Yup, you are reading that right: Marvel Midnight Suns is my Game of The Year. And this is probably surprising to some of you since this is a cooperative board and card game blog! We love cooperative and solo games here at CO-OP Gestalt, but Marvel Midnight Suns just captivated us. Why are we talking about it a video game in a board and card game blog?

I realize I am late to the party calling Marvel Midnight Suns my Game of the Year: It came out in Dec. 2, 2022 for the Ps5. But I didn’t get it until mid March 2023.

Solo Game

Let’s justify this right away: we talk a lot about solo games here at CO-OP Gestalt! We have discussed many solo board games such as The Dark Knight Returns (see our review here), or Eila and Something Shiny (see our review here). We also frequently discuss Saunders’ Law, which addresses solo modes in board games (see more discussion here). And Marvel Midnight Suns is a solo game: it only plays 1-Player (see back of box above). And it’s an offline game: you can play the whole thing without being connected to the internet. But, strictly speaking, it is a video game (not a board game).

We have discussed solo video games here before: For example we discussed why Monkey Island has influenced my expectations of solo board and card games here: I think Marvel Mystery Suns will also influence my expectations for solo games for years to come.

It’s a Superhero Game!

Anyone who follows CO-OP Gestalt knows how much we like solo and cooperative Superhero games: See our Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Games list!

You get to play so many interesting characters in this game! Iron Man! Captain America! Wolverine! But what really sold me on the game, you get to play Illyana Rasputin, aka Magik! I loved the New Mutants growing up, and so this was a blast of nostalgia!

No mistaking it, this is a Superhero game. With a touch of magic.

Why

There are four things that really make this Game of the Year for me:

1. Deck-Building
2. Exploration
3. Story
4. Friendship

Deck-Building

This is a deck-building game. Wait, what? That’s what I thought when I first played it! We love our cooperative deck-building physical card games: See our Top 10 Cooperative Deck-Building Games! Normally, when I think of Deck-Building games, I think of card games. Yet, here we are, Marvel Midnight Suns uses deck-building as it’s main combat mechanic!

This means that combat is turn-based: it’s not a real-time free-for-all. You draw cards, play cards to do damage and “other things” (see above as we can hack a console), and redraw cards to try to get what you need. I mean, it’s a deck-builder!

One of the great things about this is that there are so many ways to upgrade your deck! There are about 12 heroes with 8 cards each in their deck. That doesn’t sound like a lot of cards, but there are so many ways to upgrade those 8 cards!

• If you have multiple copies of the same card, you can upgrade a card and add an additional ability
• You can get new cards as rewards for missions
• You can exchange resources for cards (at the forge)
• You can craft cards if you have the blueprint
• You can add abilities to cards with resources

And some I  am probably forgetting!  Tony Stark and Dr. Strange both help you get the upgrades you need.

I often wonder if this could be a physical card game … but I don’t think it would work well.  There are so many things that the game keeps track of for you, and I worry a physical version would be very fiddly.  So, it’s good that it’s a video game.

Exploration

The thing this game really nails is exploration. You are (mostly) playing the Hunter (more discussion below) interacting with many heroes in the Abbey. The Abbey is a world unto itself, with beautiful scenery and a beautiful architecture. I think this game is meant to be played in about 50 hours, maybe less. I think I played for 100 hours? But, I spent the first part of the game just exploring as much as I could!

This world is gorgeous and exploration is fun and relaxing! The gardens and forests of the Abbey are just beautiful! Sometimes, I would just explore to relax because it’s so gorgeous. And exploration is good: it helps you find and unlock things that are necessary to push the plot forward.

I haven’t enjoyed exploring a game so much since Psychonauts (another great solo video game).

Story

I think there is a better story here in Marvel Midnight Suns than most Marvel shows right now! This is a big, expansive story spanning many villains and heroes! I mentioned I played for 100 hours getting through the story, and it felt like there was an interesting story the entire way through! There were plot twists, there were highs and lows, and the story was emotional! I mean, I would pay money to see this story turned into a Marvel Movie.

Friendship

The characters were not two-dimensional in the story! You play the Hunter in this game, and one of your goals is to organize the heroes and befriend them. One of the great mechanics of the game is that you are trying to make friends with all the characters! As you did things together (played video games, played cards, watched a movie, did Yoga) you would up your friendship with each character individually! That’s right! Friendship was per character! And better friendship means you were better at fighting together! And the dialogue and reveals seemed very sincere and realistic. Seriously, the friendship mechanic of this game was fantastic: I want to see more of this mechanic in more games: both video and board/card games.

Problems

This wasn’t a perfect game, but it’s darn close. There were few things I would change:

1. I would add a compass so you would know which way Hunter is facing when he travels. Too many times, I went back and forth between the map/character view because it wasn’t clear which way he was facing: that was slightly annoying.
2. The game seemed to get “buggier” the longer I played. It was always still playable, but one time near my end, it just crashed! Sometimes, in the later game, the “people want to to talk icon” was visible but no one wanted to talk, sometimes you couldn’t talk to people who said they did. I would have “fixed” those bugs?

Expectations

This game raised the bar for what I want in a solo game!

I want better stories now! I want exploration that’s both relaxing and interesting and beautiful! I want better deck-builders! I want more ways to level-up my cards in a deck-building game! I want voice-acting and animated cut scenes!

Sigh. It’s hard to get a lot of those in a physical board/card game. But Marvel Midnight Suns has raised the bar anyway.

Conclusion

I bought a Ps5 just so I could play this game! There is apparently a version of Marvel Midnight Suns coming out for the Switch, but not until Dec 2023. Was it worth it to buy this?

Absolutely! I think I got about 100 hours of gameplay out of this. The game was about $60, the Ps5 was $500, so let’s call it $600 all-in. That’s $6 per hour of entertainment! You know what, it was totally worth it: I had fun and wanted to keep playing. I will play the game again in the future! I kind of want to keep playing it with new content (there’s some downloadable content).

If my teenage self had this game, he never would have left this house.

It’s not a card game per se, but Marvel Midnight Suns may be the best deck-builder game I have ever played.

It’s all Lon’s Fault! A few years ago, I used to go Lon’s office to say “hi” and he had the coolest metal dice in his office! Steel Dice! Aluminum Dice! Titanium Dice (maybe?)! Every time I see metal dice, I think of Lon. Hi Lon!

Well, when Tesseract (A cooperative dice-placement/cube manipulation game) came onto Kickstarter, I was enthralled! And it’s all Lon’s fault! The Metal Dice (see above) looked so cool! It was so cool looking that the #1 spot on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2023!

This cooperative game, Tesseract (plays 1-4 players in 90 minutes) arrived at my house in mid-September, 2023. It was on Kickstarter back in November 2022, but unfortunately promised delivery in July 2023. Ah well, the streak of Kickstarters delivering early or on time has now been broken: Tesseract was about 3 months late (to me: I think other Kickstarter backers in the rest of the world got it earlier).

I got the base game and the metal dice upgrade: Again, it’s all Lon’s fault!  

Unboxing

This is a pretty standard sized box, with the oversized rulebook that fits flush with the box: see my can of Coke above for perspective.

There’s a number of punchouts for building the cube-holder.

There’s a sleeve that looks a little like a “Hot-Pocket” sleeve. (This maybe an American thing only? If you don’t know what “Hot Pockets” are, I encourage you to look them up: Jim Gaffagan you tube videos may be the funniest source of info). These sleeves will be used for guiding the dice (see more pictures/discussion below).

The base game comes with 64 plastic dice that are well-labelled and easy to read.

Maybe Lazy Susans are cool now? The game comes with a Lazy Susan for “spinning” the dice cube. (Planet Unknown was very popular last year and everyone raved about the Lazy Susan with that game). We’ll see more how this works in the gameplay.

There’s a number of giant Mats: breach, player sheets, and something else.

The game looks pretty snazzy! “But what about the metal dice, Rich???” Hold on! Hold On! We’ll get to those after a look/play with the base game. Look, as cool as the metal dice are, they are expensive, and they don’t come with the base game.

Rulebook

The rulebook seemed pretty good overall.  Unfortunately, it gets like a C+ on the Chair Test: it’s huge and flops all over the place:

Despite that, the rulebook does a pretty good job of showing set-up and taking you through the components, set-up and the core rules.

Set-Up

The first part of set-up was building the Lazy Susan holder.  The Tesseract, the 4x4x4 cube of dice, lays atop the Lazy Susan. See above with a nice perspective on how the dice fit.

The little Lazy Susan has 5 ball-bearings so it can rotate easily.

You put on on these circular cardboard pieces atop the Lazy Susan.  When a column completes, each symbol activates a bad news in the game.

The Lazy Susan and bad new circle sit atop a little mechanism to keep it aloof.  The little dice sleeve (the “Hot Pocket” sleeve we saw earlier) opens up so it can guide the dice down during set-up.

Then you start pouring dice into the little stand!

It’s a little wonky to get the dice in there at first: see above.  You have to make sure the dice fill the 4x4x4 template perfectly.

Once you get all the dice in there … you slowly remove the sleeve … to reveal …

A stunning cube of dice!

The rest of the set-up is much less interesting, but the rulebook describes it pretty well.

All set-up: the game looks pretty cool!

Gameplay

Each player chooses a special role at the start of the game: each of these give special powers (both active and passive) for manipulating the cubes and other parts of the game. Players gets asymetric powers.

For example, the Transfer Engineer above has a passive special ability (Efficiency) which allows dice manipulation. The ACTION is a special action only the Transport Engineer can take on their turn. Every player gets three ACTIONs on their turn.

The Turn Sequence is noted on each players player sheet (each player gets one). This game is all about manipulating dice, so every player has a “lab” that contain 6 dice to manipulate.

How do you win? If you can get 24 of the dice into containment (4 rows with 1-6 on them), the players win! As the game flows, dice slowly come of the cube, both as good news and bad news.

If the cube is ever empty, players lose!

Every turn, one die will come off the cube during the Bad News phase: it gets re-rolled and placed in the appropriate space of the primed area. If there are ever three dice in a single zone, the breaches chart goes up 1! This feels slightly like a Pandemic element, as you have to keep the primed area under control (like the map in Pandemic).

If you ever get 7 breaches, players also lose!

The majority of the game is trying to keep the Primed Area under control, while slowly containing dice, and watching as the Tesseract gets smaller and smaller! The ACTIONS you perform all have some effect on that.

Solo Play

There is a nice sentence above step 6 describing solo play :”In a one-player game, set up two Labs, each with a Researcher.  You will alternate between both Researchers.”  Huzzah!  That’s all it takes!  Congratulations to giving us a simple solo game (and following Saunders’ Law)! No special exceptions! 

See above as I have a solo game getting ready to go! It was pretty easy alternating between the two Researchers. The Researchers are very consistent in specials: they both have a special Action and a special passive power. You are pretty sure those specials will be the difference between winning and losing, so it wasn’t too hard to switch between them and remembering to use the powers.

I was learn to play a solo game pretty easily. It was fun! There would be no problem teaching my friends, as the solo game scales perfectly well and up to 2-4 players.

Cooperative Play

I asked my friends which dice they liked better: metal or plastic. Overwhelmingly Metal Dice! So, that’s what we play with from now on.

Interestingly, people seemed to stand up around the table to play cooperatively! Part of that was to get a good perspective on the Tesseract!

The game seemed to scale well, and there were a lot of cooperative mechanisms and powers in the game. The sharing/trading aspect of dice was a real interesting dynamic! Sure, you can always take a die you need from the Tesseract, but if you do that too quickly, the Tesseract depletes and you lose! So, the players tend to share/trade dice more than I expected in the game. There was a good amount of cooperation and talk!

One of the things I really like about Tesseract is the game encourages players to share and talk as much as possible! There’s an entire paragraph in the rulebook (see above) to that end! Now, I like “limited communication” co-op games, but I get tired of the “limited communication”, because I want to sit down (or stand up in this case) with my friends and interact/talk/have fun! So, I think the cooperation works really well here.

Dexterity Game

The rulebook says clearly “this is not a dexterity game”, and yet, it felt like it, a little. You have to carefully pull the appropriate dice off the Tesseract without spilling it over. Now, we never did, but Andrew leaned on the table at one point and it almost caused a catastrophe of fallen cubes! So, it’s not a Dexterity game, but the cube tower is a little more precarious than it looks. Make sure you set-up on a stable, flat surface to avoid any issues! One bad lean will kind of ruin the whole game.

Metal vs Plastic Dice

The Plastic Dice that come with the game are perfectly serviceable and they look fine and work fine. In fact, we think the plastic dice are probably a little easier to read.

But it’s clear the metal dice were the favorite. They feel “more spacey” and more like what a Tesseract would be made of! But, they are an add-on, and they are expensive. Like significantly: the base game was $50 on the Kickstarter, and the metal dice + game was $130! So, an $80 difference (and the Kickstarter calls them a $128 value so maybe more in retail).

The game works fine with Plastic Dice. If you aren’t sold on the Metal Dice, try the base game with plain dice. You can probably buy the metal dice later if you really like the game.

Cube Games

Those of you paying attention might remember we reviewed another cooperative Cube Manipulation game last year: Minecraft: Portal Dash! (See our review here). And it surprised us how much we liked it! It made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022! It almost feels like this should be its own category of game now … Cube Manipulation? There are a surprising number of similarities between the games, as the Tesseract, err Cube, is both the good news and bad news of both games! They’re different games: I think Tesseract is tighter and more streamlined, but Portal Dash has a certain charm to it as well! If you like one, you may well like the other.

Toy Factor

There’s a large amount of toy factor in the game: the Lazy Susan, the aloft dice cube, the metal dice. And I think it works! It makes the game attractive and more interesting to play! However, there is a good game underneath as well. Unfortunately, the Lazy Susan wasn’t “quite as cool” as I hoped, as it seemed to be a little precarious. It sill worked overall, but it still felt “a little” like a Dexterity Game .. more than it should. I do think that’s a minor complaint, but just one to be aware off.

Game

There’s a good game here. There’s some mechanisms that don’t make sense at first (“Why would I want to reroll my dice to get cards?”) until you’ve gotten into the game. There are plenty of interesting ideas here to keep players engaged! Occasionally, it felt like there was maybe one too many rules (For example: You can destroy a dice in the primed area if you contained the same dice in the Containment area: we forgot this rule a number of times, but at least it’s notated on the Primed Area) and we have to remind ourselves of those, but that’s great in a cooperative game! That is one advantage of cooperative game: players can work together to remember those rules! Arguably, that contributes to the cooperation in the game.

Conclusion

Tesseract is a really great game.  Me and my game groups loved the toy factor, the metal dice, the gameplay, and the overall feel of this game!  The game underneath the toys is also quite good! It had a little bit of Pandemic vibe in a few places, but there were enough new and interesting mechanisms to note that this is not some kind of Pandemic clone. In fact, between Tesseract and Minecraft: Portal Dash, it may be we are seeing a new type of game: Cube Manipulation!

This will easily make my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023.  It was #1 on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2023 for a reason!  But, we all know it’s Lon’s Fault!!

(For the record: I bought this game and all extras with my own money.  We never accept free copies of any games nor take any money/incentives from any publisher or anyone.  This is and has always been our policy at CO-OP Gestalt, but we thought we needed to say it more often.  You may hate our opinions, but at least you are sure they are our own).

What am I going to do? Usually, my game groups are 3 or 4 players, but this week ended being 5 players!! Argh, it is sometimes harder to find “non-party” games that work well with 5 players!! Hmm, I am looking at recent arrivals and see something called Freelancers! It just came in the last week (early September 2023). Looking at the back of my Freelancers game (a cooperative Crossroads game), it says the player count is 3-7! See below ..

This seems like the perfect game for tonight! We have all played Forgotten Waters (another game in the Crossroads game system) and really liked it (see here): Freelancers is the newest game in that line. We’ll probably like that? It looks fun! It looks silly! (Spoiler: it is VERY fun and it is VERY silly)

Unboxing

Well, I gotta unbox this before my friends get here … they’ll be here in an hour!

This is a pretty standard sized box, it looks pretty easy to unbox.

The rulebook looks pretty short (it’s only 12 pages). And I love this art!

Oh, the pieces are well-labelled (but they don’t correlate the list of components with a picture, Boooooo!)

There’s a lot of cool stuff in this box!

That set-up looks pretty good: I think this will be easy to get to the table!

Well, there’s some cardboard to punch (3 sheets, not too bad).

Oh my, there’s a lot of tokens! BUT!

BUT, there’s a lot of plastic bags that come with the game too! That’s great!

There’s a lot of cards: treasure, story, first stuff: this is all very readable and fairly well-notated.

The Location book looks really cool too!

The components looks pretty great! I love this art style and this game screams quality! I am super excited to get this to the table!

Solo Play! Oh No!

Oh no!  My friends will be here soon! I don’t have time to play this solo!  Gah!  I always like to play it solo so I can teach it first!!!  And it’s not even clear if I CAN play this solo!  (It turns out you can, but you have go hunting OUTSIDE the box: There are no solo rules included in the physical game, but the web site has rules for solo and 2-Players in the Variants section at https://www.freelancersgame.com/ ..  unfortunately, by the time I saw this, it was too late!  But Freelancers does follow Saunders’ Law!  There is a viable solo mode!)

Set-Up

This is a storybook game: see our Top 10 Cooperative Storybook/Storytelling Games for more examples of this type of game! 

In our case, this is yet another storybook game like Forgotten Waters where the story is all in the app! (No storybook required)! There is a giant amount of story being read by the app at http://www.freelancersgame.com!

Each player chooses one of the figures/characters to play (these are the Species in the game)! See above! There are an interesting assortment of characters! The Imp! The Hound! The Troll! The Mouser! .. and other stuff! This game can play up to 7! We are just playing at 5 right now …

Each player gets a Species sheet (above) corresponding to the chosen character: see one such Species Sheet above (say that 5 times fast). You’ll be filling in some silly information on this sheet: this game has a Mad Libs element where you will be using this information to “define” your character!

The second sheet you get is the Job: See the Warrior job above.  The most important thing on the Job sheet is the skill matrix: you will be using that to make skill checks (and mark up when you get better as you play).

See some other jobs above. You’ll note that Divorcee is a job. Yes, yes, Divorcee. If you had any idea that this was a serious game, you now know for sure this is a silly game.

Putting a Species and Job together, you get your fleshed-out character!

Each player also gets a starting item (see above.

There are also 7 roles/responsibilities that need to be assigned to the players: Since there were only 5 of us, some of us took two roles! This really makes the game very cooperative! Every player will be doing some role which is essential to the gameplay! (The Influencer board reminds of the the Sidekick of Interest (SOI) Track: see our post here about Resolving Ambiguity is Board Games).

After everyone fills out their sheets, they read aloud the story on the other side!

And we are ready to play!

Recommendation: Print The Job and Species Sheets

The game does come with a pad of a bunch of Species and Jobs, but there aren’t very many!  Before you play, you should go the web site (https://ww.freelancersgame.com) and print copies of everything! See the Friar job above in the app!

For example, there’s only 1 copy of the Divorcee sheet, so I had to print a copy for Teresa! I suspect EVERYONE will want to play the Divorcee, so you probably will want to print out copies rather than use the pads that come with the game.

There’s three copies of the Species (3 Hounds, 3 Mousers, etc), but only 1 of (most of) the Jobs! I strongly recommend proceeding to http://freelancersgame.com and printing out some Species/Job sheets before you play! Otherwise, you will use the included pads VERY quickly! (Each quest uses a new set of characters, so yes, you will go through them quickly!)

Tutorial

I was worried about learning the game as we played: it was NOT a problem!! The tutorial system that comes in the web site was fantastic! We DID NOT need to read a lot of rules! We just jumped right in! And the app guided us through the game easily! Granted, this is a relatively simple game, but this just worked.

Gameplay

The main mechanic in this game (besides the story in the Storybook/app) is that this is a worker placement game. The Location book opens to your current Location (see above) and sets the stage with a cool picture on the left, and the worker placement board to the right.

In a timed fashion (there is a little 45 second timer in the app), players have to place their markers in Influencer order on the current work page! The little graphics give you a sense of what you will get when you go there, but you are not supposed to have a lot of time to figure stuff out!

Once all players have placed their marker, the right side of the page gives more detail about what the Location does: you resolve the actions top to bottom. See above.

Most actions involve skill checks: you roll a 20-sided die for the base skill, but as you get “better”, you get a better and better bonus die to help you! First a d4, then a d6, d8, d10, and finally a d12! Usually, you get an upgrade to the skill you are going to attempt before you attempt it. Most skill checks want a 15 or higher to “do well”.

Of course, success or failure consults the app!  And you get some silliness or story advancement or further choices!  

There are a number of quest included in the game: each quest has a unique ending and twist! Our was to fight a dragon and beat it up!

Generally, the game game is run by the app, and all the players man their positions as they play: Game Master (runs the app), Bookkeeper (actions from Location book), Cartographer (handles map), Medic (keeps track of wounds), Scout (tracks Risk), Lookout (updates dials), Influencer (mans SOI chart).

As we play, we alternate between the Location book (with the Worker Placement Locations) and the Map (for exploration) Again, the app lets you know when you need to do stuff.

The App

The app (really, a web site you go to: https://www.freelancersgame.com, but it feels like an app) is quite good. The voice acting is really good! Surprisingly so! The story is pretty fun, if a little goofy. Actually, it’s very goofy. But it’s still really fun! We really enjoyed listening to the story as it unfurled. We miss reading to each other “a little”, but the 7 roles/responsibilities keep us engaged as we listen to the story!

We played online (meaning we were connected to the web-site the whole time), but you can download the content and play the game off-line: see https://www.plaidhatgames.com/freelancers-crossroads-game-downloads/

Silly

This is a silly game: between the Mad Libs on your character sheets, the silly (but great) art, the story, and the choices, this is a silly game! I think it’s even sillier than Forgotten Waters! This would absolutely make our Top 10 Cooperative Games With a Sense of Humor! (Note that Forgotten Waters is #4: Freelancers would probably make the #3 position!)

Just so you know what you are getting into: this game seems like it might be a “serious post-apocalyptic game” from the description on the back, but it really isn’t. This is super silly.

Cooperation

There’s quite a bit of cooperation as players each have a job to do! See the Lookout and Scout jobs above! Players almost feel like they are members of a crew keeping the party afloat … in fact, that’s exactly what players were in Forgotten Waters: a Pirate Crew! So, that analogy works better in the previous game, but the same idea still applies here: players work together as a party of adventurers trying to “keep the party going”. Each player has a particular duty and must do their duty to keep going!

That idea of giving each player a role(s) is a great way to keep everyone involved! This collaboration really contributes to everyone feeling important to the mission! It’s a really great mechanism: it’s hard to have an Alpha Player because there is so much to do, shared among the players!

Refinements upon Forgotten Waters

The general consensus was that this was a better version of Forgotten Waters: the system had evolved just a little to be a touch simpler and more interesting.

For example, consider that the level-up system is simpler in Freelancers.  In Forgotten Waters, there was a more complex system with marking up a constellation of stars.  That constellation system (where you mark out a constellation on your way to level-up points) is gone from Freelancers!

On the back of the Freelancer character sheet is a simple linear level upgrade (see sheets above).  Rather than having a complex system with the constellation of Forgotten Waters, Freelancers has a much simpler system!  My players enjoyed this: the simplicity helped moved the game forward (rather than getting stuck in the constellation).

The map and exploration system is also much simpler in Freelancers.  Forgotten Waters had a big hex map which players explore.

In Freelancers, the exploration is a little more “contained” on a given map: see above.  Generally, the exploration feels a little more on rails in Freelancers, but it is definitely simpler.

The skill upgrade system is very similar in both games.  The difference here is that the upgrades are simpler in Forgotten Waters: pluses just add to your skill rolls.

In Freelancers, you actually add a different die to your rolls as you upgrade (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12)!  This adds an element of randomness, but there’s something very cool about getting bigger and bigger dice to help your skill rolls!  See the skill sheet above.

In general, my players liked Freelancers better than Forgotten Waters: they liked the evolutionary changes to the game.  I think I like the changes/evolutions better, but I personally still like the pirate theme and more “open” exploration of Forgotten Waters.

In the end, both are great games.  Freelancers is slightly simpler and has slightly better/evolved mechanisms.  It’s the theme that’ll probably decide for you.  Silly Pirates or Silly Post-Apocalypse?

NSFW

So, the game can be NSFW.  At some point, a “choice” is made, and this makes the game have a section or two that is NSFW.  It’ll be clear when you make this choice: just be aware this is coming.  If you don’t mind some cursing and innuendo (and directness), then you are probably safe.   If you are playing with kids or worried about offending anyone, make sure you choose the “safer” and more “family-friendly” path. 

Conclusion

Freelancers went over like Gang-busters! Everyone had a fantastic time playing! The silliness, the story, the roles, were just so much fun! Everyone just loved this game! 8 and 8.5/10 all around. This will easily make the Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023, the Top 10 Cooperative Games With a Sense of Humor, and the Top 10 Cooperative Storybook/Storytelling games!

Oh ya! And it worked fantastically as a 5-Player Games! Sometimes it’s so hard to find a good 5-Player cooperative game!

This game was so much fun!

Pandemic Iberia is a cooperative “secret train” game: This is all the description I needed to entice my friend Robert in! He’s a huge fan of maps and trains! He’s also a huge fan of Pandemic (probably because of the map on the board). So, I was surprised that he had never encountered Pandemic Iberia! It has all of his favorite things: maps, trains, and Pandemic!

Even though Pandemic Iberia was released in 2016 (some 6 years ago), it’s still a great game! That’s why we occasionally do these Retro Reviews: to shine a light on some really great older games. Our last Retro Review was Now Boarding! See that review here.

And this review is also for Greg: Greg told me he likes train games, so I wanted him to see what Pandemic Iberia looked like.

Play Twice (Back-to-Back)

 When I used to play more with my friend Jeremy, he had instituted the rule that “we must play every new game twice: back-to-back!”  The rationale is that the first game is a learning game (where everyone is learning the rules, the mechanisms, and the flow of the game), but it’s the second game is when it all comes together.  While the game is still fresh in everyone’s mind, we can dive into the second play!

And that’s what we did for Pandemic Iberia!  Although we had all played Pandemic before, Pandemic Iberia is just different enough that it took a little more thought to get into it.  So, the first game was a learning game (and we lost horribly).  The second game was much more focused and directed, because we learned from our mistakes in the first game!

So many Pandemics…

Pandemic Iberia was the “first” Pandemic variant! Since then, we have seen so many different variants: Wrath of the Lich King (A World of Warcraft Pandemic), Star Wars: Clone Wars, Pandemic Legacy Seasons 0, 1, 2, Fall of Rome, The Dice Game, and I am sure there are some that I am forgetting!  (Becca would argue that Flashpoint: Fire Rescue is her favorite Pandemic game, even though it’s not even in the Pandemic universe!  Its gameplay is just similar to Pandemic, but with a firefighting theme).

Unlike the later games like Star Wars: Clone Wars (which we reviwed here) and Wrath of the Lich King (which we reviewed here), Pandemic Iberia is still very much Pandemic! You are still curing diseases, you are still roaming a map, you are still dealing with outbreaks! It still feels like Pandemic.

Don’t get me wrong! I loved the Star Wars: Clone Wars (A Pandemic system) game: It made my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022, but you had to really squint to the see the Pandemic underneath. Pandemic Iberia is much closer to the source material.

What’s Different?

In Pandemic Iberia, you still move around the map trying to quell the diseases. You still have to discard 5 cards of the same color at a Hospital (rather than a research station, but it’s the same thing) to research a disease. You still have to research 4 diseases to win. You still have to worry about outbreaks infecting adjacent cities, You still have to be leery of cities with 3 disease cubes!

One very interesting new idea in Pandemic Iberia is the “region” idea. Regions are areas on the board enclosed by brown lines: see the region above surrounded by Ourense, Leon, Gijon, A Corona, and Santiago De Compostela. There are a number of places in the game that utilize this new idea. The most obvious is the “Purify Water” action, which is a new type of action. At the cost of an action and a card, you can “Purify Water” and place some Purification Tokens (the water drop above) in a region! Each purification token prevents the addition of one disease cube into a city adjacent to the region that contains it (the token is discarded after it prevents a disease).

This is really interesting, because it allows players a mechanism to prevent future infections without having to be in the region! Some of the characters (like the Nurse) also have special abilities based on regions.

One other major change is how big movement is handled. Gone are the ideas of direct flights: you must either take the train, or travel from port city to port city.

The “secret train” idea is that you can build a network of train tracks on the board. When the game starts, there are no tracks! You must build out the infrastructure! See above as we have quite a nice train infrastructure on the board. So, when you take the train, you can move to any city in the connected network for just one action! But, that means someone else had to help build the train network on previous turns!

Of course Robert chose the special power that makes it so he can build two train tracks for one action: that’s partly how we got our network up so quickly!

The port city to port city travel requires you to discard a card, but then you can move from a port city to any port city (with the color of the card you discarded). All port cities are marked with Anchors (see above).

You still have to deal with Epidemics like in Pandemic. Unfortunately, once you research a disease you don’t “cure it” or “eradicate it” like you did in base Pandemic. This is a thematic twist: this is a game set in 1848, so you don’t quite have the technology to cure! All you can do is research. You still need to research all 4 disease to win!

What We Liked

We really liked the theme! With the real-world pandemic making us weary of the world-wide Pandemic, there was something charming about casting back to a previous era (1848) on the Iberian peninsula. The map of Iberia, the art on the backs of cards, the style of the game really transported us to a simpler time. Somehow, harkening back to an older era with a smaller map made this “whole Pandemic thing” feel more palatable, and dare I say, fun?

We really liked how the new ideas: the regions, the railroads, the ports, the purify waters! The railroads in particular were such a nice touch: they make the game feel even more strategic. A lot of Pandemic is keeping the diseases under control, but spending actions early in the game to set-up a train network (with the topology of our choosing) made the game feel harder, but more interesting! We had to figure out when it made sense to spend actions for building tracks!

And the purify waters action/region ideas was just a new and really cool way to “prevent” outbreaks even if you weren’t there! Again, it made the game that much more strategic.

The game is absolutely harder. We lost our first game. But it made us want to try again! By pulling together and playing better as a group, the game absolutely encouraged that much more cooperation. It was clear: we had to cooperate well or we die.

A minor thing, but a thing nonetheless: I enjoyed that there was always something interesting you could do with all of your actions! Even if you had an action left over, you could choose to either “purify water” in a adjacent region, or build a train track. I have had games of Pandemic where I threw away actions (to end up in the right space to trade), so it was nice to feel like you could always do something!

Intensity

Strictly speaking, Pandemic Iberia is harder than Pandemic.  It requires a lot of thought, planning, and cooperation to win.  Pandemic Iberia is a very intense game: you may love that, or you may hate that.  Jeff and Becca like the original Pandemic better  because it has a little more laid-back feel: they feel like you can sit back and enjoy your turns a little more in Pandemic.  They still enjoyed Pandemic Iberia, but thought it was much more manic that base Pandemic.

Robert adores the trains and strategy and I believe Pandemic Iberia is now his favorite Pandemic.  I think I am with Robert: I love the new systems and the strategy they introduce. 

Conclusion

Pandemic Iberia was a hit with my group! It’s like a 9/10! It’s a very hard, very strategic version of Pandemic. If you are looking for the next step-up in strategy from Pandemic, consider checking out the very first variant: Pandemic Iberia. It’s charming setting but manic gameplay might be just what you are looking for in a difficult, but strategic cooperative game.

Greg, I really do think you’d like Pandemic Iberia.

Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom is a game I got from a recent GameNerdz order. I believe it just came out in the USA (as of Sept. 1st, 2023): this is a Kosmos game, which typically has more of a European presence. This is a cooperative game in the Lord of the Rings universe. It’s a little surprising, given that we saw the Lord of The Rings Adventure Book Game just a few months ago! We loved that game: see our review of it here!

Even though the Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game was a lighter cooperative game, this one seems even lighter!

This Adventure to Mount Doom has only 50 minutes play time, with 10+ ages … the same age group, but this game promises a “full” Lord of the Rings Experience in 50 minutes!

Components

This is a pretty standard sized box.

The rulebook is very readable, if the font is a little small. It does a nice job showing and labelling all components and getting a good picture of set-up. The rulebook is only 8 pages! But it does a good job.

The box is probably too big for all its components.  Just some cards, standees, and dice.

The components are nice, despite the cards not being linen-finished. Everything is very readable.

Gameplay

This a cooperative game. Um, this is roll-and-move. Wait, wait, wait! Don’t run away just wait! It’s more interesting than you think.

Players do NOT play any individual Lord of the Rings character, they play the fellowship, trying to move the fellowship (piecemeal) from Rivendell to Mount Doom! See above as the fellowship starts with 5 groups on Rivendell!

Note that there is a die for each group (Frodo&Sam, Merry&Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli). Each turn, the current player will be rolling some dice and moving forward some members of the fellowship! Incidentally, the game does a great job, in both the rulebook and components, of making it clear which color applies to which group!

If you can get the ring-bearer (Frodo&Sam) to Mount Doom at the board, the players win!

On the left side of the track is a courage track for the Ring-Bearer: if it ever goes to the bottom, players lose!

Or, if all the Nazgul make it onto the board players lose!

Here’s the roll-and-move part … every turn, the current player rolls 4 dice: 2 colored (which allow the corresponding fellowship to move) and 2 black encounter dice (usually bad news). They choose one colored die for fellowship movement, then one black die for an encounter.

There are 6 encounter spaces at the bottom of the board: some are good (3 is green: Arwen is a friend makes it so you can avoid one bad space on the move) and some are bad (2 is Saruman: he amasses the Uruk-hai) and some are unknown until you flip them (1 and 6).

If the encounter card leaves the board, the symbol underneath is “usually” good: above, you can choose to move Gimli up to 2 spaces (after we take Arwen).

After you roll for the first choice, then you still roll the black dice and two more colored dice: you have no option on the second black die: you must take it.

At point, you execute your turn: Have the black encounter, move the fellowship character, have the second black encounter, then move the second fellowship character.

Every time the ring-bearer enters a new area, you have to clear the encounter cards and get the encounter cards for the next section of the board. As you expect, the encounters get less and less friendly as you get closer to Mount Doom.

There are other rules (how you can heal, how you fight, how you can get Gandalf cards, how you accidentally get Nazguls, etc), but at it’s core: this is a roll-and-move game: Per turn, you basically get to roll 7 dice total and get to choose 3 of them (1 black and 2 colored) and get stuck with 2 of them (1 black and 1 colored) (2 go unchosen or re-rolled). Note that you do get to choose which of the colored dice you roll, so that helps.

Once the ring-bearer gets to Mount Doom, the game changes a little: only the ring-bearer moves, and only 1 black die gets rolled: you just have to suffer the consequences and hope you get to Mount Doom!

Roll and Move

Are you still reading? Yes, this is a roll-and-move game. But there is some choice. You still get stuck with 1 completely random encounter each time (the second one), but at least you can choose the first. And you get to roll at least 4 colored dice and choose two of them. So, this isn’t quite like a roll-and-move like Life or Monopoly: you do get some choice..

And sometimes you will roll bad: see above as I barely get my fellowship moving with 1 and 2!

And sometimes you will cruise! See above with a 5 and 6!

There are reasons to choose lesser numbers sometimes: see above! If any of the three land on the space 2 spaces away, you lose courage! So, maybe you’ll take a 1 over a 2 to avoid the courage loss! There are choices along the way.

Solo Game

Congratulations on following Saunders’ Law and having a viable solo mode!  In this case, since no one plays any particular character (you just move parts of the fellowship depending on your dice rolls), it doesn’t really matter how many people: the Gandalf and friend cards can be used by anyone.  

In my first game, I lost horribly near Mount Doom as too many Nazgul came out: When all 7 come out, I immediately lost! It was frustrating, as my Nazgul came out because I rolled poorly on my second encounter rolls! I had no way to mitigate that! So, I just lost.

I had actually lost earlier, but I kept playing because I wanted to see the endgame. It turns out the Sauron’s Eye (see above) totally screwed me out of my courage, and my courage fell below 0 way before I lost to the Nazgul.

My first game was a learning game. Lessons: keep the courage up and stay away from the Nazguls!

My second game went a lot better: I almost lost, but Faramir made all the difference in the end game:

I used Faramir to move the last 4 spaces of Mount Doom: this avoided all the bad stuff along the way! I am pretty sure I would have lost had I not played this card at the end!

Both solo games were (correctly notated) at about 50 minutes. I lost my first game and won my second game.

Randomness

I had to have to have a long think about this game after playing it. Yes, it is perhaps a little too random. The second encounter roll can almost never be mitigated, and if you roll poorly, the Nazgul will eat your lunch and you will just lose.

But, you have some choices along the way. So, is this too random?

I am reminded of Ranier Knizia’s original cooperative Lord of the Rings game. We joke that it should be called “Getting Killed by Sauron” because it’s so hard … but you know why it’s so hard? It’s so random! The randomness there comes from the event tiles. You have no idea what event tiles you will get as you play, and so few ways to mitigate those event tile flips! Yet, we still seem to like the original Lord of the Rings game. Honestly, there is some nostalgia there, as the original Lord of the Rings game was one of the first cooperative games out there!

So, Adventure To Mount Doom maybe has a little more “bad news” mitigation or maybe the same? But it’s only 50 minutes! So, maybe my brain thinks “Lord of the Rings needs to be an Epic game, so 50 minutes is too short!” … but maybe it isn’t. I think the amount of randomness here is probably less than the original Lord of the Rings game by Knizia. So, am I a hypocrite if I like the Ranier Knizia game but not this one?

Cooperative Play

I couldn’t get my group to play this cooperatively. 

“Wait, this is roll-and-move?”

“Well, yes. “

“Is it kind of random?”

“Well, yes. But it’s better than you think!”

“You aren’t really selling it.”

So, they heard roll-and-move,  they figured it was too random, and they were done.  I think this prejudice might be widespread.

Conclusion

So, this game was better than I expected, but it’s still a roll-and-move. The solo game was okay, but I don’t see myself playing it again solo. And I couldn’t get my game group to play it.

But I encourage you to look into your soul and remember how random the Ranier Knizia’s Lord of the Rings game was and ask yourself to reconsider randomness. Adventure to Mount Doom is only 50 minutes, and there are interesting decisions along the way, even if it is maybe too random. At least it’s short!

In the end, I am keeping the game because I think this can be a good introductory cooperative game for people who have only seen older roll-and-move games like Life and Monopoly. I can see someone new to the hobby enjoying the Lord of the Rings theme and still getting into Adventure to Mount Doom. I also can see families with kids (at the bottom end of the age range: 10-11) enjoying this.

Hard-core gamers will probably hate this, or at least they think they will. It’s better than they think.

Midnight Murder Mysteries is a cooperative detective/deduction game that was on Kickstarter back in June 2022. Ir promised delivery in January 2023, but it only arrived at my house sometime in April 2023 … a few months late for a Kickstarter isn’t bad.

This is the 2nd Edition of the original game. I have no knowledge of the original edition, but I do love mystery/detective games: See our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games! That’s why I backed this game. Let’s take a look! (There is also a competitive mode, but we don’t review that here).

What Is This?

This is a detective/mystery game. Players work solo or cooperatively to uncover a murder! (There is also a competitive mode, but we don’t review that here).  There are about 9*3 or 27 cases here in 3 case books (the Kickstarter version has an extra casebook bringing it to 36 cases).  

Each case in the case book is described on two pages: the premise (left above) and the paths (right above).  As you investigate, you can investigate a location or talk to a suspect (if you are in the same space as that entity).  You can ask each suspect about their alibi, what they may have witnessed, and possible motives: each of those questions is a separate action.  Each investigate has a number next to it which leads you to an entry in the same book.

Each entry (see above) gives some information which you can mark off on your clue sheet (see below).

You can only get the information from a suspect if you are in the same location, so you will be having to walk around a ship to find them!

There is a built-in timer: you must solve the murder before the ship gets back to port!

The timer (above) gives you “about” 10 turns to solve the murder!

Once you are forced to (or choose to) solve the murder, you flip over your clue sheet and fill in CULPRIT, MOTIVE, and MODUS OPERANDI … and a backup, just in case you are wrong. You read the solution and score your investigation with a 100 being perfect and 0 being, well, terrible.

This game is all about trying to optimize your actions to get the most info before you run out of time!

Components

The components are pretty good. The case books are readable (if a little small). The board is well-labelled and easy to navigate.

One major complaint about the components is that the bases DO NOT fit well into the standees.

The stands are way too tight. I ripped the first Suspect standee. See above and below.

See the tear at the bottom? After that, I used a plastic knife to hold the base open so none of the other standees would rip. See above. I do wish they had included a few more bases because I am never taking these out again!

However, assembly is a one-time thing. Just be very careful putting your standees together.

I think the most impressive component is the HUGE clue pad: there are so many clue sheets! See above.

Solo Game

There is a solo mode (see rules above): You are trying to solve the murder before Simon the Purser. Simon is running around the ship (as are you), and you are both trying to solve the mystery before the other.

The solo mode is okay: it kind of gives you a sense of how the game works. If Simon is in an area with you, you can’t investigate unless you use an action point to move him away. His movement is controlled by the event deck, but he can essentially teleport to any location on the ship. This is frustrating since movement is so much more expensive for the solo player.

There is also a notion of publicly and privately investigating, but it really is just a counting exercise: public investigating is only one action point, but Simon gets to cross off a path. When Simon has 30 PATHS crossed off, you trigger the end of game! … and you see if you have solved it, getting some points based on where Simon was.

The solo mode was okay: I found it to just be “optimizing actions” to avoid Simon getting to 30, so it didn’t really feel like he was investigating. My own investigations were fun enough, but there was a lot of Simon upkeep.

Solo mode taught the basics of the game. It was good enough for that, but I wasn’t compelled to play it solo again.

Cooperative Play

Cooperative play was good…ish. It’s weird that players don’t share information (mostly) until the very end of the game. Each player conducts their own investigation, but there is no real sharing of information as the game plays! Each player is conducting their own private investigation, reading from the book independently. As they play, the can share whether a location is “good, bad, or meh” information AND THAT’S all the information can be shared!! So that game proceeds in a lot of silence as players read (silently to themselves) from the case book.

But, the end of the game was explosive! People could barely contain themselves when they could finally talk to each other. “Do you know what I found?? I couldn’t tell anyone! Oh my gosh!!” No one could communicate (much) for most of the game and it was like a dam burst at the endgame!! It was like everyone just exploded!! It was exciting and furious, as information about the murder flew around the table. The end of the game was absolutely the best part of the game, as players shared and postulated together, trying to come up with the murderer, means, and motive. It was boisterous and exciting.

Strategy

There is strategy to the game, even though the Suspects come out very randomly. Movement is precious in this game, so players have to come up with some strategy to get the fewest moves and most investigations. There’s some rules that seems “throwaway” when you first see them: At the end of your turn, you can move a SUSPECT up to two zones. Okay? Turns out it’s critical to use this to move the SUSPECTS to you rather than wasting your own actions. So, there will be a lot of discussion about who to move to help the others. My first game, I didn’t get why that was important, until I saw how much moving wasted my actions. There is some strategy to optimizing your investigations.

The Alpha Player Lurks

One of the things we don’t touch on a lot here in Co-op Gestalt is the threat of the Alpha Player (see our discussion here for more elaboration of the Alpha Player Problem). A lot of people have had cooperative experiences ruined by an Alpha Player, including myself. I, generally, have been fairly lucky that my game groups get along well and cooperate well: the Alpha Player is (almost) never a problem for my groups. However, it’s important to remember that the shadow of the Alpha Player is always lurking nearby, waiting to ruin a cooperative game … so, it’s good when games feel like they have explicit mechanisms to safeguard against the Alpha Player.

Recall from our review of King of Monster Island that we liked the game, but the turns felt pretty independent without much interaction. Although this generated a negative reaction at first, we realized that this might actually be a positive: this game guards against the Alpha Player! If you are in a situation where you might be playing with an Alpha Player (your brother, you-know-the-guy-in-your-game-group, maybe even yourself), this would be a good entry: the fiercely independent dice rolls keep the Alpha Player at bay as each player enjoys their own turn!

And Midnight Murder Mysteries also seems to keep the Alpha Player at bay! Each player fills out their suspect sheet independently , makes their way around the board independently, and pursues their own investigation … independently! The only time the players really cooperate is at the very end when they share all the info they have. So, as the players play, there really is no chance for the Alpha Player to tell you what to do!

There is a cost, though for warding off the Alpha Player: there’s really no interaction as you play. I tended to role-play an annoying kid, and we all sort of did stuff to be silly just to engage a little. So, again, that could be a positive or a negative: you can use the time to talk as friends about whatever you want, but you aren’t engaging in the game proper.

Downtime: The Main Problem and a Potential Fix

The main problem with Midnight Murder Mysteries is that there is a lot of downtime while you wait for the other players to “read silently” their chosen path from the casebook. Now, there are a few places when investigators can share, but we found that the bulk of the time was just waiting for the previous player to finish reading silently. This downtime kind of took a toll on us as we played.

But the downtime can be alleviated! Although I got two copies of the game for gifting (one for myself, one for a friend), I think that was a happy accident! We think the way to play best cooperatively is play simultaneously! Each player reads of out their own independent casebook and pursues their own independent path each turn from their own independent book! Players will need to figure out who to move before the round begins, but during the round, the “reading of the book” can take place simultaneously. This can pretty much remove all downtime and the game can go much faster.

The only way this can work is if you have multiple copies of the case book. It turns out that some of the cases are online in the Print and Play. So, if you have multiple devices, you can access the case books online so that each player will have their own case book! Or if you have multiple copies of the game (like me), you can physically share multiple physical copies.

Granted, there are some issues that need to be resolved: how do you handle things that are supposed to happen in order? Generally, the only things that seemed to matter were either the sharing of information or the moving of suspects. If the players decide, as as group, which suspects should be moving before the turn begins (rather than piecemeal), then that can work. It might take some tweaking, but since this is a cooperative game, the players can decide together how to deal with this!

In general, this simultaneous play house rule takes this cooperative game from something we liked okay to something that is fun and quick to play we liked a lot more! With simultaneous investigations, that 75 minute play reduces substantially (depending on how many case books you have)! Some of the casebooks are online for the Print and Play version: that’s probably your best bet to have multiple copies of the case books.

Conclusion

Midnight Murder Mysteries is a curious beast. The solo game isn’t great, but it’s good enough to teach the game. The cooperative mode isn’t very interactive until the very end, but this can be both boon and bane. The Alpha Player will never take over this game because each player in the cooperative mode will have their own investigation which won’t be influenced by the Alpha Player, but this comes at the cost of some interaction. Luckily, the endgame is explosive and highly interactive and really makes up for the earlier lack of interaction.

The worst part of the cooperative game is the downtime between turns, as you wait for each player to read silently from the case book. With a simple house rule, by just using multiple copies of the case book and investigating simultaneously, you can get rid of a lot of waiting and make the game that much more punchier! Without the house rule, the game is probably a 5.5/10 or 6/10. With the house rule, the game really speeds up and becomes a 7/10 or 7.5/10.

But, it depends on how you want to play! Do you want to play a game where you and your friends can hang out just shoot the breeze while you play? Then play Midnight Murder Mysteries cooperatively as-is: no Alpha Player will come and ruin your game. If you want your game punchier and more intense, consider playing simultaneously with multiple case books. The thing is, you can choose what’s best for your group!

Prelude

Bedlam in Neverwinter is an Escape Room room game in the Dungeons and Dragons universe of Icewind Dale. This is a game is three Acts: Each Act lasts 90 minutes as players work together to solve puzzles and try to solve an ever growing mystery. Act I, Act II, and Act III are all connected: the story all culminates to a final solution in Act III after playing through each act.

After each Act, you can save your game for another session (which is what we did), or continue straight to the next act. We played the three Acts over three sessions in June and July of 2023.

The time on the box seemed apropos: each act was about 90 minutes. The box also says 2-6 players. We ended up playing with three people. If you were stranded on a desert island with this box, you probably could play solo as two characters and still enjoy it, but like all Escape Room games, usually more brains are better to progress the game.

This Escape Room style will very familiar to those of you who played the Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion game from earlier this year: see our review here. There are differences, though, which we’ll see below.

As the prelude closes, we get ready to play.  You’ll notice we can’t do anything at all until the players arrive! As soon as you open the box, it tells you to STOP!

Act I: Mystery at Ten Towns

Charlie and Allison are my Escape Room buddies: we’ve played quite a number over the years (including many Murder Mysteries: they were part of Red Carpet in Ruins from a weeks ago). This seemed the ideal game for us: we have played many sessions of Dungeons and Dragons together as well as many Escape Room board games! This game was made for us!

Continue reading “A Review of Bedlam in Neverwinter: A Dungeons & Dragons Escape Room in Three Acts” →