The number of games that have come out these past years with a campaign is enormous! Back when this was a relatively new thing, we were really hyped! But if we’re completely honest, we’re beginning to feel the less pretty side of it: many campaign games are left unfinished because finishing them would mean leaving other games unplayed. Also, it requires a commitment of a gaming group to play through a full campaign and we notice that a lot of our friends aren’t looking forward to playing the same game ten times in a row.
We fully understand this is a luxurious position to be in though and we also see plus sides to campaigns and the way they are implemented in games. For instance, we played Rush Out! last week and this game also has a “campaign”, but in reality, it feels more like a way to slowly increase the difficulty for players to reach the full potential of a game in the end. It’s a smart implementation for a game like Rush Out! since the game is slightly skill-based and doesn’t give players time to think. The game is rather exhausting since it’s hectic! Players are rolling dice as quickly as they can to fulfill their goals, simultaneously. One player is the evil sorcerer and the other (2 to 4) players play co-operatively as the heroes. The concept is pretty simple: fill the slots on the cards with the right dice sides to complete a card.
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Both sides are trying to work through their stack of cards as quickly as possible, but the cards of the sorcerer often mean bad stuff for the heroes: like disabling the use of one die or specific icons on dice. In the later scenarios, we also saw more party-like “handicaps” like muting heroes or making them use just a single hand for rolling dice. It’s a hilarious game and certainly one to get the energy up in a group! But if you play it for too long, it will leave most people exhausted. 😉
And because it works so well for just a game or three, we think it’s perfect if you’re at a gaming convention and would like to get an energy boost! Yes, that was a not-so-subtle sidestep to the fact that we’ll be going to SPIEL in Essen this week! We’ll be hanging around the halls on Thursday until Sunday and we’re super excited and curious what this year’s convention will be like. Either way, we have a lot of meetings planned with publishers and are looking forward to meeting many new people and exploring what the board game realm has to offer.
We’ll keep you up to date and would love to share our experiences next week! And if you happen to be at Spiel and see us around, we’d love to meet you! Please say hi! <3
S J Clark
I could try making a comment about campaign games
. . .
But I would never finish it.
Jasper Wille
You might wanna check out Turning Tides, a game that we are demo-ing on Spiel this year. We fellow dutchies would for one be superexited to have you visit our booth. It’s a two-player naval battle game that we are attempting to get funded on kickstarter as we speak and we would be very curious about your thoughts.