Some 18-card games don’t quite make it as enjoyable at the table.
Take Adventurous, for example, an upcoming release by designers Dustin Dobson and Milan Zivkovic, also from Button Shy Games.
The game aspires to be frankly bigger than it should be. The game states it is for one to four players, and while true at even three players, it is largely boring.
It’s cooperative, so added players should give you more opinions on what optimum moves to make on a turn, but with only 18 cards, you, as an individual player, may only get two to three turns in a game, which leaves you feeling like you weren’t involved substantively.
The game here is a bit unusual, too. It feels very much like an apuzzle more than a game.
I know many games overlap between game and puzzle, but this one skews hard to the puzzle side. That doesn’t make it immediately bad, it just means the ‘feel’ here is different. You are competing with the gam, much like the classic Pandemic, although the experience here, of course, is smaller – it’s 18 cards after all and even in the small card game format is not among the best.
Players place ‘map cards’, scoring game-end points for various things, losing in a few ways too, but it just happens so quickly, yet the ‘grandness’ you might feel should be here is lacking.
There are ways to ‘up’ the difficulty if this one does catch your attention, so that is a positive.
Now, as a solo gam, Adventurous ticks up a bit. You can relax on the small deck and study the best move options to improve your last score. Solitaire shines brighter, although even for one, there are many better games in the solo box – A Nice Cuppa from the same publisher is a recent solo game that comes to mind here.
Artwork by Fachri Maulana on the ‘marvel’ cards is quite nice, but most cards on the table are sea map grid design, so thematically fine but not exactly eye-catching.
Button Shy hits far more often than it misses – but this one sadly just doesn’t quite click.
About Author
Calvin Daniels is a Saskatchewan-born, self-taught journalist. He is currently Editor of Yorkton This Week, with 35-years in the newspaper business.
Adventurous
Take Adventurous, for example, an upcoming release by designers Dustin Dobson and Milan Zivkovic, also from Button Shy Games.
The game aspires to be frankly bigger than it should be. The game states it is for one to four players, and while true at even three players, it is largely boring.
It’s cooperative, so added players should give you more opinions on what optimum moves to make on a turn, but with only 18 cards, you, as an individual player, may only get two to three turns in a game, which leaves you feeling like you weren’t involved substantively.
The game here is a bit unusual, too. It feels very much like an apuzzle more than a game.
I know many games overlap between game and puzzle, but this one skews hard to the puzzle side. That doesn’t make it immediately bad, it just means the ‘feel’ here is different. You are competing with the gam, much like the classic Pandemic, although the experience here, of course, is smaller – it’s 18 cards after all and even in the small card game format is not among the best.
Players place ‘map cards’, scoring game-end points for various things, losing in a few ways too, but it just happens so quickly, yet the ‘grandness’ you might feel should be here is lacking.
There are ways to ‘up’ the difficulty if this one does catch your attention, so that is a positive.
Now, as a solo gam, Adventurous ticks up a bit. You can relax on the small deck and study the best move options to improve your last score. Solitaire shines brighter, although even for one, there are many better games in the solo box – A Nice Cuppa from the same publisher is a recent solo game that comes to mind here.
Artwork by Fachri Maulana on the ‘marvel’ cards is quite nice, but most cards on the table are sea map grid design, so thematically fine but not exactly eye-catching.
Button Shy hits far more often than it misses – but this one sadly just doesn’t quite click.
About Author
Calvin Daniels
Calvin Daniels is a Saskatchewan-born, self-taught journalist. He is currently Editor of Yorkton This Week, with 35-years in the newspaper business.
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