The Bottled Imp takes a look at this attractive storytelling game. Buy great games at www.gamenerdz.com/ Find more reviews and videos at www.dicetower.com
While I love this game, I've found that it is hard to play this with a lot of my friends and family. They usually find it too intimidating to just generate a story on the spot, or they play it too competitively. You can sometimes warm up intimidated players to the game, but you can often feel like you're just putting them through a torturous process as they stare at their hand with a confused and terrified look on their face during their turn at the story. Meanwhile playing with more competitive types can really drain the fun out of the game as they quickly play down card after card, giving minimal story detail and sometimes abusing the rules of the game. For example, the rule about cards having to be significant to the story is a hard rule to enforce, because when the card is played you have no idea about how significant the story item on the card is going to be. When you finally realize its just being used as a passing detail, its usually too late to interrupt. Competitive players will abuse this to the extreme.
+Imperiused Yes, with all party games (and could be applied to all games), who you play with can be important. This game does need to be played with a fair and not-too competitive spirit to work really well. We had a blast!
lol I just played this for the first time the other day and this is EXACTLY what happened. One player was WAY too timid and didn't know how to use their cards and another was just SO competitive that they were trying to interrupt the story at every point possible even if it made no narrative sense to do so.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who experienced this. Everyone was really just trying to use their cards and ignoring the entire story up until that point so every player introduced a new character and the previous character and what they were doing is swept under the rug completely and they played it as if it was normal which got me completely disappointed with the game as it didn't deliver any coherent story, just mechanically using up your cards the fastest
@@nitorishogiplayer3465 I've thought about ways to rectify this. One idea I had was to make the game about points, rather than just getting rid of cards. Just a quick and dirty idea: 1. Cards stay on the table, in the order of play, instead of into a discard. 2. Players get counters, which they can place on played cards for 1 point whenever they bring up that story detail (limit one per turn per card) 3. Players also get points for counters that accumulate on cards they played. Or maybe if enough counters accumulate on cards they played, they get a free discard to bring them closer to the victory condition. Edit: The idea is to try encourage a more coherent story by incentivising players to build off elements already played.
I was walking through a store and this game caught my eye. After this watching this review I think I’ll get this and give it a shot for a family game. Thanks!
When I played this game, I didn't enjoy it because everyone was basically ignoring the story up until that point so it would go like: once upon a time, there was a princess. She was taken by an elf, and the elf used magic on a prince, who killed a fairy, who then revived and told a stepmother not to do evil things, and she lived happily ever after. The story had no coherence and it seemed that was how the game was supposed to be played. If the narrative is supposed to have importance, I haven't had such an experience, sadly.
The Bottled Imp is one of my favorite co-hosts on the Dice Tower. Tied with Dan King!👍
+LifeInFilms
Well that's very kind of you. Thank you. The Dice Tower gang and Dan King are great! Very inspiring.
While I love this game, I've found that it is hard to play this with a lot of my friends and family. They usually find it too intimidating to just generate a story on the spot, or they play it too competitively. You can sometimes warm up intimidated players to the game, but you can often feel like you're just putting them through a torturous process as they stare at their hand with a confused and terrified look on their face during their turn at the story.
Meanwhile playing with more competitive types can really drain the fun out of the game as they quickly play down card after card, giving minimal story detail and sometimes abusing the rules of the game.
For example, the rule about cards having to be significant to the story is a hard rule to enforce, because when the card is played you have no idea about how significant the story item on the card is going to be. When you finally realize its just being used as a passing detail, its usually too late to interrupt. Competitive players will abuse this to the extreme.
+Imperiused
Yes, with all party games (and could be applied to all games), who you play with can be important. This game does need to be played with a fair and not-too competitive spirit to work really well. We had a blast!
lol I just played this for the first time the other day and this is EXACTLY what happened. One player was WAY too timid and didn't know how to use their cards and another was just SO competitive that they were trying to interrupt the story at every point possible even if it made no narrative sense to do so.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who experienced this. Everyone was really just trying to use their cards and ignoring the entire story up until that point so every player introduced a new character and the previous character and what they were doing is swept under the rug completely and they played it as if it was normal which got me completely disappointed with the game as it didn't deliver any coherent story, just mechanically using up your cards the fastest
@@nitorishogiplayer3465 I've thought about ways to rectify this. One idea I had was to make the game about points, rather than just getting rid of cards. Just a quick and dirty idea:
1. Cards stay on the table, in the order of play, instead of into a discard.
2. Players get counters, which they can place on played cards for 1 point whenever they bring up that story detail (limit one per turn per card)
3. Players also get points for counters that accumulate on cards they played. Or maybe if enough counters accumulate on cards they played, they get a free discard to bring them closer to the victory condition.
Edit:
The idea is to try encourage a more coherent story by incentivising players to build off elements already played.
@@Imperiused sounds like an interesting idea
Really great production values, review was straight forward. Over all good job, looking forward to more of your stuff
+MarcusWindrune
Thanks Marcus. Appreciate your support.
Love your intro! I was thinking to buy to write a story or a book but I'm not sure, thanks for sharing it.
I was walking through a store and this game caught my eye. After this watching this review I think I’ll get this and give it a shot for a family game. Thanks!
When I played this game, I didn't enjoy it because everyone was basically ignoring the story up until that point so it would go like: once upon a time, there was a princess. She was taken by an elf, and the elf used magic on a prince, who killed a fairy, who then revived and told a stepmother not to do evil things, and she lived happily ever after. The story had no coherence and it seemed that was how the game was supposed to be played. If the narrative is supposed to have importance, I haven't had such an experience, sadly.
You got your 200th like ! I bought the game and maybe I will play it tomorrow. Thank you for the review!
First!
OpenTanyao lol nice