worth the praise
I dunno: gamer version of stacking game kinda sounds neat.
I don't think he touched on this in the review, but, unfortunately, the pieces don't really lend themselves to being an interesting stacking experience either. We messed around after we finished playing trying to see what interesting builds we could put together and the shapes of the ingredients mean that almost everything you do needs to be uniform to actually get any significant height going. The cheese is swiss cheese and has holes in it, which we tried to use to offset the different shaped critters and whatnot, but they were all sort of the wrong size to do anything interesting with the cheese. It seems like everything was designed around your sandwich falling over rather than being able to stack in cool ways to mitigate weird/difficult dice rolls.
Pretty sure people would say Menara is the gamer stacking game