The Arkham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City originally appeared on Kickstarter some time ago: July, 2022: see here. At the time, they were offering three games for about $350. Why were these games so much money? Because these games are augmented reality games! You physically set-up some components and then use a special app on your phone or iPad to look at the components … and it inserts “stuff” into the scene via the app. See below.

In the example above, we built just a few buildings in Gotham City with the included components, but when you look at the city through the app, you see other buildings! Other features! There are inserted into the reality! So, your app becomes a view to the world of Gotham City.

When the original Kickstarter for this game came out, I went back and forth as to whether I should support it. It looks fantastic, but it was a technology-based game on Kickstarter. Experience, mine and others, makes me very leery of any kind of Kickstarters with technology. Why? Typically, Kickstarters deliver late, delays make technology obsolete quickly, support for technology can dry up quickly after a Kickstarter, and technology Kickstarters typically are more expensive. In the end, there were too many reasons not to support it, so I didn’t back it, but instead I chose to see what would happen.

What Happened?

So, Infinite Rabbit Holes did deliver a game! I saw it being referenced (early July 2023) on a few sites, and I thought to myself: “Oh, they did actually make a product! Let’s check it out!” So, for about $135, I ordered a copy of the game and had the game delivered to my house.

For a game with a lot of augmented reality, it sure comes in a big box! See the Coke can for reference.

This seem to be a shipping trend now, a box-in-a-box: the outer box takes the shipping damage, leaving the inner box less touched.

What Is This?

Panic In Gotham City is a cooperative Escape Room/Adventure game with 5-6 hours on content for 13+.

The game bills itself as a “Mixed Reality Adventure” (see above), but it’s really an Escape Room over 6 hours (that’s right, 6 hours) that uses your app/ipad for augmented reality interactions.

Before you blanche too much at the running time, you can save your game and come back to it. There are seven chapters to the game, so you can stop at any point at the end of a chapter and come back to it at a later time. It’s a very cooperative Escape Room game: players work together to solve crises in Gotham City,

How Do You Review This?

How do you review something like this? You can’t talk about the plot too much because you don’t want to give away spoilers. You can’t talk about the puzzles of augmented reality too much because some of the best parts of the game were discovering the solutions and the augmented reality. The surprise is part of the fun!

What we’ll do is give some snapshots into our gaming experience and show you what we saw: out of context, I don’t think these will be spoilers, but you can sense of the game. So, this is more a snapshot of our experience with the game.

Experience

Four of us gathered one night, with the intent on playing all 6 hours of content over two sessions. We’d play the first 3 or 4 chapters, then leave the game set-up for next week. This was a commitment: we knew this would be a big game, but we were all up for it!

The iPad drove the game: we would constantly set it up on top of the box to watch content and videos to move us to the next session. The introduction video makes it very clear you need a well-lit space and a lot of room to move around! We ended up getting rid of all our chairs and just standing around the table and box, frequently peering into the iPad.

The intro video”suggests” you broadcast the video to a TV nearby so it’s easier to watch the videos and content. If you were to use a phone instead of an iPad, you should absolutely do that! There’s no way you should just play this game on a phone. You frequently stand around watching videos or other content, and a phone screen would be way too small. So, caveat emptor:

• Play this on an iPad with a big screen so everyone can see OR
• Play this with a phone broadcasting to a TV everyone can see

For all that is holy, I think just playing this on a phone would be a terrible idea!

Mixed Reality

There really is a lot of physical real-world stuff in here. You end up making a city (which is one of the reasons you want to leave the game set-up for the next session: it’s too much work to put this away!)

Like any Escape Room, there will be puzzles and clues hidden all over the augmented reality and components that come with the game.

Physical Exertion

One thing to be aware of: this game is actually physically challenging!  Like I said, you have to constantly rove around the board, so you are standing the whole time.  And you are holding the iPad up and looking at the board at weird angles: crouching, standing, extending, and other weird positions. I would pass the iPad to other people frequently, so they could all stay involved and so I could sit for a second!  We joked that the last time we had this much physical exertion was playing Dungeon Fighters (from out Top 10 Cooperative Dexterity Games)!  

I joked that I was going to wear kneepads for the second session, and I probably should have.

A Few Caveats

There are a few things to be aware of with this game.

One: this is a game, that once you’ve played it, you won’t play it again because you have solved all the puzzles!  Luckily, you CAN reset the game!  I plan to reset it and give to Charlie and Allison, my Escape Room buddies.  Of course, I have found that if I wait a few years, I forget most of the puzzles and I can replay it again, but that’s up to you.

Two: one of the reasons my friend Junkerman doesn’t like Escape Room games is because he feels that a few people take over the game.  While that can happen, it can be a little more pronounced with Panic in Gotham City because the player holding the iPad is controlling the action!  I think that’s why the game recommends you transmit the scene to a TV so everyone can see it easily.  To be clear, this “alpha player” issue did not happen in our game, but it could be more likely in this game unless you broadcast the scene to a local TV. Caveat Emptor.

Over Two Nights

We ended playing over two nights, but we probably should have split it into three nights.  The game is quite challenging, both physically and mentally! Although we finished it in two nights, I think we might have enjoyed it more over three nights.

Conclusion

If you do the appropriate amount of planning, The Arkham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City can be one the best experiences of the year. Make sure have a big enough area to move around, make sure you allocate the proper amount of space, make sure you set-up in a place where you can leave the game over a few weeks (It really is 5-6 hours of content), and make sure you share the duty of holding the phone/Ipad for the city. And be ready for some physical activity!

Having said all that, I think Akham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City is my contender for Game of the Year for 2023! As I was playing, I kept saying “This is so cool, this is so cool“. My friend Teresa described the experience as absolute joy. We really got into this game and enjoyed it immensely.

Playing the game over two sessions was absolutely imperative (and maybe it should have been three).  I do think the first session left such a good impression (like 9.5/10) that the second session actually wasn’t quite as good (maybe 8.5/10). 

If the price tag doesn’t scare you away (I paid $135), and you do some proper planning, I think this will be a fantastic experience overall for you: 9/10. I realize it’s a one-time experience, but it was so worth it.

Appendix

You can reset the game: see above as Sam, Teresa, and Sara put the game BACK TOGETHER. It took about 20 minutes, but since the game is pretty expensive ($135), it’s good to know you can get a few more plays out of it.

I also plan to demo this at RichieCon this year. Stay Tuned! RichieCon is coming soon!

Comic Hunters is a competitive drafting game for 1-4 players that’s currently only available in Brazil. Using this dark corner of the web called “Ebay”, I was able to secure a copy … paying way too much money. (I’d rather not say how much. Really. Please, stop asking. Just go look for yourself and see how much it is on Ebay).

I was really interesting in this game because I collected comics in a former life, and I actually have some of the comics depicted in the game.

To be clear: the cards depict actual Marvel comics covers! See above. In fact, I have all 10 of the comics above! Anyone who has been following Co-op Gestalt for any amount time knows how much we like Superheroes (see our Top 10 Cooperative Superhero Board and Cards Games)! So, Comic Hunters was a natural buy for us!

Sleeves

This has been a bit of a journey for us.  Since the game was so expensive (please stop asking how much, allright?), we went ahead and got some matte sleeves for the game.  We found a list here on BoardGameGeek of sleeves that fit the game.  You need 135 sleeves: we went ahead and chose the Gamegenic sleeves for the game. See below.

Over about 40 minutes one night, I sleeved all 135 cards.

The sleeves seem very nice: they aren’t too shiny.

Portuguese

Those of you paying attention might remember Comic Hunters is from Brazil … which means the game is mostly in Portuguese.  Luckily, the comic cards themselves are all language independent (with the original Marvel comic cover in English) : they have icons, so the cards don’t need anything special. See below.

Most of the board is pretty iconic, with numbers and symbols. The only section that really sees Portuguese is the Round Tracker: see below.

What does that mean? Luckily, it’s very easy to correlate the round with the drafting by just matching the text to the round description (to the left of the round marker): that picture shows an iconic reference for the four types of drafts in the game (see below).

So, for most of the game, you can get by not knowing Portuguese … except for the rulebook. This is a fairly complicated game, and you can’t get by without an English translation of the rulebook. See the Portuguese rulebook below.

Rulebook

So, there is an official English translation of the rules on BoardGameGeek in the files section (in fact, there’s two of them!) They look almost exactly like the original rulebook, in graphic design and sectioning, but in English! See here.

For about $7, I went ahead and printed the rulebook in black and white at my local FedEx copy center.

The rules work fine, although I did have to trim the edges manually to make it fit in the box. (I left the top part on for possibly stapling it later).

For about another $24, FedEx was also able to make a much more professional color English copy, with a nice coil binding: see above.

So, I have three copies of the rulebook: one color copy in Portuguese (the original), one B&W copy in English, and one color copy in English. See above. They all fit in the box.

Why did I get a B&W copy as well? As it turns out, it takes a few days (potentially) to make the professional copy. I really wanted to play right away, so I had FedEx make the cheaper B&W to get me going. I think it will be an advantage to have multiple copies of the rulebook for this game: there are some quirky sections that will benefit from multiple rulebook copies.

The rulebook gets about a B or B+ on the Chair Test: It opens up nicely and looks great, and fits on the chair next to me and it fits in the original box. The only problem is that the font is just a little small.

Overview

In Comic Hunters, thematically you are trying to collect a certain set of comics to get the best collection! There are eight main Marvel superheroes you are tracking: Captain America, Black Panther, Black Widow, Dr. Strange, Hulk, SIron Man, Spider Man, and Thor.

Mechanically, this is a drafting game with cards (like Seven Wonders or Sushi Go), but with four very different kinds of drafting: to win, you need the most victory points at the end of the game.

You can see the Seven Wonders-like scoring pad that comes with the game, but it’s all in Portuguese. I just used a 3×5 index card to emulate the scoring pad. (I think BoardGameGeek has more official English scoring pads, but I didn’t really need them).

Scoring

There are several competing scoring criteria for your comic collection: Size, Variety, Highlights, and Secret Stash.

For Size, you consult the board (above), and it tells you how many victory points you get for each collection (For example:5 Dr. Strange comics will score you 12 points). See above.

For Variety, the number of hero collections you have gets you points. If you have just Spider Man, Dr. Strange, and Iron Man comics in your collection, you would only get 5 Victory Points. (You have no variety, man!). You need at least 3 comics of that hero to count against Variety. See above.

For Highlights, you check the board to see how icons you match (See above). For example, If you have the most Number One issues, you would get 15 Victory Points! There’s New Look, First Appearance, Special Edition, Epic Battle, and Number One. There’s only three highlights in play per game.

Finally, for Secret Stash, you just score the number of points on that chart (see above).

Drafting

Like Seven Wonders, this is a victory point drafting game. Like Seven Wonders, there are three rounds (Ages) to the game. Like Seven Wonders, there is scoring at the endgame to find who the winner is. But the drafting has some big differences from Seven Wonders!

First of all, there are 3 drafts per round, notated by the Itinierario! And four very different types of drafts!

The first draft (Loja or Store) is the most like Seven Wonders: each player gets 4 cards from Era 1 comics, chooses 1 to keep, then passes the rest to the left/right (depending on the round). By the time you are done with this draft, everyone should have 4 comic cards!

The next type of draft is Sebo or Flea Market!  Players set-up n rows (where n is the number of players) with a starting card.  See below for a 3-player start! On your turn, you can either add a new card to any row OR take a row!  

Here, you are trying to balance when a row is great! If you take a row too early, you get fewer cards.  If you take it too late, someone else may get the row you want!

Convencao, or Convention is when you set up a large 5×5 grid of comics and take either a row or column (after being allowed to move one card). Each player gets two chances to take a row or column.

The final Drafting type is Site De Leilao or Auction Website. It’s basically just an auction using the secret stash counter as money.

In the auction, there are some asymmetric rows put out (depending on the number of players). For the solo player, only two rows are put out: one row with 3 comics and one row with four comics. Winners gets the row of choice.

Avengers Assemble!  Collection! 

At the end of each round (after 3 drafts), you take your comics and figure out which ones to actually buy: This is Organizar Colecao or Assemble Collection part of the round. The comics you acquired over the round (over the 3 drafts) become either money (to buy other comics) or comics to keep (which must be bought with other comics).

The Market Value of each comic (its sale price or buy price) is the Era it comes from: recent comics are Era 1 (worth 1), 80s-90s comics are Era 2 (worth 2), and silver age comics are Era 3 (worth 3). This info is on the back of the cards as well as the front.

This is where you are trying to make collections of your comics, keeping in mind the scoring conditions at the end of the game. You also have to make brutal decisions on what comics you have to sell to keep the ones you really wants! Cards that are sold go to the Convention deck and players keep the bought ones. (You can also move comics you already from previous rounds between collections).

After three rounds, players add up victory points and the most points win!

Solo Game

Even though Comic Hunters is competitive, it does have a solo mode, which is why we feel justified talking about this here in our cooperative blog. We can always play any game with a solo mode cooperatively like we did with Eila and Soomething Shiny (see here), Flamecraft (see here), and Canvas (see here): just play the solo mode as a group.

In the solo mode, you play against Jeeves (the Avenger’s butler). As you play, basically Jeeves tends to get the comics you DO NOT get, but he does’t have to pay for him! As you play, you try to get the best comics for yourself as well as trying to limit Jeeves’ options.

You collect comics are normal… see above …

And Jeeves gets your leftovers! See above.

Although the game flows the same, the rules for draft are altered in order to compensate for the solo player and Jeeves. So, there is an entire section to the rulebook about how each of the drafts changes to deal with Jeeves. It’s more complicated than you might expect, even if you know the base game. I found I had to re-read the rules a number of times in solo mode to get the nuanced differences.

The solo game is fun! I have played it a number of times and it took a while to get it! What’s cool about the solo mode is keeping track of three things: which cards you buy, which cards Jeeves gets, and which cards go to the Convention deck! Some of the cards you don’t acquire go to the Convention deck, which means you may still see it again! As you try to limit Jeeves’ options, you may decide to discard certain cards to the Convention deck so you can see them again! That little twist, of comics going to the Convention deck (so they can reappear in later rounds), makes the solo mode that much more interesting. I think that helped elevate the game for me.

The major flaw of the solo game is simply that the rules had to be readjusted fairly heavily to accommodate solo play. Even if you know the base game, it’s still quite a bit of work to get into the solo game.

But the solo game is fun.

Cooperative Mode

I wish this game had a cooperative mode.  Like I said, we can always play this cooperatively by simply playing the solo mode as a cooperative group, but I feel like this game deserves a really good cooperative mode: It’s really great.

UPDATE: We put our money where our mouths were and made a cooperative version of the game.  See here!

Coming To America?

Part of the reason I picked this up is that it’s not clear if Comic Hunters will ever come to the USA in its current form. For licensing reasons, it’s unclear whether an American company could get the rights to all the Marvel comics covers.  There have been whispers that some company may bring it to the USA in 2024, but it’s unclear if the game will have to be re-themed (for licensing reasons) with different artwork.  See this BoardGameGeek thread here for more details.

Conclusion

Am I glad I spent way too much money on this game?   Yes!  The art is phenomenal (well, it does contain some of my favorite Marvel comics covers) and the gameplay is really different and original.  I am enjoying the solo mode quite a bit: there’s quite a few interesting ideas, and I just love living in this world of Marvel Comic Hunters: 8/10.  If you think you would love this world, give it a try:  I know that many conventions have a copy of this game in their game library (Dice Tower) to try.  We’ll also have it out at RichieCon-7 this year for people to try.

If someone had showed me Comic Hunters before Seven Wonders, I don’t think I would have ever played Seven Wonders, but I suppose Seven Wonders and Sushi Go did have to pave the way for drafting games to be popular before this could flourish.

I just wish this game had a good cooperative mode.

What’s a tile? Does a tile have to be a thick square piece of plastic? How about a thick piece of cardboard? How thick does a piece of cardboard have to be in order to classify as a tile? Can just a playing card be a tile? Our answer: A piece is a tile if it’s used like a tile in a tile-placement game. Although this definition sounds specious, it represents the reality that there are a lot of tile-laying or tile-placement games that use cards as tiles rather than piece of thick plastic/cardboard. It’s a tile if it’s used as tile and its placement matters! Below is our top 10 list of cooperative tile-placement or tile-laying games.

Now, there are some cooperative games that have tile-placement in them as a minor mechanic (such as Robinson Crusoe), but to be on this list, the game has to have tile-placement as a main mechanism in the game.

A Thought Experiment: Mechanical Beast

At first, it looks like Mechanical Beast might be a pure tile-placement game, but as you play/explore, you realize you get no choices when placing tiles! You have to place the top tile on the space you explored, without even the option of rotating the way you want! (You have to place the tile along the arrow).

What makes this an interesting spin on tile-placement is that, even though you have no choice on tiles when they come out, you can later rotate one or many tiles using the gear mechanism! This gives you some choice in the topology of your tile grid. Mechanical Beast is weird, and while not strictly speaking a tile-placement game, it kinda looks-and-feels like a tile-placement game once you get into it. Strictly speaking though, you have no choice when you place a tile: its orientation and placement is set, and so we don’t consider this a tile placement/tile laying game. (Arguably, you have choice as which room you build from, so you can influence topology, but it’s not quite enough choice).

The main point of this discussion of Mechanical Beast: for all of The Top 10 Cooperative Tile Placement Games, players have some choices when they place a tile (orientation, placement, side, topology, etc) and those choices makes a difference in the game. Some games will, of course, have more choice than others: in general, the higher a game is on this list, the more choice you have in your tile placement!

10. Chainsomnia

Solo Game:  Yes (but must play 3 characters)
Players: 1-4
Time: 40-60 Minutes
Tiles: square medium-thick cardboard

Chainsomnia is #10 on this list because there’s probably the least choice in tile placement: when you explore, you must place a tile legally connected to the room you are in, but you do get choice in orientation which entrances connect (as well as the topology, as you control which room you explore from).

As you play, you have get all tiles out to expose the exit: players only win if at least one player makes it to the exit and all nightmares are discarded!  

This is a cute and lighter cooperative tile-placement game, where the topology does matter because you have to make sure to keep a way to the exit open as you explore, but still manage to keep the nightmares under control!

9. Cities: Skyline

Solo Game:  Yes
Players: 1-4
Time: 40-70 Minutes
Tiles: polyomino cardboard tiles, medium thickness

Cities: Skylines is based on a video game.  In this board game adaptation, players cooperatively execute urban planning for a city (this is a city-building game after all).  

What makes this is a little different than other tile placement games on this list is the tiles do have slightly different shapes!  We did not necessarily specify that the tiles all had to be the same shape, and in this case they are not!  (Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, there probably are NOT that many cooperative polyomino games!)

This is a fun, but more complicated tile placement game where tile placement absolutely matters!

8. Forgotten Depths

Solo Game:  Yes (you can play from 1 to 3 characters)
Players: 1-3
Time: 60 Minutes
Tiles: square cards

Forgotten Depths is a dungeon crawler game where the tiles come out as you explore the dungeon.  This is still a dungeon-crawling adventure game, but the tile placement is a main mechanic that influences the shape of your adventure.  When you draw and place tiles (Map Tiles), there are a few rules you have to follow (“All edges of the new Map Tile must match the edges of all the tiles they’ll touch”), but in general you have some choices as you place tiles.  You’ll want to try to create Legendary Locations to provide XP and cool story elements, you’ll want to put the campfire close enough, you’ll want to make sure monsters, doors, chests, are close enough/far away.   

You have three different “ecologies” you play through, so there’s quite a bit of variety.

The choices you make when placing the tiles in your dungeon have an effect on how your game unfolds.  It’s pretty fun: the tile-placement is more about how you want your adventure to run than “scoring points”, but it’s a main and important mechanism in the game.

7. Sub Terra/Sub Terra II

Solo Game:  Yes (but must play 3 characters)
Players: 1-6
Time: 60-75 Minutes
Tiles: square medium-thick cardboard

Sub Terra and Sub Terra II are lower on the list … not because they aren’t great games, but because the amount of choice in tile-placement is less pronounced.  Certain powers allow the players some choice in choosing tiles that come out  (The Scout in Sub Terra or The Archaeologist, The Aristocrat, or The Foreman in Sub Terra II), players can also have some choice in orientation of tiles (as long it’s legal) that come out, and basic actions allow the players to reveal a tile before moving on them, but the amount of tile choice is a little more limited: generally, most players take the top tile and place it where they are going.  

Having said that, both of these still feels like tile-placement games, as you play tiles in the play area!  Sub Terra II definitely feels more like tile-placement, because the shape of your exploration (where you explore) helps influence where the final Artifact shows up!  Both of these are great cooperative games: I would give the nod to Sub Terra II as it has a little more true tile-placement, but Sub Terra is still a great game and has that tile-placement feel.  Take a look at our review here of Sub Terra II to see if it’s something you might enjoy!

6. Escape: Curse of the Temple

Solo Game: yes
Players: 1-5
Time: “realtime” (really, that’s what the box says)
Tiles: larger, heavy thickness tiles

Escape: The Curse of the Temple is probably the odd duck on this list: it’s a real-time dice-chucking cooperative game about exploring a temple as fast as you can!  Your tile-placement choices seem less consequential, but they are absolutely vital!  You need to explore quickly, placing tiles! You can only place tiles (“discover a chamber”) from your current tile, but you can choose how it connects via orientation.

All this exploration is happening in real-time, so the dungeon is being explored by everyone as they play.  You need to be talking as you explore and keep some players under control: “Don’t explore too far that way or you’ll make it too hard to get to you if you get trapped!!”

The topology matters in this game!  If you explore too far along a long corridor, you may isolate yourself or the exit from the rest of the team!  So, where you explore (as you are crazily rolling dice) really does matter.   So, it may seem like a quirky choice, but the tile-placement choices  (the speed of choice, the collaboration of choice, the choice of orientation of the tile) do matter in this game.  And it’s really fun!

5. Dead Men Tell No Tales

Solo Game: no
Players: 2-5
Time: 60-75 Minutes
Tiles: medium sized, medium thickness tiles

Dead Men Tell No Tales is a favorite in my game groups: I got two copies when the original Kickstarter went up, giving one away as a birthday present.  Players each take the role of a pirate (with special abilities), and players work together to loot a pirate ship before it explodes!  It’s not real-time (although it sounds like it might be)!  

There’s a lot going on here, but the tile placement is essential to the game: every turn, one player must draw a tile and place it legally somewhere on the pirate ship that’s exploding!  Not only does the topology matter, but things like where treasure, monsters, and Fire Dice placed also matter! 

Where and how you place the tile on the soon-to-be-exploding pirate ship matters a great deal!  This doesn’t, at first, look like a tile-placement game, but it absolutely is.

4. Castellion

Solo Game: yes
Players: 1-2 (although it’s easy to have 3 or 4 people playing cooperatively as a unit)
Time: 60 Minutes
Tiles: smaller, medium thickness tiles

Castellion is a game in the Oniverse line of games, and it is all about laying tiles!  Players have to place tiles on a board with shapes and colors on the tiles affecting how tiles can and can’t be placed.

There are some really interesting decisions when you place your tiles.  We ended up expanding the player count to 3 easily: we all just work together make the decisions as a single player would and deciding how to play the tiles. 

This is a pure tile-laying that was challenging and fun!  The typical arc of our gameplays would be to lose the game but then want to play immediately to try again!  It is quite fun and challenging!

3. Tranquility

Solo Game:  Yes (slight variation, main game is cooperative with multiple players)
Players: 1-5 
Time: 20 Minutes
Tiles: square cards

The joke is that Tranquility is not tranquil at at! It’s all about placing cards in a 6×6 grid so that the numbers are strictly increasing .. and it can be very stressful how/when to place your cards! The cards are numbered from 1-80, and when you place a cards, you have to place it such that it is in increasing order … but if you place next to another card, you must discard cards of the difference between the two numbers.

If you ever run out of cards or can’t play a card in order, you lose!  This is also a hidden information game: you are not allowed to talk to your fellow players as you play.

This is a surprisingly fun small game, with lots of interesting decisions about where to place cards.  Although there’s no real theme here (it’s just a tile/card placement game), the sailing ship and cute art really enhances the game.

2. Sprawlopolis/Agropolis/Naturopolis

Solo Game:  Yes (generally, this is regarded as a solo game, with cooperative rules tacked-on)
Players: 1-5 
Time: 35 Minutes
Tiles: poker-sized playing cards … just plain cards

We love all three of these tiny 18-card button shy games!  Each one has a slightly different theme (build a city in Sprawlopolis, build in a rural environment with Agropolis, or a natural environment in Naturopolis), but they all work essentially the same way! 

Players choose 3 of the 18 cards as scoring conditions (see above), then players use the rest o the 15 cards to score the best they can! One of the reasons this game is so high on our list is how much agency you get in the game for laying your tiles!  Players get 3 cards per turn, choose one, and can place it anywhere on the board (over cards, next to, above, with a few restrictions) with one of two orientations! The amount of choices and agency is why it is also so high on our Top 10 “Small” Cooperative Games list!  See also our review of Agropolis here.

1. Mists Over Carcassonne

Solo Game:  Yes (easy to do: just take 3 meeples in each of 4 different colors and play normally)
Players: 1-5 
Time: 35 Minutes
Tiles: square light-thick cardboard

Mists Over Carcassonne is the tile-laying game that inspired this list! Each tile, when lain, has so many juicy decisions: Do I try to set-up scoring opportunities for my fellow players? Do I mitigate ghosts? Do I score? Can I do many of these things at once? It’s also so interesting how the tile itself is both the good news and bad news!

The solo game is a wonderful little 35 minute puzzle, with 6 levels of difficulty to keep the player engaged. The cooperative game seems to inspire so many discussions! Even the Alpha Player is kept at bay, at least a little, as each player owns the tile he/she places. Mists Over Carcassonne is a fantastic, easy-to-teach, quick-to-set-up, simple but deep game that works great as a solo game and a cooperative game (and a competitive expansion for the base game to boot)! Mists Over Carcassonne was also a nominee for the best cooperative game in the 17th Annual Golden Geek Awards!

Monster Pit is a cooperative Boss-Battling game for 1-5 players: it was on Kickstarter back on March 2022. It promised delivery in November 2022, but just delivered to my house about a week ago (April 7th or so). It’s about 5 months late.

This game is for Ages 14+, and takes about 60-minutes to play. There is a solo mode!

Let’s take a look.

Unboxing

This game is gorgeous! It has a similar kind of art as Rescuing Robin Hood (which we reviewed sometime ago here). My group really loved the art!

The Kickstarter version came with an extra monster.

Generally speaking, this game looks fantastic.

Overall, I was very very pleased when I opened the box.

There are just tons of really good looking components. If I had one complaint about the components, it would be that the cards weren’t linen-finished.

Rulebook

The rulebook looks great and very-well produced, but it sometimes was very frustrating.

The rulebook starts great with a well-annotated list of components. This was great!

There’s a quick game overview that gets you the spirit of the game quickly, with a link to a Let’s Play! (I usually just read the rulebook than watching videos, but you may love the videos).

The set-up spanned a number of pages, but it worked well. The set-up described set-up in detail!

So far, I am very happy with the rulebook. The next few pages look great as well. I was able to essentially get through the rules pretty quickly.

The problem is that, as these rules are great for first start-up, they seem to be missing a lot of rules and edge cases and general things that come up in the game. This game makes you think it’s an easy game, but there’s quite a few rules that don’t seem to be fully thought out.

For a set-up and getting into the game, the rulebook was great. For follow up with rules, the rulebook was lacking. I was very frustrated with this rulebook: too many rules seem unspecified.

Gameplay

Monster Pit is all about rolling dice.  You roll dice to see how far the “end of game” token, you roll dice for combat, you roll dice for activating the monster, you roll dice to see what areas of the city get affected … everything is dice rolls.

It’s also “kind of” a worker placement game, as you place your marker on a city space to “do something”.  Each city district has a few spaces where you can activate one of the abilities.  There are a lot of things to activate!

The game summary that came with this is one of the best I have seen: there are enough for all players, and it really does describe all the things you can do when you place your character marker.

This is a Boss-battler: to win, you have to take out the big boss: see Vaiel above.

Each character chooses a board and Captain: as the game goes on, you accumulate more warriors to your board (see above). Each warrior you acquire helps you with more dice, and either defense or offense: each character starts with a Paladin.

Generally, a lot of the spaces on the city board (“worker placement spaces”) allow you to draw a card which helps your captain with a new warrior, a mount, an item, a wizard: see some examples above.

If you can defeat the Boss before the tracker reaches the end, you win! Otherwise you lose.

Solo Play

The game fully supports a solo mode, and it’s easy to play: you just play one character with some scaling factors.

The “end of game” marker moves a little at the start of each round: the solo player rolls some dice and advances the marker that far. Given how many spaces there are on the track, it doesn’t seem to move that fast. I won my first game and it was only half way around.

The game looks great set-up, but I didn’t enjoy solo play. I felt like I couldn’t do very much per turn: the bad news comes out, I get exactly one action, and the night phase comes which activates more bad news. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Although I did win my first game, it felt like there was a lot of upkeep to the one action I had per turn. I didn’t like it.

I was hopeful Cooperative Play would be better.

Cooperative Play

Unfortunately, cooperative play went just as badly as solo play. The dice conspired against us, the end of game marker moved very quickly, but the game still felt like a trudge: it always felt like we were waiting for everyone else’s turn to end. There was a lot of downtime.

Problems

There were generally three major problems with Monster Pit: too much randomness, a poor action economy, and too many rules for a simple game (which were poorly specified in the rulebook).

Just about everything in the game is decided by dice … and that led to a lot of frustrations on all my players. A bad start with bad rolls is hard to overcome, as you can’t get money which means you can’t buy upgrades, which means you don’t do much on your turn. And then the Monster actions are decided by dice. And combat is decided by dice. And bad effects are decided by dice. Everything was just so random.

By itself, the randomness wasn’t necessarily bad: a lot of people wouldn’t be affected by this. The problem was that the action economy, which is about the only thing the player has a choice in, is very poor. You only get one action per turn when you place your marker! In the meantime, the bad news engines of the game are pumping out Monster actions, little monsters, and all sorts of thing to deal with. It was very frustrating that you felt like you only had one action per turn: this was even more frustrating in the endgame when a lot of the places on the board were “blocked”.

The game was too random and my group felt like it had very little agency even when we could act. And we were frustrated that the rulebook seemed to miss explaining a lot of rules.

Fixes?

A simple fix might be to let each player start with one more soldier, one more item, just something so that if your starting rolls are bad, you don’t feel like you can’t do anything.

A bigger fix would be something to allow more actions per turn: Having 2 to 4 workers per turn would make the game feel more engaging. The problem is, that’s a very big change and would require substantial rebalancing.

There is a good game hidden in here, I just don’t think the current version of Monster Pit is quite it.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend Monster Pit as-is. It would probably get a 7.5/10 or 8/10 for components because it’s a beautiful game! But the game just wasn’t fun in solo or cooperative mode: all of us would probably give the game a 4/10. It was too random, the action economy was out of whack, and the rules were poorly specified.

Having said that, if there were ever a 2nd edition, I would look at it again! I do think there is a good game hidden in here. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough house rules to fix the current version.

Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure is a real-time cooperative game for 2-4 players, Ages 8+ and lasting about 45 minutes. I pre-ordered my copy online from Target back in January when I first heard about: A cooperative Indiana Jones game? Count me in!

So, this arrived at my house June 18th, 2023 at about 1:30pm. I know the date and time because I had invited a friend over to play the game with me at noon, and it still hadn’t arrived! While we were waiting, we played through Bogeyman: a cooperative kind of horror game by Antoine Ferrara (we’ll take a look at this in the future). It finally arrived! Let’s take a look!

Components and Gameplay

This is a smaller size box from Funko games. It’s about the size of Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game from a few weeks ago. This size makes sense: the cooperative games from Target all seem to be about the same size. I believe, at the time of this writing, that this is currently a Target exclusive game.

There is a major toy factor going on here in the timet! The timer is actually a fairly complicated structure!

The timer structure has to be assembled, see above. It is supposed to swing upside down as you fill the bucket on top with gems:

This is the main centerpiece of the game and it looks amazing on the table!

There are two parts to the game: the gather phase (which is not real-time) and the fight phase (which is real-time!). During the gather phase, you are trying to build up your hand to fight the bad guys. To win: you have to defeat all three bad guys over 3 rounds of gather/fight.

Each bad guy has an ever-increasing number of hit points! You don’t have to take out the first two to win, but not defeating the first two bad guys puts you at a disadvantage on the the next round: you DO have to defeat Rene Belloq to win!

Each player takes the role of an iconic Indiana Jones character, with a special power! See the 4 choices above!

On their turn during the gather phase, players move to any location on a track of five: see above; once they take the action there, they have to roll a dice to see the “consequences”.

Generally the consequences are losing cards or putting a gem into the timer tower!

As players “gather”, they are collecting cards with symbols and colors and “fight”: see above. The cards are like UNO cards in many ways, because you can only play a card on the deck if you match the current top symbol or color!

The only way to win to to play enough “fight” cards (see the character cards above) to knock out the current bad guy, but you can only play those “fight” cards if you can match the card on top (symbol or color).

Once you have played too many gems, the timer tower will flip! See above! That’s when the real-time phase starts! This part of the game reminded us of Escape: Curse of the Temple! You are trying to play fight cards and draw cards as fast as possible, but if you ever draw a SNAKE card, you have to roll the red dice until you defeat the snake!

The real-time phase is furious! You are trying to play fight cards as fast as you can to knock out the bad guy! If you do before the time runs out, you move on to the next gather/fight round!

This is a really great production!  That timer tower is really cool to see in action!

 

Movie Arc

This game really felt like it had a movie arc: as you playing in the “gather” phase, it felt like you were trying to gather information about the bad guy, occassionally hurting him, but making the final fight inevitable! Once the timer tower flips, it feels like the battle at the endof the movie has started! It’s furious! It’s crazy! It’s fun!

The game really does feel like an action movie.

Replayability

Our major concern for this game is replayability: there are only 3 villains and you fight the same three every time. Also, the locations are a little limited: they do have an A and B side AND you get to change one of them every round, but a few more villains or locations might have helped this game. We enjoyed the game, but you play the same three rounds every time: gather/fight, gather/fight, gather/fight.

Other Thoughts

This game looks great on the table, If you have this set-up, I’ll bet a bunch of people will stop by! It’s very appealing visually!

The rulebook was pretty good: we read the rulebook as a team, and we got going on the game pretty quickly. It had a big font, was easy to read, and enough good pictures (including set-up).

You may want to consider sleeving your cards: you touch them a lot, and you handle them a lot during the sweaty, grody, real-time phase. The cards aren’t linen-finished, so they will grody faster.

The Lost Arc of the Covenant In The Room

So, if you like real-time, you will probably like this.  If you don’t tend to like real-time … you may still like this.  The real-time phase is easy to teach and easy to play: it’s frantic without too much annoying freneticism.  I personally don’t tend to like real-time games, but I like this.

 

 

Conclusion

Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure was a surprisingly fun real-time game, and I don’t like real-time games generally. The game felt you were in a movie:the gather phase feeling you were gathering information and resources, but knowing that a big battle was coming … you just didn’t know when! When that timer flips, it’s an adrenaline rush!

The game looks fantastic on the table, and the toy factor of the timer tower cannot be denied! You will want to play this just to see the tower! And it will attract others to you .. “What is that you are playing?”

The cards could be better (you may want to sleeve them), but the biggest concern is the replayability! Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure was a blast to play, and we had fun, but the game is pretty much the same game every time with the same three villains and the same game arc. It might have been nice had there been a few more scenarios (find the arc, find the crystal skull) to vary the game.

Your first play is so dynamic and fun, you might give it an 8.5/10 out of the gate because it’s so quick and fun and cool! You will probably calm a little and drop it to a 7/10 or less after a while just because the game arc doesn’t change.

I’m glad I got this: I will be pulling it out at RichieCon 2023 and introducing to everyone I can! This feels like a perfect convention game!

Just Arrived! Component Errata To Legends of Sleepy Hollow!

We love Legends of Sleepy Hollow … despite its component issues. We discussed a lot of the component issues in our review here, but it is still worth noting that Legends of Sleepy Hollow made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022!

The Kickstarter has been talking about printing and upgrading the pieces for some time! My upgrades/errata (see above) finally arrived June 13, 2023. It’s a surprisingly big box (see above) for such a smallish product (see below).

Inside the box are (1) upgrades for a map (2) some replacement cards (3) a new rulebook (4) a new adventure book!

The original map for Chapter 2 was definitely problematic: it was too dark and it had discontinuities!

See the original map above: I have it separated where the discontinuity is: you can see that the map pieces don’t quite line up AND it’s a little dark.

The newer map is both brighter (a little hard to tell from my picture) and it all fits together: see above.

You can see the differences are much more pronounced when you put the new (left) and old (right) maps next to each other!! See above and below! I am very happy we have a new map.

The next thing was a new rulebook. This rulebook needed a little updating: I am glad to see that it got one! See below.

It’s hard to tell the difference between the rulebooks in the first few pages: they seem almost the same.

Once you get to page 9, you can see some new rules were added in!

There’s basically about 5 new sub-bullets for Character Special Abilities, new on page 9.

A few new rules show up near the end as well:

It’s good to see further elaborations on the Spawn rules and a few other rules. I think these all help.

One comment I made in my review was that sometimes the boards/game was too dark. You can see they took that to heart as well: the newer rulebook (left) is lighter than the original (right) (and to a lesser extend, the Storybooks below).

The Storybook, although there is a new one, appears very similar to the original. There don’t appear to be that many differences at first blush: I went through both storybooks at the same time, doing a quick visual comparison and didn’t really see any differences. I am guessing the editing was tighter.

There was one minor difference we spotted:

Because the second chapter map was updated, I think the chapters that references to the map looked updated and cleaner.

The final updates are the cards: those seem to be minor fixes (typos) to make the game better: they seem to just replace the equivalent card in the game.

I am very happy that Greater Than Games sent me these component upgrades. Honestly, the component issues kept me from wholeheartedly recommending the game: I believe now that these issues have been resolved, I can say without reserve that Legends of Sleepy Hollow is a fantastic game if you want a rich and deep storytelling game! Supposedly, the errata pack will be free to order from Greater Than Games website if you bought this from a retailer (I went looking fo a link to post here and couldn’t find one, but this literally just came out, so wait?). If you bought the Kickstarter (like I did), it should be coming to you free of charge.

My friend Nevin (yes, he’s that Nevin from the C++ committee) introduced me to the competitive game of Carsassone many years ago: he and I live in different cities, but base Carcassonne was a game we could play over the Internet. At the time, it was one of a very few games you could play online. At a hotel in Chicago, Nevin showed me the game, hoping to strike my fancy so we could play online! Alas, it didn’t really strike my fancy. Nevin tried a few times afterwards to get me interested, but for some reason, Carcassonne didn’t work for me.

Fast-forward to 2022: Mists Over Carscassone is a cooperative version of Carcassonne taking Germany by storm! It even becomes a nominee in the 17th Annual Golden Geek Awards for 2022 for best cooperative game! I have heard about this game for sometime, but I haven’t been able to get it over the USA! Officially, I believe it’s due to be released in the USA August 2023, but I was able to find a US store that had a copy in stock and ordered it! It arrived late May 2023.

Mists Over Carcassonne is a cooperative tile-playing game for 1 to 5 Players: it is for ages 8 and up and lasts 35 minutes, as per the box. These parameters seem in sync with reality.

To be clear: this is a standalone game! You do not need the original Carcassonne to play.

Components

This is a smallish box. It’s a pretty standard size for a Euro game (about the size of Agricola), but it looks small compared to all the kickstarters we have been looking at lately (Deep Rock Galactic, Valor and Villainy: LLudwick’s Labyrinth, The Isofarian Guard, etc.).

This is a tile-laying game, so the majority of the pieces will be tiles in punchout boards. There are also some meeples (and ghosts), a rulebook, and an expansion manual.

You can see a lot of the tiles above in “pre-punchout” form (above) and “post-punchout” form (below).

The meeples are in a curious wax packet.

The game’s components are good enough: they are usable and easy to read.

Rulebook

The rulebook is good: it explains the game well even to people haven’t played Carcassonne! (Well, I did play 15-20 years ago, but I don’t remember a thing).

Mists Over Carcassonne gets a full A on the Chair Test: the rulebook fits perfectly on the chair next to me, and is easy to look up rules!

My only real complaint is the game shows how the game plays though examples with limited description of the rules. This works because, through a well-selected series of examples, you see how the game plays. But I felt like I could never go look up a rule: I’d just have to look at the example to understand the rules. This style is great for a first time player like myself, but I don’t like it when I don’t have a full grasp on the rules. I suspect this rulebook style has evolved over time for the Carcassonne series; they’ve certainally had a lot of feedback and chances to make the best rulebooks: maybe this style works best for them.

It may just be me: I had this same problem with Sleeping Gods rulebook, The Flourish rulebook, and (to a lesser extent) The Isofarian Guard rulebooks. Please, just tell me succinctly and completely what the rules are, using the examples to illustrate the point: don’t let the example become the sole realization of the rule.

“Excuse me, Rich? Rich? Are you paying attention? Look At the back of the Rulebook!”

Oh! After playing the game like 6 or 7 times, I finally saw the back of the rulebook! This is the best of all worlds: this is a very concise description of all the rules, with an explicit ordering of operations (many of our questions came up were order of operations questions) AND it uses the back of the rulebook for something useful. Okay, I am eating crow here … this rulebook is great. Just make sure you look at the back cover!!!

I learned the game from the rulebook: the font was good, the text was readable, the examples were good. Job well done. Just make sure you look at the back of the rulebook!

Gameplay

This is a Victory Point game: in order to win, the players must work together to get the desired score (as set by the level). There are 6 levels of difficulty in the game, with different scoring constraints.

The Victory Points needed are described very iconically on one of the boards: for level 2, you need 75 victory points: See above. This same board also describes the starting conditions: for level 2, you start with 15 ghosts, the graveyards, and the castles, but not the hounds.

Levels 4, 5, 6 starting conditions get worse and worse as the game gets harder and harder … see above!

The starting tile is placed out (above) with starting ghosts. This is a tile-laying game: you place a tile every turn, trying to score points while trying to keep the ghosts under control. If you ever place a tile and can’t place the appropriate number of ghosts, you immediately lose. The ghosts are a limited resource: you have to keep them under control as you play.

See above as the tile place will have 2 ghosts.

Basically, a player has a very simple turn: pick a tile (face-down, you can’t get see it), place it legally (roads must connect roads: no dead-ends, stuff like that), and then place a meeple on the placed tile if legal and desired. The meeple placed on the tile helps that player to “own” that road, castle, city, etc. for scoring later. When you actually “close” a road, city, whatever, then you have the opportunity to score!

Notice the tile above closes the city so players can score!

Cities score 2 points for each tile in the close city, Roads score 1 point per tile in the closed road, and there are other scoring criteria.

You only score when you “close” something, so if you make it to the VP limit after scoring, you immediately win!  You lose if you run out of ghosts or tiles.  That’s it!

Ghosts

Although you can lose my running out of tiles, every single game we have lost were because we ran out of ghosts! See a losing game with too many ghosts above! (Strictly speaking, we lost because we couldn’t place enough ghosts on the next tile to come out).

There are three ways to mitigate ghosts:

1. When you would score (because you “closed” something), you may instead chose to remove 3 or fewer ghosts from any single tile.
2. When you place a tile and “close” a mist area, you can remove all ghosts in the closed mists
3. When you place a tile and “extend” a mist area, you put one fewer ghost out

This gives the players really interesting choices every single turn: do I set-up a scoring opportunity, do I “close” mists to mitigate ghosts, or can I do both and reduce the number of ghosts? The hardest choice is to forego scoring in order to keep the ghosts in line!  Such a hard decision!

What I enjoyed about this is that a tile is both good news AND a bad news at the same time!  Does the tile have what I want? How many ghosts do I need to worry about?  Can I leverage my tile to do any good?  Do I just have to mitigate ghosts?   And the players have so many choices on their turn.

Ghosts “scare” The Alpha Player Away!

One of the nicer things about Mists Over Carcassonne is that the Alpha Player can be kept at bay (the Alpha Player is that annoying guy who attempts to takes over the game: See our full discussion of the Alpha Player “Problem” here). How? Because on your turn, you get a tile in your hands and you have the agency to to try to place it. The other players can’t necessarily see the tile, so the Alpha Player can’t see your tile, unless you choose to show it! But, you can ask for help with the tile, if you like!! Each player can do what they want: what I’ve found is that everyone helps by pointing out places the tile can/can’t go, reminds each other of the ghosts situation, reminds each other of places we’ve set-up cooperative scoring, but in the end: it’s the player’s choice where the tile goes! It really depends on how play is evolving: if the game feels collaborative, the player can place the tile and show all players the tile …. but if the game feels “Alpha Playery”, the player can just keep the tile hidden in their hand until they are ready to play.

By physically taking a tile into his hands, that player is “owning” the tile and tacitly rebuking the Alpha Player: “This is my tile, let me place it”. The Alpha Player Problem is typically not a problem with most of my game groups, but I believe Mists Over Carcassonne is a cooperative game that will have less issue with The Alpha Player.

Solo Play

This game fully supports solo play (thank you for following Saunders’ Law): At the top of page 3 of the rule is simple and explained: “For the solo game, take 3 meeples of 4 different colors”.

As the solo player plays, he has the choice to play different colored meeples out when places a tile: see above as the solo player has a many different colored meeples out!

You might ask, “Why does the solo player have 4 different colored meeples?” One rule we haven’t covered yet is that when you close an area, you can close an area belonging to multiple different meeples, and you score for each colored meeple! Consider the example above: When the solo player closes the city, both the pink and blue meeples are in that same city, so when it’s closed, BOTH colors score! Blue scores 5 tiles*2 points=10, pink scores 5 tiles*2 points=10 so this one tile scores the group (or solo player) 20 points!

This shared points rule is critical to winning the game, as they are worth so much! It makes Mists Over Carcassonne more strategic, as you try to set-up more complex scoring opportunities! Again, more choices for the players: do I try to set-up a shared point situation so we can all score? Even at the cost of the ghosts going crazy?

I played about 4 to 5 solo games over a couple of nights: I was able to beat Level 1 a few times, then got trounced at Level 2. The thing is, this game is so easy to set-up and get to the table quickly, and it really is about 35 minutes. If you want a nice “end of the night” puzzle, the solo game works well for that. It’s a nice, quiet puzzle. If it ever gets too easy, there are 6 levels to try, each harder than the last!

Oh yes, and the solo game did its job: I was able to learn the game so I could teach it to my friends.

Cooperative Play

Cooperative plays worked fabulously: it was easy to teach the game … and my friends jumped right in. 

The best part of cooperative play is that so many discussions flowed easily, as everyone saw things others didn’t see!  There is a maxim in Open Source software called Linus’ Law:  “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow “.  I think that same idea applies here: many eyeballs on all the tile possibilities really opened up the game. 

After we trounced Level 1, we jumped to Level 2: This is a good sign: my friends wanted to keep playing even after we won our first game!

Conclusion

This is a really easy game to get to the table: both solo and cooperatively. Mists Over Carcassonne has lots of hidden depth and strategy for such a simple set of rules. Every turn feels juicy as you have many choices: do I set-up scoring, do I score, do I mitigate ghosts, do I set-up shared scoring, and the best turns are when you can do many things with just one tile!

The solo game feels like a nice puzzle: do I want a puzzle for 35 minutes? Mists Over Carcassonne quickly sets-up and presents a nice challenge, which can easily be scaled to your ability (via the Level system).

The cooperative game works really well too, as the system tends to encourage discussion: your compatriots see things that you don’t! The collaborative strategizing about shared scoring and ghost mitigating seems to naturally flow.

Even if you didn’t love Carcassonne (I am one of those few), Mists Over Carcassonne solo and cooperative modes might be something that still appeals to you. This game is easy to teach to anyone and offers lots of replayability with its Level system. Fantastic Game: 8.5/10

Oh yes, Mists Over Carcassonne is also a straight-up expansion to competitive Carcassonne. So, even more reason to consider it!

Yes Nevin, you are probably getting this for your Birthday…

The Stuff of Legend is a Hidden Traitor game that was on Kickstarter back in October 2021.  We’ve been looking forward to this for a while:  it was on our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2022  mostly because this is a Kevin Wilson design (one of the people responsible for the amazing Arkham Horror 2nd Edition).   The game promised delivery in June 2022, but it didn’t arrive at my house until May 27th, 2023, so it is just about a year late.

The version we got was the Kickstarter Bogeyman version, with a slip cover: see above right.  The retail/normal version will look more like the above left.  We’ll discuss differences later below.

The Stuff Of Legend

The Stuff Of Legends is a best selling Graphic Novel … which I knew nothing about when I backed this game. The Stuff of Legends universe basically provides the backstory and setting for this game: players take the role of toys trying to save their kidnapped boy from the Bogeyman!

Even though I didn’t know the IP, the universe and art are quite compelling.  In fact, my Kickstarter version came with a nice-sized comic book called The Dark, Book I.

The art is fantastic in this graphic series, if a little dark.

Components

The production is very good. 

Cooperative or Hidden Traitor Game?

Those of you paying attention might have notice that the game box says that this is a Cooperative game (see above), but we introduced it (at the start) as a Hidden Traitor game: which is it?  It’s kind of both and neither. Let me explain.

Like many Hidden Traitor games you might have seen, everyone is given a loyalty card at the start of the game.  All players are on one of two teams: the toys trying to save their boy (Loyal to the Boy) or trying to help the Bogeyman kidnap the boy (Loyal to the Bogeyman).   Most players are Loyal to the Boy, and at most 1 or 2 (depending on the number of players) are loyal to the Bogeyman.

Here’s the thing: At player counts 3 and 4: there is a 50-50% that no one is loyal to the Bogeyman!! At the start of the game, you shuffle together 1 Boy Loyalty card and 1 Bogeyman loyalty card, and only one of them it goes into the the deck with all the other loyalty cards.  So, it’s possible that no one is loyal to the Bogeyman at the start of the game!  The remaining card is placed on the board, and through a wacky card called “Muddying the Waters” players can swap loyalty cards with that!

Those of you who follow hidden traitor games may find this seems reminiscent of Shadows Over Camelot, the old Days of Wonder game (out of print for many years).  It’s possible that no one is a traitor in that game as well! In fact, we tend to play Shadows Over Camelot with a house rule that makes the game fully cooperative by never selecting traitor cards: See our Top 10 Games That Can Be Played Fully Cooperatively.

Having said that, if you play with 5 or 6 Players, you are guaranteed to always have at least 1 and maybe 2 loyalty cards of Bogeyman.  

What’s weird is that there is a card called “Muddying the Waters” that can really mess with this: it allows you to swap your loyalty card with the one in the center.  If it looks your team is about to lose, you can play that and maybe swap teams!  Your loyalty can be dynamic in this game.

“But Does It Make Sense to Play Fully Cooperatively?”

Does it make sense to play this fully cooperatively?  I think it does!  We played a 4-player game and they just barely scraped by a win for the Boy team.  I ended up being the Traitor!  Here’s the thing: I couldn’t do very much to sabotage the other team: since actions are mitigated by voting, I couldn’t do anything too horrid.  And there is no special advantage to the Bogeyman team for revealing! In Shadows Over Camelot and many other Hidden Traitor games (like Battlestar Galactica and Unfathomable), once you reveal the Traitor card, you get some special actions to sabotage the others!  Nope!  Nothing like that here!  At the end game, all I could do was just say “I don’t have anything I can do” and discard a card or two, hoping to cause a Coin Flip.  

This lack of special traitor ability is both bone and bane for this game: if you have to have special rules for the traitor team (Bogeyman), then you have to obliquely ask to see the rulebook and try to find all the things you can do.  But then you sometimes feel like you can’t do a lot, even if you are a traitor!  In fact, about the only thing you can do near the end of the game is try get your hand discarded quick so you can force a Coin Flip (which forces the endgame closer).

From a cooperative perspective, I feel like this game could be played fully cooperatively because the game was still hard!  At the end of the game, the Boy Loyalists still had to guess to win, and they had a 20% chance of losing still!  I think we could house rule this and say “Let’s just play cooperatively and force all of us to have Boy Loyalist cards”.  I think this still works (but only at 3 to 4, since the balance of the game shifts with more players).

Solo Play

Straight out of the box, you can’t play this solo.  This is a Hidden Traitor game, so you typically need lots of people.  But, as we pointed out in the cooperative section, just above, you can play this fully cooperatively!  And our experience was that the game was still hard even when playing cooperatively!  So, what if we simply play solo as the fully cooperative house-ruled game?  What if the solo player plays two or three toys and manages them as if it were a 2 or 3-player cooperative game?

So, we are stepping beyond the bounds of this game!  We are stretching the rules to make it fully cooperative! Then we are stretching it again to make it solo!  Does it work?

It does!  See above as I play a solo game handling 3 characters!  It’s a bit overwhelming managing three hands, but I was able to play this way.  In fact, the extra overhead of managing three hands sort of balances the fact that you have perfect information in the solo game: playing only two hands might be too easy.

You might think “Oh, this game is too easy if you have perfect information”.  It didn’t seem that way to me!  I lost my solo game because I chose the wrong exit!  The thing is: I had to make a choice of exits, because I was running out of time!  The Boy would have been lost had I not chosen an exit!!  I needed to look at more of the exits, but I ran out of time.  

That extra intellectual overhead of managing 3 hands helps balance the perfect information, so it was still an interesting game solo.

Kickstarter Version

So, I backed the deluxe Kickstarter version of The Stuff of Legend called The Bogeyman Edition.  Here’s the thing: I think the normal version is probably the way to go if you are interested in this game.  Why do I say that?

First of all, the miniatures that come with the Kickstarter version, as great as they are, seem  … less useful.

The cardboard standees seem thematic to the game as you are playing toys.  The miniatures represent the toys in their “violent phase”, which is also kind of a light-toned color reminiscent of flesh.  I think, if there were a reveal moment in the game, where the traitor flips from toy to traitor, maybe these miniatures would have made sense (I got from toy to standee!) But there is no such moment in the game! 

You “suspect” who the traitor(s) are, but there’s no accusation mechanic in the game which causes a reveal.  Maybe you can do that if you are accused? But why would you?  There’s NO reason to reveal you are the traitor: there’s literally no special rule or advantage for the traitors once they are revealed.  It’s better to just stay hidden and sow lingering doubt as to whether you are the traitor or not.

Every one of my friends preferred the cardboard standees (over the minis) for the action selector: it seemed to evoke a more a sad toy vibe, which seems more representative of the overall vibe of the game.  After all, you are trying to save your boy, so you are sad toys until you rescue him!

In fact, the only time we used the miniatures for action selection was when Sara said “I’m being violent and shooting troops this turn, so I’ll use the mini instead!”  A silly reason probably not worth the extra $$$ I spent.

Another reason: even though the Kickstrarter metal coin (which is needed to flip) is super cool as a giant metal coin (and it’s really big), it is actually harder to flip than the same size plastic coin! People were so scared of ruining the coin or the board as they flipped the coin, they just made me (the owner of the game) flip it, as any damage it did was mine! It’s cool, but may be easier to flip as a plastic coin!

As crazy as it seems, I think the retail version might be the way to go if you are interested in this game: it’s just easier to play, cheaper, and maybe more thematic. Decide for yourself.

Interesting Hidden Traitor Ideas

One of the most innovative ideas in this game is that your hand of cards is a scarce resource: every time you run out of cards, you have to flip the loyalty coin to refresh your hand.  Every time you flip that coin, something bad happens:  the Boy moves closer to death or the Bogeyman acts!

The Boy is a maker on the right side of the Board: every time the Boy side is seen, he advances one space. If he ever makes it to the bottom, the Boy Loyalists lose!

If, on the other hand, your coin flip reveals the Bogeyman, you have to draw bad news Bogeyman card!

This whole tension of trying to use your cards as best you can to avoid coin flips is really interesting!  Am I discarding early because I am trying to force coin flips, or do I really just have bad cards and need a new hand?

There’s also an interesting idea of stained helper cards. Sure, many hidden traitor games have the idea of “helping out” with support cards, but any card that has the black ink (see the card above) is “tainted” and causes the character to invoke his weakness!

For example, the General’s weakness (Doubt) will cause him to discard a random card if any of actions becomes stained. Again, this is interesting: “I can only offer 3 red symbols if they are stained!” Is the person offering to help because that’s all he has, or is it because he is a traitor and wants to stain your action? Remember that action cards are a scarce resource: you may have to settle for a stained action rather than causing yet another coin flip!

Exploration

Something that’s unique to The Stuff of Legends is the exploration! I haven’t seen many Hidden Traitor games is the idea of exploring! (Arguably Battlestar Galactica has it, but that board is much more static) But, The Stuff of Legend has it! Lots of Location and Encounater cards are randomly laid out at the start of the game. The players must explore the world of the Stuff of Legend to find the proper exit, but exploration has painful consequences, invoking troops and leaders and general bad stuff! But then there are mitigation cards for exploration (you can peek and swap Encounters and avoid a path), which makes it feel like you have some agency on your exploration!

Every location in the game has some cards which will generally cause bad stuff to happen, but every so often you find a way to peek at the exits!

This exploration worked really well in both the Hidden Traitor and Fully Cooperative version of this game. As cool as the exploration is (I prefer games with exploration), it does tend to make the game longer. Generally, most hidden traitor games are shorter: under an hour or even under 20 minutes. The exploration does tend to make this game longer: about 1.5 to 2 hours. Caveat Emptor. (Interestingly, my solo game clocked in at one hour).

Conclusion

From an objective point of view, The Stuff of Legends adds some interesting ideas to the Hidden Traitor genre: the stained Action Cards, the Action Cards being the scarce resource that cause coin flips, the exploration mechanism, and the dynamic loyalty cards. It’s a little frustrating as the Hidden Traitor because you can’t do too much to sabotage the others, even when it’s clear you are a Hidden Traitor: that’s probably the biggest complaint we had. But, the gameplay was interesting: the game can sit in this weird almost cooperative phase which just makes the game tense and interesting. Completely objectively, I would probably give this a 7.5/10. If you like Hidden Traitor games, this is really different: it may be a bit long (mostly from the exploration), so I suggest you give this a try and see if you like it! It’s probably better at higher player counts, like most traitor games.

Completely subjectively, I don’t like Hidden Traitor games, and if that’s all The Stuff of Legend were, I would probably immediately sell it! But, with a little nudge, you can play this fully cooperatively. The game is still hard enough even without the traitor(s), so it does make sense to play this cooperatively: Extending that idea even further, you can play this 3-handed as a solo game, and it works as a solo game.

Objectively, this is a 7.5/10 if you like Hidden Traitor games. The fully cooperative game is probably a 6.5/10 or 7/10. The solo game is probably a 6.5/10. If you like solo or fully cooperative games, you can play it that way and it’s still pretty good.

Of course, if you like the Stuff of Legend graphic novel, that probably adds a full point to the rating: there’s a lot of theme here. We saw our rating of Deep Rock Galactic go up recently when we played Deep Rock Galactic with someone who really liked the video game!

Appendix

I sleeved my Loyalty cards because I was worried we’d be touching them a lot. Nope, not really. BUT the Loyalty cards have to stay pristine: any imperfections in the backs (a ding on the edge, a scratch) will make them identifiable to other players even when flipped. It’s probably best to sleeve them anyways: It was only 9 cards.

I don’t think I’ve played a murder mystery game in 8 years! The last time that I played was at a Murder Mystery Party hosted by Charlie and Allison sometime before the pandemic.

Recently, Sara was rooting through some of my new games and found Red Carpet in Ruins. She started looking at it, and said “Hey! We should play this!” I called Charlie and Allison right then and there. Although it took us a week to all agree on a date, we finally got a group of 8 together to play through Red Carpet in Ruins last night.

Murder Mystery 

In case you’ve never seen a murder mystery game, someone is murdered (pretend, not for real) in a group involving 6 to 8 characters: your group has to work together to find said murderer!

Each of these characters (see above) has a motive to murder the victim! In Red Carpet In Ruins, we are role-playing characters from a 1959 Hollywood film set where the main actor has been murdered! The group must uncover the murderer! However, there is a catch: the murderer is in the group of folks, and he/she will do anything to cover up the murder! Over the course of a night (3 to 4 hours), each player role plays a single character, usually going as far to dress up!

Throughout the night, little books tell you where you were, when you were, how you were, and things that need to be revealed as you play. At some point, after everyone has revealed all the relevant plot points, accusations start flying! Everyone writes down who they think did it, and you reveal the final murderer!

Differences

Charlie and Allison have played a lot of these (according to them, all of the “How to Host a Murder Party” mysteries) and they pointed out a few differences in this game:

1. Times are very well-defined: Inside the character books, players times are very well-established, so if you are ever asked about your whereabouts you can very clearly articulate your location
2. Map and character standees are included: If you really want to note where people were, a map and standees are included—many murder party games don’t included this
3. You know if you are the murderer right way: Some Murder mysteries don’t tell you that you are the killer (or not) until the final act—in this game, you know before you even come to party.

Charlie and Allison, the connoisseurs, liked all these new changes.  Although we didn’t really use the map that much to show movements, we could have. And knowing you are the murderer lets you concoct better alibis. 

Although, the murderer in our group confesses that it was very stressful knowing they were the murderer all night: they actually would have preferred not knowing (like some of the older games).

Preparations

Unlike most of the games in our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games, there is an awful lot of preparation for a Murder Mystery Party! This isn’t a game you can just pull off the shelf and say “Hey! Let’s just play this now!”

You have to send out invitations early: people have to know when it is so they can prepare.  Players have to prepare in multiple ways: they have to get costumes (although strictly speaking, you don’t need to wear costumes, it helps make the evening more fun), and they have to read about their character in their informational booklet.  See below: each character gets an invitations and an informational booklet.

Also, it’s very important than everyone commits to coming: even the host doesn’t know who the murderer is, so the game can run aground if not all players show.  This is why it’s so important to spend some time making sure everyone agrees on a date: the game will not work if everyone doesn’t show. (There are some mitigation strategies, but even those are limited because the info packet is needed to run a character: if the info packet is not there for a character, it’s unlikely the night can continue).

So that makes the Murder Mystery Party a little fragile: one player, by not bringing their info packet can completely derail the evening. Make sure everyone is committed.

Costumes

Costumes aren’t strictly necessary, but they really do throw you into the theme of the game.

My group didn’t go crazy, but we did just enough costuming to get us into the mood.  It’s up to your group how much you want to get into it: we did just enough to make it fun for us.

Do whatever your group finds fun!

Gameplay

Gameplay proceeds in three rounds over a night.  Each round is about an hour, and in that hour “pivotal plot points” need to be revealed: each character has many points (as described by their informational booklet) that need to be revealed: who they saw, what they heard, when they saw said things, and so on.  Once everyone (except the killer) has revealed the important plot points, play proceeds to the next round.  

We punctuated our rounds with dinner (between rounds 1 and 2) and dessert (between rounds 2 and 3): the game strongly encourages this ethic, and even provided suggestions of music and food on their web site! After the final round, accusations are made and everyone makes a guess as to the killer! And the final murderer is revealed!

One thing to point out: everyone has to tell the truth to the best of their abilities: this is how plot points gets revealed … except for the murderer: he/she is doing everything he/she can to lie and stop the truth from coming out!

Hard Core Board Gamer Thoughts

There is a weird thing I realized after playing last night: Murder Mystery games like Red Carpet in Ruins are Social Deduction games and Hidden Traitor games disguised as Detective games!  The accusations I saw flying around last night reminded me of games of Coup or Avalon: people behave just like Social Deduction games! Finger pointing! Yelling! Accusations! And then, there’s the Hidden Traitor element where the murderer tries to lie and remain hidden! Just like Shadows over Camelot or Nemesis!

I point this out because, on the surface, Murder Mystery games “feel” like they should go into Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games.  Nope nope nope nope nope.  Although there are elements of sleuthing and detective-type deduction, Red Carpet in Ruins was much much more of a Social Deduction Game with some Hidden Traitor elements. The lack of detective game is even worse if you are the murderer: you don’t get to play the detective part of the game at all … you just become the Hidden Traitor and lie lie lie.

I realized after playing that I don’t like Social Deduction games and I don’t like Hidden Traitor games.  The detective parts and engaging times with my friends kept this enjoyable, but I didn’t like the Murder Mystery genre nearly as much as I remember.  Caveat Emptor: Murder Mystery Games are not nearly as much a Detective game as you might think.

Reusing The Game

You can reuse the game when you are done: the only “non-resuable” pieces are the invitations. You’ll notice I just made a copy of the invitations and that worked fine.

My wife’s co-worker wants to try this, so I reset the game: I put the Objects back in their envelopes (there are objects that are revealed as the game plays), gathered the info packets, and put everything back in the box. I will pass it on, and suggest she makes copies of the invitations so she can pass it on …

Conclusion

The fun part of Red Carpet in Ruins was spending 3-4 hours with my friends: we got to dress up, solve parts of a mystery, and be roleplay silly 1959 Hollywood stereotypes for a night. Do you enjoy being a bit of an extrovert and roleplaying with your friends? Then you will enjoy this … just be aware there is a lot of preparation. If, on the other hand, you are an introvert and don’t like the roleplaying, this may not be for you. And to be clear, Red Carpet in Ruins is more of Social Deduction game (with a Hidden Traitor) than a strict mystery game. If you are an introvert hoping to engage in just the detective part of the game, you may be sorely disappointed.

Me and all of my friends had a good time last night. Decide for yourself if this is something you’d like .. maybe I can pass it along to you!

Illiterati is a cooperative word game for 1-5 players, Ages 7+, and about 30-45 minutes long. I backed this on Kickstarter back in March 2022 and it just arrived at my house today, May 10th, 2023. It originally promised delivery in April 2023 … that means it only missed by 10 days! That’s absolutely fabulous in Kickstarter terms, to be only 10 days late, so: good job guys!

The Kickstarter version came with Matte Card sleeves.

This box is a beautiful cover that pulls open, kind of like a hardcover book in a case: see below.

Let’s take a look.

Unboxing, Components, and Gameplay

This is a smaller than normal box: about the size of a big book like an encyclopedia … and I am guessing that’s the vibe they were trying for: this is a cooperative game about spelling words for books.

This is a word game: you will be spelling words using tiles. Players will work together and can share letters, but this is still a word game.

The letters  are on really nice tiles: they are drawn from this amazing draw bag … and discards go in the other bag. These bags are fantastic: I can fit my whole hand in!  They are NOT too small! 

On each player’s turn, they draw some letters … (depending on # of players and some other things) … trying to spell relevant words!

There are two types of books every player needs to “complete”: a red book and blue book (see above).  Each book has its own criteria: see above and below.

The basic flow of the game is that you have to spell words that match the book you currently have. Above, you can see the RED book criteria: I have to spell words (with a total of 8+ letters between them) that are “Things That Live Underwater“. There’s an additional criteria: the words have to use 3 (or more) letters with the yellow sun sign. (Ignore the right side of the card: that’s for final play!!!)

In the second round, I am able to satisfy the book criteria (spelling SALMON and PRAWN, with ONN being yellow letters), and I can “complete” this book. I discard the letters to the bag, turn the the book over (to show it’s complete) and draw my next book.

My next BLUE book requires 2 words that rhyme over 4 letters each!

Of course, this wouldn’t be a cooperative book if there weren’t some sort of Bad News cards every turn! The Illiterati cards (see above) are the bad guys: they are trying to stop us from completing books! At the end of every turn, an Illiterati card is flipped and something bad happens! See above!

If the same Illiterati comes up again, then he/she activates the new bad news AND the old bad news! See above!

Although you want to spell words for your book, this game is about survival from round to round: if you ever have unused letters that aren’t part of a word, you may have to burn letters! If you have to burn too many letters, then you lose!

The Burn Tracker tracks how many letters you have burned: see above. Interesting side note: no one can complete a book if any letters have to be burned on your turn!

Once each player has completed their own two books, then cooperative players have to do a Final Chapter! Independently! Above I have to spell “Holidays or Events” using 12 or more letters AND there has to be a match of 5 symbols! Whew! Note that the V and Y aren’t burn letters because there is a small shared “library” of letters that don’t have to be used and can float from round to round.

If you forget the rules, the summary cards are very good: See above.

In fact, you almost don’t need the rulebook: the difficulty Levels and rules are summarized on just a few cards.

All-in-all, this is a really nice production. See above.

Rulebook

The rulebook is pithy and short.  Thank goodness: we’ve had so many games with ridiculous rulebooks lately.

The game gets an A- on the Chair Test (it hangs over the side just a little). It’s easy to look over at the rulebook on the chair next to me when I have questions: in this way, I never have to take up precious table space, as the rulebook is easily accessible next to me.

The components and set-up are good enough.  I was displeased that the Set-up did NOT tell us to shuffle any of the cards: it’s obvious after you play once, but it really needs to be stated (for example, last week Valor and Villainy: Lludick’s Labyrinth went out of its way to tell when to NOT shuffle and when to!).  There were also a few times when I went to look for a rule clarification, and I couldn’t find one.  Luckily, most cooperative games make this easy to move on (and this one works: “What should we do?  Let’s come to a quick consensus”), but it was slightly annoying.

Overall, it was a pretty good rulebook.

Solo Play

The back of the rulebook gives us rules for Solo Play. Thank goodness they are so simple (and thank you for following Saunders’ Law)! The only real change is that you draw 10 tiles at the start of your turn instead of 7: This makes the game flow essentially the same (i.e., no real big changes for solo play).

See a solo game set-up above. I enjoyed the game solo. It wasn’t anything special, but I really like word games, so I had fun. It was, in a weird sense, like Bananagrams: if you’ve never played that game, you just spell words until you run out of letters. There was an element of that in there, because you almost never have the right letters for your Book (“Things that live underwater”) on the first round or two, so you just spell words to stay alive.

See me trying to spell words, just to stay alive! There’s not a lot of “sea” words in this lot!

After my second round, I got the right letters to spell some “sea” words, so I could move forward.

I generally had fun. I would play this again solo, but see the caveat below.

Cooperative Play

Cooperative Play worked well, and it didn’t. Let me explain: The cool part of cooperative play is that you can share ANY letters you want! I would call out “I need an X? Anyone got an X I can use?” Generally, you were looking at your own area, but occasionally helping your neighbor. Cooperation abounded as we shared letters and ideas for words! If someone got done early on their book, they could offer another brain!

My problem, and this might be just me, is that I like my word games to be … quiet. When we were playing cooperatively, people were asking for letters (“I need an E!”), muttering under their breath (“What is a Kwijybo?”), and helping each other (“Oh! You can spell QYZBUK!”), and generally making a lot of noise. This is good in MOST cooperative games, but not for me in a word game. This may be a me-only problem. In general, this was not too much of an issue … but a few times, I found that I couldn’t think about my letters with so much noise.

So, to be clear, the game has elements of frenzy, which may be fine for you. In a word game, that type of frenzy is not for me. I think I would prefer this game at two or maybe three players: at four and five players, this would be too much for me.

Realtime

So, this game has a timer … and we pretty much ignored it. This is SUPPOSED to be a real-time game, but we really don’t enjoy real-time games. There is definitely some notion of “you can play without the timer if you want” in the rulebook, and by gum, we did not use that timer! Like I said earlier, I don’t like my word games to be frenzied, and the timer exacerbates that chaos even more!

What’s even more funny is that the TIMER GOT STUCK SO MANY TIMES!! I tried using the timer a little in my first few solo games, and the sand would just stop falling. Once I poked the timer, it would start up again, but I can’ t tell you how many games I played where the timer just got stuck!

In end, the fact that we do not real-time games, I personally don’t like frenetic word games, and the timer didn’t work … completely discouraged us from using the timer. At all.

The only reason to use the timer, we think, was to avoid Analysis Paralysis for certain friends. I have friends who would probably spend 20 minutes on letters per round if left to their own devices (you know who they are). That’s fine if that’s how you want to play, but you have to know what kind of game you want. In the end, none of my primary game group has Analysis Paralysis, but we see the necessity of the timer “in certain situations“. Decide for yourself: we think using the timer “twice” would be the sweet spot: so, about 6 minutes. You just may have to use a different timer.

Word Games

I love word games! I mentioned in my review of Paperback Adventures that I love the idea of cooperative word games, because they are games I could play with my Mom! So, Illiterati is a word game I could play with my whole family, including my Mom! Illiterati’s game rules are quick and easy to learn. I think Paperback Adventures is the better cooperative word game: it’s not real-time, it’s easier to collaborate quietly, and it has more depth. But, having said that, I do like Illiterati: it’s a lighter cooperative word game that’s easy to bring out.

Illiterati is probably easier to bring out as a solo game than Paperback Adventures: if I want a quick word game, then Illiterati is much more accessible. Also, Illiterati works with 1-5 players, whereas Paperback Adventures only works with 1-2 players. That extra player count comes at the cost of a more manic and frenetic word game: Paperback Adventures is more subdued at only 1-2 players.

If you like cooperative word games, I think Paperback Adventures and Illiterati are both good choices: it just depends on what you want in your game.

The Vowel Problem

One problem to look out for is the Vowel Problem, wherein you have an assortment of letters with no vowels! In some games of Scrabble, you can get stuck without any good letters and no vowels!! Paperback Adventures has the innovative way of avoiding he Vowel Problem problem by always have a vowel from the monster you fight! In all my plays of Paperback Adventures, I always felt like I had a good assortment of letters to spell interesting words.

Illiterati almost has the Vowel Problem! Luckily, there is a quick rule you might miss on your first pass through the rulebook:

The Redraw Rule (on bottom of page 6): “When life gives you LMNS…” .. basically, you can redraw up to seven letters at the cost of an extra Bad Guys draw when you draw the Bad Guys. We didn’t use this rule, because it’s easy to forget in the heat of the moment, but it’s good to know it’s there for when you get LMNS … and no vowels.

Optional Rules

Do you want silliness? Completely optional are some silly rules called Pandemonium Powers on page 7 (see picture above). You don’t have to play with them (and we didn’t, as they weren’t our cup of tea), but I could see families liking these rules. They are just silly rules to make the game more fun for some groups: “Choose 1 player: They cannot use their hands this round!”

I like that they are optional. Generally, it feel like Illuminati has done a good job of making this package have enough ways to play for any group.

• Don’t like real-time? You don’t have to play with the timer!
• Want some silliness? Play with the optional Pandemonium Powers!
• Want PVP?  There’s a Player vs Player mode
• Want to play with younger kids? There’s a Junior Mode!
• Want a Solo mode? There’s a solo mode!

Seriously, I appreciated that: My group doesn’t like real-time, and we still could have fun with this game.

Conclusion

I liked Illiterari: it’s a lighter cooperative word game that works. The components for Illiterati are top-notch and I love the art and book aesthetic of the game. Even though the game is supposed to be real-time, we just never found ourselves playing that way (either solo or cooperative). The timer also didn’t work: the rules say it’s perfectly fine to pay without the timer, but we can see that timer being necessary for certain groups which are prone to Analysis Paralysis.

I think I would prefer Illiterati at no more than 3 people total: I liked the solo game, but cooperative game had too much frenzy. Too many people makes it harder to think about words. I prefer my word games to be quiet: at higher player counts, this game is not quiet! That may be just be me, but be aware of that.

I would give this a 7/10. I liked it, I would play it solo (especially when I want a quick word game), and cooperatively with one or mayyyybe two more people. You may love the frenzy and prefer the large player count for the whole family!

Appendix

This is a book game, so we have to have an Appendix, right?

We also got some bookmarks (that aren’t used in the game, but pretty cool).

The sleeves that came with the came were very nice, but I am not sure they were necessary. The cards were linen-finished, and you don’t handle them that much.

We also got a small expansion for another game: see above.