Tag: reviews

Kinfire Council + The Winds of Change Solo And Cooperative Expansion. A Journey and A Review!

No, this has nothing to do with the Scorpion’s song Winds of Change from 1990.

You guys are totally gonna laugh at me.  I didn’t back the original Kinfire Council when it back on Kickstarter! Despite it being a Kevin Wilson game! Why??? I usually really like Kevin Wilson games!  Between cooperative games like Arkham Horror (2nd Edition), Kinfire Chronicles (review here), and even traitor games (which I don’t usually like) like The Stuff Of Legend (review here), Kevin Wilson makes some great games!

The base game Kinfire Council (see above) is a competitive worker-placement game, which looked pretty mean!  It has voting on resolutions (which may screw the town or other players), and cultists that players may join-up at any point!  It looked like someone put traitor mechanics and take-that mechanics into a worker placement game!  No thank you!  Me and my group like cooperative games; this just didn’t look like it was for me/us.

Somehow I missed the memo that Winds of Change (see above: an expansion that seemed to be part of the same Kickstarter) made the game solo and cooperative!  You have to forgive me on this; it’s buried a little bit in the Kickstarter page! In fact, if go searching the page within your browser, the word “cooperative” doesn’t even come up! (It’s hidden in the pictures of the page).

Also, I am always suspicious of games where the solo and cooperative game are obvious add-ons. 

But I did get it.  It took some effort.

So, is this any good? Is it worth getting both Kinsfire Council and the expansion Winds of Change JUST so you can play solo and cooperative?  The answer’s a little more subtle than you might think.

Unboxing And Base Gameplay

The base game is pretty standard sized box; see Coke Can for perspective.

There is a LOT of stuff in this box! See above!

Each player chooses (or randomly gets) a Worker sheet … see above …

And a Councilor sheet! See above!

Together, the Councilor and worker sheet form your tribe!   See above!  (They don’t actually have an official name for this combination in the game, so I am using tribe to mean the combination of a worker sheet and a Councilor).  The Councilor is cool because it gives special asymmetric powers (see Head of the Temple above; she knows how to handle gold)!  Each player also gets a number of “generic” workers (see the 5 above).

The acrylic standee is a special worker called “The Seeker” who can go outside the city and do other special things.

As the game unfolds, you can upgrade your workers!  See above as Doma gets to be a Merchant!

At the end of the day, this is mostly a worker placement game!  Your workers and Seeker can be placed throughout the city and activate Locations!  Only one per Location .. unless you have something special!

Many Locations have a choice: do you activate the top or bottom?  For example (see above): The top is a choice between EITHER getting 2 coin or 2 food.  The bottom action is trading; the worker can convert 2 food or 1 common into a moon stone (rare) OR one moon stone (rare) into 4 coin.  These are some of the main resources in the game!

It’s probably safe to say this game is a resource acquisition/conversion game too!  See a bunch of the resources (from the Upgrade pack) above.

Kinsfire Council is also a voting game; you are members of a council for the city (I mean, it’s in the name for goodness sake).  Every turn, two Decree cards come out (see two examples above).  In order for these decrees to pass, they have to get a majority vote!  If you are in league with the Cultists, you may want to vote against them!  Or you may want to pass a decree that helps you but hurts the city!  Or you may not care at all and just ignore the decrees, preferring to spend resources on other things!  It DOES cost action/resources to vote!  So, you have to decide to vote or not!

Another issue the players have to deal with … Cultists come out!  They clog the worker placement board  and make it so you can’t go there!

See above as the #1 Cultist clogs the #1 Action space!  Luckily, your workers can arrest Cultists, by being adjacent to them (but unfortunately, arresting a Cultist takes your action, unless you are a guard…).

The Cultists also cause threats to come out!  The threats don’t necessarily immediately trigger!  They usually only trigger when enough Trouble tokens gets placed! (Thing in the Tunnel above needs 2 Trouble to trigger). If you can discard the necessary resources (at the bottom left of the card), you can stop the threat before it comes out AND get victory points (bottom right)!

Every Cultist placed will either place a new threat or add a trouble, depending on its number (see the bottom of the threat board).

It sounds crazy, but Cultists are resources too!  Even after you arrest some, you can still use the Cultists (say, as hostages for taking out threats: see above!).

There’s lot of good stuff going on too; you can also upgrade spaces on the board by using the City Planning space!  See above as it flips the white space to the blue side making it better!

There’s also Research (which is like good news cards) which can be really helpful too.  Like everything in Kinsfire Council, the Research cards are ALSO resources that  may be traded in (besides doing the something useful).

Along the way, you have to keep the city healthy: the chart to the left are the resources you need to “feed the city” (3 food) and “keep it clean” (1 gold): this is called City Needs!!  If players don’t collectively keep the City Needs under control, the city get more Cultists!  Interestingly, you don’t have to use a full action to take care of the City Needs; this is just an errand … every action has a free errand you can run! (Thematically, it somehow makes sense that politicians see taking care of City Needs as a simple errand, not a full action).

As part of the errand phase, you can also build the tower!  (See three such tower cards above!)  The Towers serve as inspiration to the city!  The Cultists hate the tower, because it provides inspiration and hope!  So, the less of the tower you build, the more Victory points the Cultists get!

To win, you need the most Victory Points: this is a Victory Point game! See the Victory Point track above!   You’ll  also notice that the Cultists have their own Victory Point marker!    It’s possible for the Cultists (to be clear, Cultists are NOT a player) to win the game!  If the Cultists win, whosoever has the most Cult Influence wins the game instead!

At the very end of the game, the Cultists reveal the Hidden Threat deck (created at the beginning of the game, and added to by certain decrees and threats) and add THOSE Victory Points to the Cultists!

The above 4 Hidden Threats would add 44 Victory Points to the Cultists!

This is a worker placement game, but with some really interesting ideas with voting, upgrading spaces, battling cultists, special workers, upgrading workers, collecting resources, doing research, building towers, and maybe … aligning with the Cultists behind the scenes!

Do you try to keep the city healthy or just let it go to hell and let the Cultists take over?  That’s all part of this competitive game!

Rulebook

Good rulebook. 

It gets a A- on The Chair Test (it could be an A, but the font could be a little bigger, especially seeing how much white space there is on the page).  BUT the rulebook has a great form factor, has some decent pictures, doesn’t droop down over the edges of the chair next to me, and it stays open to be easily consulted.  Great job guys!

The components pages are good; pictures and correlating text is always a good thing.  See above.

The set-up is also good; pictures and labels help!  See above.

Holy crap, there’s even an Index, and I used it multiple times! It was a useful Index!

The rulebook even ends with something useful on the back; see above.

My only complaint was that there were a few things that were unclear in the rulebook.  I posted on BoardGameGeek and got some responses; I post the thread here so you can benefit from my questions!  (The Designer, Kevin Wilson even answered and tacitly approved the answers).

Other than that, very good rulebook.

Solo Game (Unofficial)

To be clear, the base game of Kinfire Council is for 2-6 Players and is a competitive worker placement game.   There is no solo game built-in to the base game!

BUT, if you squint at the 2-Player rules a little (see page 20 from the base rulebook above) you can see the implications of a simple solo game!

In fact, the solo mode from the Winds of Change expansion is ALMOST the 2-Player game from the base game!

Basically, the official solo game and 2-Player game doesn’t allow player(s) to go after Cult Influence.  To win, the player(s) must get more Victory Points than the Cultists!   Interestingly, the solo (and 2-Player mode) redefine the Cult influence action to eliminate Trouble tokens and SUBTRACT Cult VP (rather than add Cult Influence and ADD Cult VP).

So, you can play the base Kinfire Council solo … unofficially! It’s really just the 2-Player game where you MUST be against the Cultists!

To win the (unofficial) solo game, you play like normal, and BOTH players VP must surpass the Cultists!  See above as I lose my first unofficial solo game as the red tribe is still behind on VP!

To be clear, this is an unofficial solo mode that is my own creation to just learn the game.  It’s not very hard, but it does teach how the game plays.  The solo player takes control of two tribes and plays the game normally, like a 2-Player game, but alternating between the tribes.

So, I played a couple of solo (unofficial) games to learn the game.  This is a great way to see all the rules and systems!  This (unofficial) solo game is MUCH EASIER than the official solo mode.   The official solo mode is WAY HARDER, but when you are learning the game, I think this (unofficial) solo mode is more approachable!  Basically, the official solo mode has more rules, more things to keep track, is a little oppressive (especially at the beginning), and may be a little too frustrating (in the beginning). 

I lost my first (unofficial) solo game and decisively won my second (unofficial) solo game.  But I learned the game.

If you have played The Captain’s Chair, you know that it has two official solo modes. The “simple” solo mode teaches most of the mechanics of the game without being too oppressive.  Once you know the basics, the “hard” solo mode is how you want to play.  I think that same idea applies here.  

Play the (unofficial) solo mode (which is basically just the solo player operating the 2-Player game by himself) to see how the game works; you only need the base game for that.  If you enjoy that, then you can decide if you want to move on the official (and much harder) solo mode from Winds of Change.

Winds Of Change Unboxing

Winds of Change is the expansion that provides official solo and cooperative rules for base Kinfire Council. 

It adds a bunch of new Locations you can swap from the base City Locations.

It adds three new Towers to swap in.

A bunch of new cards.

And a new resource called Favor Tokens which is like Magic, but its use gives the Cultists Victory Points. (Honestly, in all my plays, I stayed away from these resources)

BUT the most important thing this adds is the new Cult Decree Cards (see above).  This is what makes the solo and cooperative games more challenging!  This is the new key ingredient!

Basically, every turn, when you normally get two decrees (which you may or may not want), you ALSO get a Cult Decree card at the same time!  Just like the Decrees, you have to get the votes on Cult Decrees to make sure they don’t take hold!

The Cult Decree cards are even worse than you think because they ALSO have an immediate bad news (look at the bottom of the card)!

Official Solo Mode (Winds of Change)

If the (unofficial) solo mode is too easy, it’s the Cult Decrees that make the official solo game in Winds of Change a LOT harder.

The official solo mode is very much like the 2-Player mode.  Two tribes must work together (see above) to make sure the city survives the Cultists!  The three real differences are:
1) Players must now deal with Cult Decrees (GULP!)
2) The two tribes share all resources in one pot
3) Each tribe only has three generic workers instead of five generic workers

Since the two tribes now share all resources, there is only one Victory Point marker.  Both tribes move the same VP marker!  See above!  To win, the solo player must simply beat the Cultists!

The official solo mode is still basically the same game, but there’s no back-stabbing or bad councilors to worry about!  The two tribes cooperate!  The solo player alternates between the two tribes and plays normally.  The real difference is that all resources are shared between the two tribes AND they have to deal with the pesky Cult Decrees!

The official solo game definitely feels more oppressive!  Your first few turns feel like you can just barely hold back the tide of Cultists! It’s a little overwhelming!  I think I had some bad luck in my first official solo game, so I cheated a little just to make sure I moved forward to see the whole game!   

In my  second official solo game, I felt like I got it!  In the beginning of the official solo game, it’s HARD to keep the Cultists under control, but by the time you make it turn 5, you have a little bit of an engine going and you have enough resources to make a difference!  It feels  … inspiring … when you can wrest control of the city from the Cultists!  This is our city, darn it!

The official solo game is much harder that the (unofficial) solo mode (as we discussed earlier), but it is a good challenge and it will be a solo mode to keep you coming back.

It’s just a little bit of work to keep the solo and cooperative components separate from the base box.  (I actually ran out of space on my table, and had to put the Winds of Change box on my stove!!! See above)  It’s actually kind of annoying to put everything away.

Cooperative Game

You could easily play the 2-Player mode from the base game cooperatively as a 2-Player game.  And frankly, except for the Cult Decree Cards, it’s pretty much the same game.  Again, the Cult Decree Cards make the game SO MUCH harder. 

For one of our 2-Player cooperative games, we played with the official Winds of Change cooperative rules with the Cult Decree cards.  We wanted the challenge!

In the cooperative game, each player has their own VP marker.  Like before, ALL PLAYERS must have more VP than the Cult, or they lose!  See above as we win!  Both Teresa and I had more VP than the Cult!

The Winds of Change also has new Player Aids (which are quite good: see above).

Basically, we had fun playing cooperatively!  There’s a lot of multiplayer solitaire, which means we both have agency on our turns.  But we still have to talk a LOT to make sure we arrest the Cultists and keep the Cult Decrees under control!   I think this game a really good balance of having solitaire agency but still requiring plenty of cooperation!  At the end of the day, YOU decide how to move your workers, but still work together to keep the Cultists down!

House Rules: Cooperative – Sharing

There was one thing that really surprised us in the cooperative game; there is no rule for sharing resources!

In the official solo game, the two tribes share all resources, so there’s no need for any sharing rules.  But, the cooperative game has no mechanism for sharing?

We came up with a House Rule that seemed to work fantastically!  You can use an errand to share any single resource!!!  It’s an easy place to add the sharing mechanism, and it’s very thematic!  “Oh, as an errand, I need to make sure my friend has some Magic to stop the threat on their turn!”

It’s not free, as it still takes up an errand to do it, but it made the game a LOT more cooperative!  “Can you deliver me a Cultist?”  If my friends just needed one resource and could save us an action, why not do it?

It was sort of funny to have all resources (including Cultists and Cards) being something you can share.  For the Cultists, it reminded us of doing prisoner transfers across town.

We STRONGLY recommend adding this House Rule: as one of the options for an errand, you may choose to share a single resource.  If you can’t build the tower, or resolve City Needs as your errand, maybe you can still do something useful with your errand and help your compatriots.

Sharing as an errand made the game more cooperative, more interactive, and more fun. 

House Rule: Solo – Don’t Require Alternating

In the official solo game, you MUST alternate between the two tribes as you play.  But, why?  Since all the resources are shared, it doesn’t matter as much!  In fact, sometimes you have more options if you can choose any order you want!  Maybe you want to use tribe 1’s three workers FIRST (because they are all guards) and THEN do all of tribe 2’s workers after the board has been cleaned of Cultists!  I found many times, when playing solo, I accidentally didn’t alternate ANYWAYS!  You sometimes forget to alternate … but it doesn’t really change the game.  In fact, it gives you more options!  If you can choose the order of the workers of the tribes, sometimes you can pull off something really clever that maybe you couldn’t if you were forced to alternate.

This isn’t a big deal for a House Rule, but I think it makes the solo game just a little more fun: give me more choice so I can feel clever. 

Thoughts

We were originally supposed to play a 3-Player cooperative game, but Sara fell sick and just wanted to listen to us.  Here’s the funny thing; just listening to us play and narrate our turns to her, Sara gave this game a 7.5/10! She said it sounded really fun!

Teresa really liked it.  About a 7.5/10 as well.

I liked both the solo and cooperative modes a lot.  The solo game was about a 8.0 as was the cooperative game.  With the house rules we proposed, both go up to an 8.5/10. In fact, the sharing as an errand rule was such a good house rule, it might even make it a 9/10.

Conclusion

You can play the base Kinfire Council game as a solo and cooperative game to see if you like it (using the unofficial rules we described).   These unofficial solo/cooperative modes are pretty easy, but they give a good sense of the game.  If you like the game, then the Winds of Change expansion makes the game much more challenging.

Is it worth getting both?? I personally think it’s worth getting both  Kinfire Council and the Winds of Change expansion to play this solo and cooperatively.  It’s a lot of work to get there, between learning the base game, cooperative game, set-up, combining games, and set-up, but the unofficial solo rules can make it a LOT easier to learn the systems of this game.

If you do get Kinfire Council and Winds of Change, I strongly suggest you play with the cooperative house rule sharing as errand, as it makes the game more cooperative, more interactive, and more fun; it brings the game to almost a 9/10 for me (cooperative mode).   Even without that rule, it’s still an 8 or 8.5/10.  It’s so cool that a cooperative worker placement works so well!

The official solo mode is great, but a minor house rule (for relaxing the alternation) makes it a little more fun, as it gives the solo player more choice.  Solo: 8 or 8.5/10.

Storyfold Wildwoods. An Intimate Little Experience.

Storyfold Wildwoods is a solo storybook game that was on Kickstarter back in November 2024.  It promised delivery in September 2025, and it made it on time in September 2025!

This is a game with story, and a slightly weird worker placement mechanic.

Storyfold Wildwoods  presents itself as a solo game, but that’s not how we played it.  This review will be a little different than my normal reviews.

Team Solo

Even though this is a solo game, my friend Teresa was really interested in this dark themed storybook game.  So, we ended up playing Team Solo: both of us making decisions as we played as a team, pretending to be a single solo player.

I usually play solo first to learn the rules and teach my friends, but there was no need to in Storyfold Wildwoods; the games presents the rules as you play. 

There is a Rules Reference, but we only looked at it once or twice when we played.  Most of the rules are covered fairly well as the game unfurls itself.

What Is This?

This is a story game: you play a little girl and her animal companion wandering in the dark forests.

The story is dark both physically and tonally, as you are playing to stop both the physical and metaphysical darkness in the forest.

This is also kind of a worker placement game, as you decide which actions to perform. There’s a river of actions you can perform: the further down the river the actions are, the easier they are to preform.  See above as Explore is easier to activate since it’s at the start of the river.

There are dice in the game, so the actions you attempt may or may not fail.   So, this is a worker placement game where your actions “may” or “may not” succeed.

This is also a lot of game in the cards: there is a lot of story buried in the cards in enemies, and other things that come out.  See the 6 chapters above (the first, Prologue takes you through the rules).  Each Chapter of cards is a fairly hefty deck.

Experience

This is an experience of a game.  You read the story and you make decisions, and it’s heart-wrenching when your die rolls fail, as you are letting the darkness in.   It’s surprisingly depressing when you lose and end up All Alone in the Dark.  See above.

Although this is meant to be a solo game, it worked quite well as an intimate 2-Player game, where the players collectively make decisions.   It took some of the pressure off the dark theme as we decided and worked as a small group.  I suspect this COULD work as a 3-Player game, but I think that might be too much.   Teresa and I had a great time playing as Team Solo.  Er, not a great time … as we lost, and ended up Alone In the Dark … maybe better said as “we enjoyed the experience”.

Theme

I want to be 100% clear; the theme here can be too much; it’s pretty dark. I am not sure I would want a young a kid to play this by themselves (even though the main character has a little kid in the forest).  I do think that this could be a good game to play WITH a kid; that way you can explain/mitigate/explore the darkness and failure together.   Honestly, I think if theme appeals to your child, playing Storyfold Wildwoods Team Solo with your kid might be a fantastic way to explore this world and its dark themes.

Conclusion

I don’t want to say too much about this game, because there’s a lot of neat stuff to uncover, and it’s better if you just find it out yourself.  The way the game presents the rules makes it easy to learn the game as you are playing.

The theme is dark: be aware.   But the art is beautiful and the story is interesting.

The play mechanics might be a little simple, and maybe even a touch random, but this game is an experience more than a game.  It does have a real game underneath, but its the experience here that you are embracing … the game actually hits you emotionally pretty hard.

Even though this is nominally a solo game (and it would work as a solo game), I think I enjoyed it more playing it more as an intimate 2-Player experience (with shared reading and responsibility).  I think this would be a good 2-Player game to play with you and your Mom, an adult and a child, or a boyfriend and a girlfriend.  There’s something in the game that bonds you when you play; maybe facing the darkness together brings you closer together.  Even if you fail, you still have each other.

8/10.

The Original Ikeans: Vikings Building Furniture! A Solo and Cooperative Review of Valheim

Follow us along as we enter the world of the Vikings! Explore lands, find resources, fight big-bads, and … build furniture? Valheim is a big game that I had to “absorb” over a month to crystalize my feelings. I have lots of thoughts … as do my friends! Did I like it solo? Did me and my friends like it cooperatively? Follow us on our journey!

Valheim is a cooperative boss-battling and furniture-building game (yes, you heard me right) that was on Gamefound back in October 2024.   It delivered in October 2025.

This is an exploration game where players play as Vikings exploring the world and looking for resources to build furniture and weapons!  Although some of my friends might see the furniture-building as the main goal of the game, the furniture-building is a secondary goal; the furniture is for upgrades so players can fight the big-bad at the end of the game!

Let’s a take a look!

Unboxing

The first day I got Valheim, I spent 2 hours unboxing, punching out tokens, sleeving cards, and generally organizing the game.

The unboxing was a full two hours of work!  

Valheim is a big mama-jama of a game!  See above! I backed the full all-in package for this: SPOILER ALERT!! You don’t really need most the stuff from the deluxe kickstarter version.  The Dice Tower? Nah.  The Dice Tray? Nah.  The Playmat?  Nah (the board is better).  The card sleeves … there are issues (see later).  The Wooden Furniture is by far the best thing to get.  See below.

If I had to do this over again, I probably would have gotten the non-deluxe version. But I still would have somehow tried to get the wooden furniture….it’s awesome and thematic.

The deluxe box is huge: see the Coke can next to it.

This is just a big game.

It’s pretty fancy looking.

Like I said, it took a while to unbox/organize this; about 2 hours.

Gameplay

Each player takes control of one of the four characters.  These characters boards are really nice dual-layered boards: see above.  But the characters have no name or even designation (the archer? Maybe?)

Each character is just an empty template until you choose the skills; each player gets three skills! See above as the archer? (no name) gets Healthy, Carpenter, and extra move (lower right).

As you play, you can fill in the consumables area with all sorts of cool meads, potions, and things like honeycomb!  (You can actually build a beehive in the game!  That’s a type of furniture!)

As the game progresses, players can make or find weapons and armor to help in their quest.   See above as the yellow swordsman (seriously, no names for anyone?) gets a Hammer, Leather Tunic and Fire Wood Bow!

The cost of each items is in the lower left; you have to build your items too!

Players explore a world of hexes as defined by the scenario chosen!  See above!  Players are looking for resources from which they build their furniture and their weapons!

Resources generally are at particular Locations: see above, where blue archer can go exploring at the “rocky place” to get rock.

As the game unfolds, the players collectively collect more and more resources!  See above.

The resources in the environment are in a nice container (see above).

Another resource tray holds potions, consumables (like honeycomb) and other tokens.

The resource trays sit at the bottom of the board, right next to the house. 

The house is where you build furniture and keep resources.

Of course, this is a hostile work environment, and there are little monsters to fight along the way!  See the Greyling one space away.

The monsters are pretty well-defined on their cards.  The Greyling has 2 hits, rolls 1 black die during combat, and gives some resin as a treasure if you kill it.

But of course, the final thing is (usually) killing the big-bad!  See above!

In fact, fighting the final big-bad is a very different combat!  You “summon” the big bad, then fight them in a special arena!  See above!

If you can drop the big bad (Ekithyr above) to zero hit points, you win!   If you all die in the final arena, you lose! (You can also lose if you fail to summon the big bad before the event deck runs out)

Explore hexes, gather resources, build furniture, fight monsters, roll dice, and summon the big bad!  That’s Valheim in a nutshell!

Rulebook

The rulebook is ok, but it has three major major flaws.

First: The binding for the rulebook is NOT stapled pages … so it has trouble laying flat and open!! It uses a glue binding (usually that’s what most graphic novels use):  see above! We saw this binding in many games over the years, and we are were just as appalled now as we were then (most recently in War Story: see review here, but also Freedom Five: see review here).

The problem with this kind of binding is that it may/may not stay open!  Notice above that I have my two fingers on it to hold it open!  You can always “break the spine”, or “bend it back” to hold it open, but that severely limits the life of the the rulebook!  The worst  part is simply that the rulebook does NOT lay flat so you can see it on the chair next to you!  This rulebook FAILS the Chair Test!

The thing is, this rulebook is like 52 pages long! I think they only used the glue binding because it’s so long … but then I remind myself that Gloomhaven’s original rulebook was 52 pages: and it used a stay-flat stapled rulebook!!! Why on earth did they use this binding?

Second: Another problem with this rulebook is that it has two halves; the first 32 or so pages are the rules, but the last pages are all summaries and explanations of cards!  See above!  I think they should have SEPARATED the rulebook and summary book into TWO books!  That way, you could have had a separate stapled lay-flat rulebook and a separate stay-flat book describing all the cards and systems in the game.

(We’ll get to the third problem in a second). Let me say that this game has a great Table of Contents (yay: see above) but no Index (boo!).  I do think that this is a game that needed an Index!! Not all games need an Index:  we just recently saw that Ham Helsing has an Index, but it really wasn’t necessary.  But I think Valheim does need one …  but, this isn’t a deal-breaker.

The components pages are great.

The set-up was pretty good for the generic game: see above with lots of pictures.

The font is big and easy to read.  There are also a hefty amount of pictures; maybe even too many flavor pictures? See above.

The book also ends with a summary of tokens which I appreciated (unfortunately, it didn’t cover Kickstarter extras; that had to come in a separate sheet).

The final problem with the rulebook is that I feel like it missed a lot of edge cases that seemed to come up again and again.  For example; in raids, does the ! summon the raiding party if you are close by it? Not clear?  In the final arena combat, what happens if you die when the big-bad does?  Do you lose? Win?  Tie?  It all depends on if the actions of the big-bad are “atomic” in one transaction, or not.   Can you run away from combat? Can your skills be used immediately again and again and again and again if you can power them? (I think that last one is you can).  When you get the honeycomb, do you get to see what it is when you put it in your character?

It feels like these edge cases came up as we played.  We were able to get through them, and most of the rules were well-defined, but there was just enough edge case ambiguity to be frustrating.

But, this is a beautiful rulebook with a readable font, a good set-up, components, table of contents, and fairly detailed rules.   I just hated the binding, I wish it had been separated into two books, and I wish it handled more edge cases.

I learned the game, and the rulebook was good enough for that.  But that was in spite of the rulebook … see below.

First Play: Solo Game Tutorial

So, my first game was a solo game using the tutorial: see above.

The tutorial takes you through the game; setting you up, and taking you through the game in about an hour: see set-up above.

There is a deck of 50+ cards that holds your hand and takes you step-by-step through most of the systems of the game!  See the deck above.

The only problem with this tutorial is that you MUST have all 4 characters in play!  For the solo player, this is a LOT of work as he has to operate all 4 characters at once! GULP!

It was daunting, but you know what? It worked!  See some of the tutorial above!  This was a good tutorial.  There were a few places where it was a little unclear (and they actually made at least one mistake), but this method of walking the four characters through the game worked!

I would ALMOST say this is a great tutorial, but it just had a few problems.

At some point, you build some furniture … but it gets the cost wrong.  The cost to build the Fire Table is TWO resin and TWO wood, but the tutorial card shows ONE resin and TWO wood!  We assume that the summary (on the right) is correct?

The combat is pretty well-described, but  one card describing the combat with multiple participants was … poorly worded.

After all was said and done, this tutorial worked well,  Not great, but well.  I still had some questions, but I felt like I understood most of the systems of the game.

I was also exhausted, because operating four characters during the tutorial was a lot of work.  I was just a little disheartened by the few mistakes and a few poor wordings.

First Cooperative Play

A week later I was able to get a cooperative first play in!  It lasted about 1.5 hours from start to finish!

For our first cooperative play, we simply played through the Tutorial again.  We each played one character (there were three of us), and kind of “shared” control of the fourth character.

One of the great things about cooperative play is the sharing of the load. As a group, we set-up the game, as a group we ran the game, as a group we read the tutorial cards.  Remember how I was saying how exhausted I felt after my first solo play through this tutorial?  A lot of that went away when we played solo.  And I think this game really benefits from that sharing of the load, because there are a lot of systems to run.

As we played through the tutorial, it was good to get a refresher from the runthrough.  And it seemed to go well.

By the end of the night, the game Valheim had introduced itself to me and my friends. We did encounter the “poorly worded” multiple combat card and mistake of the fire table again, but we just moved through it.

My friends wanted to play again, after running through the runthrough.  I could call that a successful runthrough. 

True Solo

Strangely, I couldn’t find any reference in the rulebook to solo rules?  I even downloaded the PDF I could find and searched for the word solo.  No mention.  The only acknowledgement that you can play solo is the player count on the box!  See above.

My reading of the rules is that “each players selects a character”.  If you are playing solo, you only select one character, I guess?  Implicitly, this is a true solo game!  I just wish they had acknowledged that with a single sentence somewhere: “The solo player takes control of a single character and plays the game as-is”.  (And you almost always need to say “effects on another player in the solo game affect the solo player instead”; that wasn’t in here.  It should be).  Recall, last week we saw Fate: Defenders of Grimheim did exactly he right thing and made it clear how to play solo!  I wish Valheim had done this too.  Oh well.  Moving on, assuming true solo play …

My first solo game was the first scenario from the Scenario book (as recommended by the rulebook).  We have to deal with Ekythir again. Sigh.

The solo game is harder.  You get used to having a weapon in the Runthrough, but in the “real game”, you don’t start with any equipment!  You literally have to build EVERYTHING from resources!

And you find out right away that you CAN fight without weapons; you just get the yellow die WITHOUT any doubles!  Gulp!  So, you start the game feeling VEEERY weak!  

I start with nothing but the skills on my back!

This game is all about exploring the world so you can get resources!  You need resources for weapons and furniture!

As the game goes on, you had better be collecting resources so you can build some cool furniture back at home! See above as I build the rug, the fire table, the barrel, and the beehive!

Why do I build all this stuff??  Is the furniture even useful??  Absolutely!  The rug heals your stamina by 1, the beehive gives you consumables (see above), the barrel gives you mead, and the fire table allows you to have fire arrows!  See above for all the cool stuff I got!

And I need ALL of this as I go into my final combat!

Depending on how I played it, we either both lost, we both won, or I just lost?  In the final round, we both killed each other … maybe?   It’s not clear how much is simultaneous!    To be fair, with a very small retro motion, I was able to use my skills (powered by stamina) to kill him before the last round.  BUT I wish this would have been clearer.  

Generally, I had fun exploring the lands and gathering resources and building furniture!

Cooperative Play (Scenario 2)

A week after we played through the tutorial as a group, my friends were excited to build beehives together!

After learning the basics of the game through the good tutorial, we settled in for a real game Scenario 2.

In Scenario 2, we get to fight …

The ELDER!

Some good cooperation came out as we played.  Each of our skills requires all of us to “do something” to activate them (for example, I had to build 3 pieces of armor).   This game each player focus, and we all tried to activate all of our skills.

This meant working together to allow us to do stuff!  “Oh! You need to craft some armor three times? Okay! You need copper and I need to go kill monsters!”  Generally, this worked pretty well, as we all pursued our goals, and there was just enough serendipity that our goals helped each other.

Over the course of the night, we built tons of furniture to build our characters up.  In the end, we summoned the Elder and beat him up!

Good times.  I think my friends really enjoyed building the furniture building and world exploring … maybe even more than the combat (which can be a little random).  The combat almost seemed a necessary evil so that we HAD to build furniture.  I am telling you, I think my friends enjoyed the furniture making more than anything else in this game!  Just ask Sara how much Teresa talked about the beehive ALL WEEKEND LONG.

Issues

This game feels like an A game inside a B body.  There were so many places where a little extra thought/effort could have made things just a little better.

Raid Rules: these seem poorly specified.  They aren’t covered in the intro, so I had to go find the rules for Raids in the rulebook.   What happened to me: I was two away from the raiding party, so could I attract the raiders if I rolled a ! on the explore dice?  Thematically, it seems like they are trying to coalesce to attack, so they wouldn’t attack!  Pedantically, the rules say the raiders would move to me.  Which is it?

Sleeves for weapons/armor:  The sleeves fit on the cards just fine, but the sleeved cards DO NOT fit great into the dual-layered player boards.  They “sorta” work, see above.  But it feels nobody really tried the sleeves with the boards!  They boards should have slightly bigger or the sleeves slightly smaller … a small adjustment here would have made a huge difference!  

Sleeves for normal cards: The sleeved cards BARELY fit into the plastic insert.  You have to SQUASH THEM HARD to fit.  Even after you put on the cover, the cards slide around a little. See above.  Sigh.  The spaces for cards only had to be a touch taller and this wouldn’t have been an issue.  Well, at least the sleeved cards actually fit in the insert … barely, but not great.  See, they work, but it feels like a B work … not A work.


The house: This may just be a deluxe version, but the house doesn’t work.  Sorry, to be clear, the house stands up and can hold things, but it ends up obscuring the resources and furniture!  Although the cardboard house has a cool toy factor (see above), it is NOT useful for playing!  

In the end, we just took down the cardboard house so we could ALL see the insides of the house!! See above.  Again, cool thing, but interferes with gameplay.  Coolness gives it A, but then interference with gameplay drops it to a B.

Hex Spaces Feel Crowded: The spaces on the board feel very crowded if there’s more than one thing on there.  See above!! What resources do the minis cover?  It almost feels like the hexes should be one size bigger?  The game is still usable, but this kind of made the game clumsier.

Better notation:  If there are multiple enemies, there’s no “clear” way to notate which guys have taken damage.  

This immediately drew a comparison to Tales From Red Dragon Inn (see above), where each mini is CLEARLY marked with which has which hit points!  Sure, we can work around this, but it seemed … annoying they didn’t think of a better system for this.

Can’t Run?  If you get stuck in a combat you’d rather not, there’s no rules for escaping.  There are rules for others to come help you, but it seems strange there is no way to get out of combat once you are in!  If you character dies, it’s not the end of the world (you spawn back in the house), but … I think I wanted to run away from a Troll once and I couldn’t???

Odin Skills: The Odin Skills don’t fit great back into the insert.  You kinda clumsily plop them in.

Just Everywhere!  When you go to set-up the game, it’s a mess! I had to put boxes and box tops everywhere because this game is so big!

Table Space Constraints:  I feel like game REQUIRES you to turn your game longways.  The way the resource trays and home are set-up, there’s no way this would fit on my table any other way than the longways: see above.  So, I ended up sitting at the end of the table!  This just wouldn’t fit if  I used the prescribed layout!  I mean it looks cool (see above) but only one way.

What I Liked

Gorgeous:  This is a gorgeous game with great (modulo some issues) components.

Furniture:  Something about the furniture puts a smile on me andmy friends faces …  We are building furniture!  Cool theme.

Gameplay: Was generally straight-forward, once you got the hang of it.

Tutorial:  The tutorial was well done.  Not perfect, but good enough to get you into the systems of the game.

Conclusion

For Teresa, Valheim may be her game of the year!   She loved the theme so much, she was able to overlook all the issues we encountered along the way and just embrace Valheim!  I struggled a little more with the issues; I feel this could have been a great game, but the issues brought it down to a good game.   Maybe you’ll be like Teresa and absolutely love this game!  Maybe you’ll be like me and just like it.  That’s still a pretty good recommendation either way.  Hopefully our exploration of this game will help you decide what you might think.

Both Sara and I do worry a little about replayability; once you build all the furniture, what else is there to do?  Because of that and all the other issues I had, this is probably a 7/10 for me and Sara … just barely a recommendation, but we still liked it.  But Teresa will give this an 8.5/10 and point out that you can build a beehive!  That’s all that matters!

Fate: Defenders of Grimheim. A Solo and Cooperative Review of a Tower Defense Game

I didn’t know a thing about this game until I saw it on a BoardGameGeek advertisement!  Fate: Defenders of Grimheim is a cooperative tower defense game for 1-4 players.   A tower defense game is when monsters move towards a “tower” with the intent of wrecking it!  Your job, as the players, is to defend said “tower”!

This is a game from Fryx games; I ordered directly from the website (and had to pay some extra money because of Tariffs, so that was stinky).  This is the same Fryx games that gave us the enduring Terraforming Mars, the great Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition (see our review here), and not-as-great Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game.  

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing and Gameplay

This is pretty standard sized box; see Coke can above for scale.

Players each assume the role of one warrior protecting the homestead! Bjorn, Alva, Embla, or Boldur.  See above.

The homestead is at the middle of the board!  See above.  Every time a bad guy makes it to the homestead, the players lose one (or more) of the homes there. Lose too many homes, and the players (collectively) lose the game!

At certain points during the game (including the start of the game), a bunch of bad guys are placed into the game at the edges of the board.  See the card (above) describing where the bad guys go …

… and see the same bad guys on the board!  Note that the arrows denote how they move during the move phase! (If they hit a trail, they start following the trails).

There’s three different flavors of enemy: the Dead (coming from the northwest part: see above).

The Trollkin, coming from the northwest (see above)

And the Fire Hordes, coming from the South.

This is a tower defense game!  You have to kill the bad guys before they make it to the center of the board!

Each player (hero) has a bunch of tools to help them stop the bad guys; these tools are all special to that hero!

There’s abilities (like above) which can help the player in many ways. These abilities are paid for with experience /gold.

There’s upgrades the players can get (if they do the quest at the top of the card).

Generally, each player has a starting main weapon and starting ability, plus a special ability.  See above.

As the game unfolds, the player quickly upgrades and gets new abilities and weapons!  See above!

If you can keep at least one structure left (the fountain is the last thing to go) before the timer runs outs and/or you kill all enemies, you win!

Rulebook

I liked this rulebook.  Except for one thing.

The rulebook is just too big; it almost fails the Chair Test.  See above as it droops heavily over the edges of the chair.  The only reason it doesn’t fail the Chair Test is that it stays open, and is easy to read.  I can barely use on the chair next to me: this gets like a D on the Chair Test.  Honestly, this rulebook could have easily gotten an A on the Chair Test if it hadn’t been so droopy.

The Components page is nice and well-labelled: see above.

The first few pages didn’t jump int set-up, they talked about the cards and components.  This worked well to get you familiar with the components of the game.

The Set-up is pretty good: the picture’s a little small, but it does work. See above.

Generally, though, this rulebook was really good.  I had no real grumpiness as I read it.

It’s only about 12 pages, but it’s pretty easy to read.  There’s no Index, but I think that’s okay for this game.  This game is pretty straight-forward and I don’t think it needs an Index.

Generally, good rulebook.  I just wish the form factor were smaller.

Solo Game

The solo game is very well-defined on page 11: see above. Basically, there’s no rule changes! This is a true solo game, where the player takes control of a single hero in the game.  The game is self-balancing: the number of monsters that come out are essentially a function of the number of players. This is a fantastic solo mode with no real changes to the rules!  Thank you for following Saunders’ Law!  This gives us a solo mode that scales to cooperative mode with NO CHANGES!

After the solo modes for so many games have left us underwhelmed lately (Lord of the Rings, I am looking at you), it’s great to see a simple and scalable solo mode.

I took control of Alva for my solo game.

Her cards and figure come from the Alva/Bjorn box.  It’s a little hard to find the starting cards, but once you know what you are looking for, it’s easy enough.

Basically, the solo game starts with fewer homes in the middle and only one set of enemies come out at first!

More enemies will come out when we hit the Axes (above) on the timer.  You draw one card of enemies for each player (that’s the scaling part).

Over the course of the shorter game, I had to go and kill some enemies before they reached the homestead!

One of the best parts of the game is how quickly you gain new abilities and new weapons and new upgrades!  Generally, you seem to be able to get something new every other round or so, which is great!  Your character really feels like they are progressing as you play!

Near my solo end game, I had at least 3 new weapons and new abilities (some of them upgraded!)

It was a pretty quick game; the box says 30 minutes per player, and my experience says that’s accurate.

It was very easy to jump into this game, a lot of fun to perform upgrades, and some strategy as I tried to figure out the best way to kill the bad guys before they invaded!

The solo game works great.  And it’s trivial to apply the lessons of the solo game to the cooperative game, since it’s essentially the same game!

Cooperative Game

My friend Teresa and I played the cooperative game!

We each took control of a separate hero.  Now, the monsters, scaling for the player count, come out twice as fast!

It was interesting to see how the cooperation unfolded.  Generally, each player is different enough and has very different cards that’s there’s not really much chance for Alpha Players.  The cooperation that happens in the beginning of the game is more coarse discussions about which sets of enemies to handle.  “I”ll go over there and deal with the enemies to the South, you deal with the enemies to the North”.

In the beginning stages of the game, the game is more multi-player solitaire as each player handles some part of the board.

As the bad guys get closer and closer to the homestead, some more cooperation unfolds as players may need to back each other up.  “Can you please get that stray bad guy for me?” “I suppose…Sure!”

There’s not tons of cooperation, but there is enough interaction as players talk and even lament the task ahead!

I got Grendel (one of the really big bads) later in the game, and it was good to have Teresa nearby so I could complain how hard he looks!

Generally, each player is very involved in their turn as they try to figure out how to activate all their abilities and cards and weapons.  It’s kind of cool in the later game just how many directions and how many options you have for killing bad guys!

In the end, the cooperative game was fun and engaging!  There was no real chance for the Alpha Player, but there was still some high-level cooperation (with a smidge of low-level cooperation in the later game).   Good times.

What I Liked

The shapes: The enemies of the same flavor are all the same shape (see above). This makes it VERY easy to see which types of enemies are which.  This is a small touch, but it really helps players quickly distinguish enemy types without having to squint.

Well-Labelled board:  In the same vein as the shapes, the board is well-labelled with a big font describing the enemies special abilities!  There’s no need to consult the rulebook … the rules are on the board!

Well-Labelled Enemies:  The enemies themselves are well-labelled: how much damage does the bad guy above do?  5 axes!  How many hit points?  6!  How many experience from killing it? 3!

The board is gorgeous:  I really like the art and how clean this board is.  It’s clear where mountains are, it’s clear where forests are, it’s clear where trails are, and the art just looks fabulous.

Upgrades Happen Quickly!  As you play, your hero very quickly gets new cards, upgraded abilities, and new weapons!   This allows the player to build something of an engine as they can use abilities to power other abilities to make stronger attacks!  The feeling of upgrade is strong and very fulfilling for a game that is only 30 minutes per player!

Easy to get to the table:  This game is very easy to get to the table.  There aren’t a ton of rules and the board is well-labelled, so it’s pretty easy to start into a game.

What I Didn’t Like

Dice and Randomness:  At the end of the day, all combat is decided by dice … and that can be frustrating when you are rolling badly.   There are some mitigation techniques, but generally you just hope you roll well enough.  I didn’t hate the dice, but I didn’t love them.  I guess they are a necessary evil to keep this game “interesting”.

The Character Art:  The Character art reminds us a lot of Red Dragon Inn … it has a cartoony vibe to it (see our review of Tales From Red Dragon Inn here).  My friend Teresa didn’t love the art; it wasn’t quite as good as Tales From Red Dragon Inn, and it was also a little inconsistent with the art on the board (which we loved).  I thought the art was ok, but the character art can be a little off-putting for some people?  Shrug?

Minis: I went out of my way to spend extra dollars to get the minis for the Legend monsters (see above) … and you almost never use them.  You may get a Legend monster in your game, or you may not.  I don’t think it was worth getting those extra minis, especially because I probably had to pay way too much for them because of the tariffs.

The Cover:  I didn’t love this cover.  I think if I saw this in a game store, I might pass it over.  But my friend Teresa said she liked it.  Art is in the eye of the beholder.

Conclusion

I liked Fate: Defenders of Grimheim.  The game is very easy to get out, very easy to explain, and very easy to play!  While playing, there are so many opportunities for upgrades and doing clever things with your weapons and abilities that make you feel smart!  The cooperation isn’t through the roof in this game, as most players are engaging in multi-player solitaire activities, but there is some interaction and cooperation (moreso in the later game).  I also don’t think you’ll really have to worry about the Alpha Player ruining your game, as each character is very different, causing each player to be very independent.

This game sits in a nice niche; it’s got enough meat-on-its-bones to be interesting, but easy enough to play quickly.  I think this would be a perfect cooperative game for a convention!  You can pull it out and quickly jump into it for engaging play!

I think the only reason I don’t adore this game is because the dice can be unforgiving … they can be a touch too random for me.  Still, I liked this solo: 7/10.  I’ll call the cooperative game 7.5/10, and I would point out that this would be great convention game where you can get strangers together and quickly playing a fun cooperative game!

Drop Bears: Drop A Little Horror in Your Life! A Review of Drop Bears

Drops Bears is a cooperative survival (horror) game that was on Kickstarter back in July 2022: see here.  This promised delivery in April 2023, and it just arrived ay my house a few weeks ago in late August 2025.  That’s right, it’s over 2.5 years late! Ooof.  Even for Kickstarter games, that’s not great.  But they did deliver!  So, kudos for that!

This game is sort of an odd duck; it calls itself a survival game.  I’d call it more of a horror game where survival is a big component!

Was this worth the wait? Let’s take a look!

Unboxing and Gameplay

This is a pretty thick game, but it has the Ticket To Ride box profile.  See above for scale.

The first thing you are met with is the “put the box back” and “build sheet”.

Why is there a “build sheet”? You have to build the little tower that holds the tiles.  Oh yes, this is definitely a tile-laying game. Sort of (see below).

Building the tower wasn’t too bad; it wasn’t nearly as hard as building Sauron’s Dice Tower from Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship from a few weeks ago!

It fits pretty well back into the box (but see below).

The Drop Bears are the horrific creatures you are fleeing from in this game!

These miniatures are utterly fantastic.  I love them so much!

The miniatures are by far the coolest thing in the box. I don’t even feel like you have to paint them; they are pretty terrifying as they are!

The players each take control some camper: see above and below.

There’s 10 total; 2 of them are for solo play (the companions).

Players run away from the Drop Bears; each bear has its own flavor/character.  And by flavor/character, I mean ways it eats you up!

Players have to keep track of health and heart-rate; lose too much health and you die!  Have your heart-rate go too high, and you panic/run away!  Luckily, you have equipment (like the very Australian Vegimite Toast) to help the players.

Players explore the tiles and have to survive the Drop Bears until Dawn.

There’s a little counter showing the progression of the game: see above! Campers act, bears act, campers act, bears act, etc etc … until Dawn (the end of the track).  If the players don’t die “too much” and they have enough survival points (to survive the Australian bush in the day), they win!  Otherwise, they lose!

It’s an interesting looking game!  See above!

Rulebook

This rulebook straight-up fails the Chair Test!  It’s waaaaay too big and droops over the edges!  There’s no way I can easily look stuff up on the chair next to me!

However, you can always use the “two chair” workaround; at least then it’s usable.

The Components page is very nice and shows all the components (except for the arm?)

The Set-Up page works well; it’s on two pages exactly, so I can set-up the game without having to turn the pages! Good job!

The “Index” on page 3 is NOT an Index; it’s a Table of Contents.  (An index is sorted alphabetically by keywords with references/page-numbers/hyperlinks to appropriate pages.  A Table of Contents is sorted by page numbers, listing the sections of the rulebook in order).  This mistake put a bad taste in my mouth, but it’s probably just me.

This rulebook was okay; it had big fonts and lots of pictures with some examples.  My biggest complaint about the rulebook was that it was too big; too many rules and the form factor was too big.

It does feel like like all the rules are here.

The rulebook also ends with a list of Icons!  Thank you!

There’s some good stuff to like in this rulebook; big font, good components and set-up, icons on the back, but the form factor and just general size of the rulebook was too big.

I learned the rules from the rulebook.  It seemed to work, but it is long and daunting.

Solo Mode

So, there is a solo mode (thank you for following Saunders’ Law)!  In fact, there’s multiple solo modes!  Huzzah!  The solo rules are presented on pages 26 and 27.

You can either play 2-handed solo (control two campers and just play the game as normal), or have one camper and a companion.  I am am gun shy about using “alternate” solo rules, (especially after Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship solo rules infuriated me), so I went ahead and played 2-handed solo.   Since my next activity is to teach the cooperative game, I prefer to learn the game WITHOUT too many exceptions!  Learning it 2-handed is the best way to learn how the game is meant to be played cooperatively.

I ended up playing the Hippie and the Cheerleader.

It was fine. It taught the game.  I survived the bears. And it was quick.

Cooperative

We played a 4-Player game.

It moved pretty quickly.

At the end of the day, it didn’t feel very cooperative.  A few times, we cooperated so that we’d end up on a search space so we all benefited, but generally, each player wants to be as far as possible from the others!  Multiple players on a single space will ALL get attacked, so it’s really in everyone’s best interest to be separated!  Many cooperative activities (sharing, swapping stuff) have to be on the same space … and it’s hard to stay close.  So, we can’t cooperate very much.  We kind of just did our own thing and stayed away from the others.

The game moved quickly though; we enjoyed how quickly the game does move.

Vibe

This is a horror movie.  It’s a horror movie with tile-laying and panic-ing!  But, everyone will get eaten by bears.  Seriously, you will get attacked by a bear almost every round or every other round.    You have to deal with it!  It feels like a horror movie!!! No matter what you do, YOU WILL GET ATTACKED.  And at least one person WILL PROBABLY DIE.  But’s that okay!  This is a horror movie!  And that’s what happens in horror movies.

So, you can’t play defensively and just run away.   The Drop Bears will drop on you and will attack you many many times.

This game really nails that horror movie vibe.

Randomness

There is a lot of randomness in this game.

Axis 1: Attack dice … when the bears attack you, you typically have to take 4 dice of rolling.  You may get light damage, or even nothing, or you may get ravaged!  You can reroll dice with survival points, but it’s just a reroll, not a guarantee.  And you need survival points to win!

Axis 2:  Search dice!  When you go looking for items at locations, you have no idea how long it will take to find something!  Maybe only two turns if you roll well!  Or never if you roll poorly! Let’s be clear, these items can make a huge difference in surviving.

Axis 3: The tiles you when you “Scout”.  If you go a direction with no tile, you randomly pull a tile and get a random tile!  You could get a Park Ranger’s Hut or something bad!   There is no “look” option without moving! If you want to expand the map, you must just move to a random tile and hope it’s good!

There’s only 3-axes of randomness (we saw arguably 5 axes in Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship), but the game just feels a little too random.  Maybe that’s okay because the game is short and it is very horror movie vibey!

What I Liked

The miniatures: The minis for the bears in this game are SO COOL.

Art Vibe: I don’t necessarily love this art, but I think it fits the vibe of the game. That cover (see rulebook above) think presents an accurate “feel” for the game: This is a horror game!

Quick: Once you know the game, it’s pretty quick.  That 30-40 Minutes is pretty accurate.  And it doesn’t take “too long” to get the sense of the game.

Disambiguation:  The cards for each bear do an EXCEPTIONAL job of indicating who they will attack when they drop.  Me and my friends all liked that the rules were very clear on WHO got attacked!

Death: It’s sorta funny that “even if you die”, you can just re-spawn and keep playing.  The game “expects” death, and that’s sorta funny.  I mean, it’s a horror movie, right?

What I Didn’t Like

Set-Up: the set-up is a little clunky, especially at step J/K!  I had to kind of figure out what that meant, which meant kind of paging through the rulebook.  It felt like this could have been simplified.

Can’t Repeat Actions!  Eh?  You only have two actions per turn, and you can’t do the same one again?  YOU WILL FORGET THIS RULE because it doesn’t seem very thematic!!! Why can’t I search twice?  Why can’t I run twice?  Whaaaat?  This rule seemed … dumb and athematic.  Yet, I don’t think I can offer a house rule because I really do think this game was play-tested with this “no repeat” rule, so I feel like ignoring this might break the game.

Only 1 Actions Card???  WHY is there only one Camper’s Action card??? In a 4-Player game, this was very annoying.   The best thing I’ll say is that the Camper’s Action card became our first player token because we passed it around on players turns!!  It seems dumb there weren’t more of these.

Why Can’t You “not do anything”?  The rules are very clear; you MUST do two actions.  You can’t just “do nothing” on your turn.  And why the heck not?  That seems SO ATHEMATIC!!! How many horror movies have you seen where the chased just stops to let the bad guy run by? Or tries to hide?  We just worked around this by allowing a “Heal” or “Rest”, even when you were all full up. (This exception seems dumb).

The Tree doesn’t QUITE fit:  The tile-tree doesn’t QUITE git back in the box; see above. The edges of the hexes push up just a little and cause the top to jut out just a little.

Too many rules:  This, fundamentally, is a simple game about running from Drop Bears and getting beaten up.  Yet, the rules are 32 pages!  In a big rulebook!  There seem to be too many rules for what is essentially a very random game.

No Look?  This is a cooperative tile-laying game, but there is no notion of just “looking” ahead; you just get what you get!  I don’t love that; it doesn’t seem like it would be too hard to add a “look” action to the game so you can be a little more discreet when you move. This, I would argue, SHOULD be a house rule.

Reactions

Sam: 5.5/10 using the BoardGameGeek system.
Andrew: 6/10
Teresa: 5.5/10 or 6/10
Rich: 5.5/10 or 6/10
Basically, me and my friends had fun playing Drop Bears, and even though the game was a little random and messy, at least it was quick. None of us hated the game, but none of us loved it.  The general sense overall was that it was ok, but maybe it needs someone who really likes horror games … it does have a good vibe for a horror movie!  That’s just not our thing.

Conclusion

If you like Horror Movies and are looking for a game that really captures that vibe of a horror movie, I think you’ll really like this game.  Drop Bears really nails the horror movie vibe! The game is quick and thematic with amazing miniatures, and that may be enough for you to just love this game!

It really felt like there was a need for refinement of rules (can’t repeat actions, no empty action, can’t look) to make the game just a little more simple and streamlined.   There just felt like too many rules for what is fundamentally a pretty random game.  But, at least the game is quick.

I think Drop Bears really nails the vibe of the Horror Movie, but it just didn’t land for me and my group, but it might for yours.  We’d probably give it 5.5 or 6/10, but the horror movie vibe, quick play, and AMAZING miniatures may take this to a 7 or 8 for your group.

Firefighters on Duty: Real-Time Fun from Someone Who Never Played Project Elite!

Firefighters on Duty is a cooperative real-time game for 1-4 Player about being firefighters putting out fires and saving civilians!  This is a game all about rolling dice and moving firetrucks as fast as you can! This was on Kickstarter back in Nov/Dec 2023.  It promised delivery in November 2024, but it arrived at my house in late September 2025 … so it’s almost a year late.  Well, at least it made it.

Apparently, this is similar in many ways to the original real-time game Project Elite!  Project Elite (see BGG link here) was a real-time cooperative game where players moved around and rolled dice … but players killed aliens instead of fire!  Firefighters on Duty is by the same designers as Project Elite, but BGG does NOT list it is as a re-implementation … so it is different.  Unfortunately, I have never played Project Elite, nor do I have access to it, so we can only discuss the Firefighters on Duty by itself.

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing/Gameplay

See Coke can above for scale.  This is a pretty standard sized board game box.

Each player takes the control of one of four firetrucks: red, blue, green, orange.  And yes, everyone wants the red firetruck first!

Of course you need water to put out fires, and water in this game is represented by little blue dice!  See above! When you try to put out a fire, you roll the blue dice!

You carry water in your firetruck, and you decide (when you fight a fire) how many water dice to roll!

Each Location has a little blue water drop; in order to take out a fire at “this location”, you need to roll higher than this number!  See the 3+ and 4+ above … if there’s a fire there. you need to roll 3 and above (or 4 and above).

The game is controlled by action dice!  You can only do what the action dice tell you!  Each player has two dice (the solo player has three), and they are just constantly frantically re-rolling these dice for each 2 minute chunk (4-minute chunk for solo player).  What do these dice do?

Firetruck: move any vehicle one space.  Besides your firetruck, there is also a water truck (to bring more water to you) and an ambulance (for wounded civilians) that you can move
Water: Add one water to the fire station well
Fireman: Move one of your firemen (carrying one thing only)
Gear:  Do an action; usually try to put out fire, but sometimes chip with axe or turn off electricty.

The game lasts six rounds (the round marker is in the Hospital above).  During each round, you have a two minute spurt of activity where you roll-and-execute-as-fast-as-you-can!  A timer marks the time (on your cell phone, the game doesn’t include a timer).  After the real-time phase ends, you have to suffer the consequences of what you couldn’t get to (fires burning, fires exploding, people dying).

Fire is represented by little red wood markers on the board.  There is a little bit of a Pandemic element to the game as spaces with “too much fire” can spread to itself or adjacent spaces!

How are fires set-up initially?  There are 3 scenario booklets (see above), one for each of the player counts!

There are multiple scenarios per book for some variety.  Each Scenario (see one above) shows how to set-up the map and how to put out the people, fire, and hazards!

Guided by the scenario book, you set-up fires, fire hydrants, hurt civilians, hazards, trapped civilians, and the general map!  See above!

Your goal is to put out all fires (usually) and save civilians! You are “docked” points for things you don’t do, and as long as you have a positive score AND have put out all the fires, you win!

The game is all about getting your firetrucks and firemen to the dangerous places!  You can’t put out fires unless your firemen and connected hoses (back to your fire engine) are on fire spaces!

This game is about rolling as fast as you can to get your firemen and firetrucks to the right space!

The components are all very nice and very readable.  They have to be!  You are looking at stuff in real-time and can’t second guess yourself!

Rulebook

The rulebook is a little daunting at a 20-page large rulebook for a real-time game!

The game gets about a C on the Chair Test: see above as the pages droop over the edges when I try to put the rulebook on the chair next to me! Luckily, the font is pretty big and the pictures do a good job of describing things.

The components page up front is good. See above.

The game set-up starts …

.. and then goes to the next page!  Set-up is a little bit of a bear in this game.  Your first time through, it might take you a good 1 to 2 hours JUST to set-up!  Luckily, once you get going, it goes much quicker.

The rulebook is good enough.  The game does have a lot of rules for a real-time game, but don’t worry; it does sink in pretty quickly once you’ve played a game or two.

In general, this was a pretty good rulebook except for the form factor.

Solo Game

Perhaps a little surprisingly, the game does support solo play (thank you for following Saunders’ Law!).   The solo play is not true solo play; you will be taking control and operating two firetrucks.

The solo rules are outlines near the back of the rulebook (see above).  Basically, the solo player has to operate two firetrucks, but has twice as much time per round (4 minutes instead of 2 minutes).

The solo player also gets three action dice (instead of two); it makes it a little easier to roll what you need.  The solo player also gets one more scenario point, and “failures” by the solo player cause fewer deductions for scenario points.

The solo player gets twice as much time because he has two firetrucks!

Let me tell you right now; you will almost certainly lose your first game.  If there is ever fire on a space with wounded civilians at the end of a round, you just lose.  See above.

That first game is ALL ABOUT learning how the systems work;  you learn that trucks can block other trucks (the hard way: “MOVE THAT TRUCK! I gotta get up there!”), you learn how to put our fires, you learn how to move the firemen, you learn to think about how to stock the truck, when to use the water truck, etc, etc, etc.

In my first game, I would stop the clock a lot to look up rules. “Okay, I moved my firemen.  How do I put out a fire again?”   To be clear, there are a fair number of rules and you won’t get everything the first time you play.  I think it’s totally fair to stop and start the timer as you learn the game.

It’s sorta funny, when you lose …  you feel like the experienced Fire Chief is looking back at you and saying “Ok newbie, what did you do wrong?”  Then you realize all the things you did wrong.  There’s actually quite a bit of strategy in the game!  When do you bring out water trucks? When do you return? When do you bring out ambulances?  How do you deploy trucks so they don’t block each?  How do you deploy firemen so they can reach all the fires?  There’s quite a bit of strategy here that isn’t self-evident when you first hear “Oh, this is just a real-time game”.  Nope!

The biggest mistake I made in my first game is setting up the game on one side of the table. See above.  Nope nope nope nope nope.   The problem is that you need to kinda “move around” and “be flexible” as you roll, and place stuff!  Being constrained and squished behind my chair caused me to lose precious time.

In my second game (and believe me, after losing horribly in your first game, you WILL want to play a second game), I set-up around the edges of the table, making sure all chairs were clear so I could easily get to all sections of the board!  See above!  Much more mobile!

And all the stuff that you have to deal with “between real-time rounds”? I put out of the way, away from the action. You DO NOT want these cards and others tokens to get in the way while you are playing!

For the record, this scenario still didn’t “quite” fit around the table!  You need a LOT of space to play this game!  The fire stations (see above) are supposed to be longer, but then they don’t fit on the board!  You may find yourself adjusting the map slightly so it still fits on your table.  So, yes, this game takes a LOT of space!!  Both ON and AROUND the table!

In the end, I won my second solo game (after lots of readjustment), but I still remember stopping the timer at least once to look at the rules.  It’s gonna take at least two tries to get this game.

Let’s be clear; I wanted to play a second time to try to win!

Like usual, I think it’s important to play the game solo before teaching it.  There’s a lot of rules, and it’s better to have a sense of the game so you can teach it and run it.  A lot of questions come up when playing, and I think it’s ok to be able to “stop” the timer occasionally to explain the rules.

Cooperative Play

Teresa and I played a 2-Player game!

After learning my lesson in my solo games, I set-up the table so we could both people could stand easily around the table.  And yes, Teresa wanted the RED firetruck.  I think you need to prepare yourself for people fighting over the red firetruck in the cooperative game 🙂

After a few rounds, Teresa got the game!  Before each round, we’d discuss our strategy: “What am I doing?  What are you doing?  What are you concentrating on? ”  And then we’d start the real-time part of the round, and roll-roll-roll!  We’d deal with the consequences of our actions: watch fires consume stuff, and start with a new strategy for the next round!

We did lose our first round (the ambulance blocked the street and the firetruck couldn’t get through), so we had to learn from our mistakes!

To be clear, we played second game because we WANTED to!  It was fun, and we wanted to learn from our failure, and we wanted to set the course right!

The real-time phase tends to be a little more multiplayer solitaire, as each player concentrates on their region/responsibility, but later in the game, you both realize you need to coordinate in real-time phase to handle fires that are far away!  (One truck with two men isn’t quite enough for some of the faraway fires)  This seemed to work well; as we got our “sea-legs” for the game, then we started realizing: “We need to cooperate more”.

There is a quite a bit of cooperation in this game!  In between the real-time phases, players work together to come up with strategies to defeat the fires!  And players start being multiplayer solitaire in real-time phase, only to realize they have to cooperate in the real-time phase in the later game!

This is a game where cooperation really shines through!

Reactions

Teresa: I liked this! I wanted to play again!  I also liked this better than the other firefighter game we played (you can actually see the other game Teresa is referring to: Flashpoint: Legacy of Flame behind us above!)  Firefighters on Duty is probably a 7.5/10?

Rich:  This was different than any cooperative game I played in a while!  I think the game is much more fun cooperatively than solo, but the solo game worked!  6.5/10 for solo, maybe 8/10 for cooperative?

Conclusion

So I went full in and got EVERYTHING for the Firefighters on Duty Kickstarter: see above!  And you know what?  I don’t think I’ll ever play the extra stuff!  I am not even sure I needed the sleeves (and they didn’t even give me enough sleeves??!)!  The base game has more than enough content for quite a bit of replayability!  If you are thinking of getting this game and you are considering the extra content, I’d hold off!  If you play the pants-off this game, sure, you can pick up the extra stuff later, but I don’t think you need the extra stuff!

This game really invokes a lot of cooperation!  You start off only cooperating in the non real-time strategy phases, but then end up cooperating intently in the real-time phases too!  As a cooperative game, this is fantastic!

Firefighters on Duty is quite a unique event!    When you play it, I almost guarantee you will play twice!  You will lose the first game, then want to replay it to redeem yourselves!  I didn’t expect myself to like this so much (since it’s a real-time game), but it worked really well!   The game started multiplayer solitaire, but the cooperation unfolded as we played more and more!

This is a really neat game; the solo game works well, but it’s not my favorite … but you absolutely need to learn this game solo beforehand to teach it!  And the solo mode works really well for that teaching.   The cooperative mode is really neat; 2 to 3 players seems best (there might be TOO MUCH going on for 4 players?).  6.5/10 for solo game, 8/10 for cooperative game.

I don’t want to play this all the time (real-time games sometimes require me to be in the right mood), but when I want a real-time cooperative game, this is a fantastic choice.

Forbidden Pandemic Island: The Card Game! A Review of The Four Doors

What do you get when you cross Pandemic with Forbidden Island and make a card game?  You get a cooperative card game named The Four Doors!

This cooperative card is designed by Matt Leacock (of Pandemic fame) and Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback (of many games, but the one I know best is Legends of Sleepy Hollow: See our review here).  The Four Doors is a light little cooperative card game for 1-4 players and takes about 30 minutes to play.  If you have played Forbidden Island (a light little cooperative tile-laying game) or Pandemic (a heavier cooperative game), you might be saying … “Heeeeeeey, this kinda feels like those games a little…” … and you’d be right!

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing and Gameplay

I ordered this directly from the Happy Camper website (the publisher) about 2 weeks ago?  It arrived fairly quickly (late August).  See above!  It looks kinda neat, but it’s relatively small!  See Can of Coke for scale.

The object of the game is, as a a group, to retrieve the sacred relics above!  Yes, they looks shiny because they are foil covered cards.  They are pretty neat! And yes, this “gather 4 items” kinda feels like Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert … you gotta collect some exactly 4 things and it’s an action point game!  (You only get 3 actions per turn!)

To win, you have to bring the 4 relics to the light house and turn it on to win!  (sarcasm mode on) This is COMPLETELY unlike Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert where you have to return to the launch pad to win (sarcasm mode off).

And you have to turn the lighthouse with a special card! It is pretty cool with that foil.

… just like you need to activate the helicopter/flying machine to fly away in the Forbidden Games…

Players each take the role of one of the characters above, each with a special power (yes, like Pandemic or the Forbidden games). But the powers are pretty cool and a little different.

To retrieve a card, you have to have and discard 4 cards of the same color at a door.  (Yes, more Pandemic and Forbidden analogies).  These are in a deck that you get 2 cards from at the end of each turn.

There’s some special cards you can use (spells) which you can play at any time (not just your turn), but then they are not discarded but put in place (the Hollow) where they (usually) can’t be brought back!

The Four Doors (that’s the name of the game, remember?) are laid out in a column: see above.  Your pawns move up and down the column and you can only retrieve a colored relic at the appropriate door.

So where’s the Bad News?  This is a cooperative game after all!  Every turn, the same cards that help you also come out and hurt you!  The same deck is used for both good cards and bad cards!  It just depends on which phase you draw them!! When drawn and played as Bad News cards, these cards “further open” the rift which may seal the door forever!    If you ever get 4 of these Bad News cards attached on one side of the door, the  doors gets half-shut … then closed forever!  If you haven’t gotten the relic out before the door closes forever, you lose!

The cards attach at the sides, depending on what’s at the bottom of the card: see above and below.

Three cards attaching to the doors should feel reminiscent of Pandemic …

Every time the good news/bad news deck recycles, the difficulty goes up: this chart (above) dictates how many of the colored cards attach to the doors in the bad news part of the turn!

If you retrieve all 4 relics and bring them to the lighthouse before the doors close forever, you win!

Solo Mode

Congratulations to having a solo mode!  (Thanks for following Saunders’ Law!)

The solo game is documented on page 9 of the rulebook.  This is a true solo game; the solo player operates one character (but see below).

The only real difference is that the solo player has another action they can take: Swap Adventurer!   This allows the solo player to invest in another character whose special power may help him accomplish a short turn goal easier!

So, I kinda put the adventurers off the side so I could see all their special powers.

I started my first solo game with The Summoner! See above! She makes it easier to get cards you need to get relics!

And I started at novice, and boy I crushed this game.  I didn’t need to start so easy!  I also never used the Swap Adventurer once because The Summoner was so good!  She just gets the cards I want from the discard, so I never needed another adventurer!!  I started thinking about “optimal ways” to use the Swap Adventurers to best effect, which I think might be fun once the game gets harder!

Luckily, it’s easy to adjust the difficulty level by simply getting more cards attached to doors per turn (see card above).  Instead of starting on Novice, I should start on Standard, or Heroic, or Epic…

I felt like the solo mode worked well.  I felt NO NEED to try this 2-handed solo (although it would be easy to); the solo mode seemed to work well. This is VERY UNLIKE the solo mode from Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship from a few weeks ago (see review here);  I did NOT like the built-in solo mode there! I do like the built-in solo mode here in The Four Doors.

I kind of dig that you can switch adventurers to really try some fascinating in-game power switches.  I am worried this may be overpowered, but hey, if it’s too easy, just adjust the difficulty!  It’s easy to do that!

Cooperative Game

The cooperative game went well.  We played as 4-Players.

The game is open-handed, which means all information is shared!  See rules above.  I love that shared information in cooperative games!  It makes it really easy to coordinate and talk.  “Ah man, I need a red card! Wait! I see you have one!! Maybe we should meet!” I personally think this shared-information type game is much more cooperative and interactive as players can talk strategy much easier if they can see everything!  Full information does have the downside that it can invite the Alpha Player to join you, but Alpha Player Syndrome is not a usual problem for my groups.  I suppose it is something to be wary of here.

The opportunities for sharing and doing clever card combos came up quite a bit!  Between the character’s special powers, the spells on cards, and special powers on relics, we were able to pull off some really cool combos!  And the discussion came from everybody; someone might see a special combo others didn’t see!  “We need to get that relic before the door closes!!! Help!”  “Oh! Use my TELEPORT!!”

There was quite a bit of discussion and cooperation; that was really fun for us. 

I was also pleased to see that everyone got a relic, which meant everyone had an “extra” special power.  These relics have pretty neat powers too … and they also help contribute to the conversations of combos!!

Overall, this was a hit cooperatively.  Everyone had fun, there was a lot of interaction and discussion, and the combos we pulled off made us all feel smart! 

Good times.

Reactions

Andrew: Fun, 6/10
Sam: Fun 7.5/10
Teresa: 7/10
Richie: 7.0/10 solo, 8.0/10 cooperatively

My rating was initially a 7.5/10 for cooperative play, but the more I look back on my experience with my friends, the more fun I realized I had as we played!

Which One?

Which game should I play?  The Four Doors is very much like Pandemic, Forbidden Island, and Forbidden Desert.  Where does it fit in with those?

I think it depends on what you are in the mood for.  From a complexity point of view, I think Pandemic is the most challenging and complex game, Forbidden Desert is next, The Four Doors, then finally Forbidden Island.  If you want a game that is little bit more than Forbidden Island, but not too much more, The Four Doors is a great choice.  To be fair, I think all of these games are great choices.

Conclusion

I should just called this review The Four Doors: The Forbidden Pandemic! It sounds like a forbidden dance of love! But it’s not; The Four Doors a cooperative card game that feels like Pandemic/Forbidden Island/Forbidden Desert. I do think it’s different enough from those games that you can buy it and not feel like “they are all the same game!”. I think The Four Doors is a nice cooperative game to bring out for someone who is just above Forbidden Island, but maybe not quite ready for Pandemic or Forbidden Desert.

This game is easy to learn, has a great table presence, and can be a jumping on point to learn cooperative games.  It’s a little more complex than Forbidden Island, but I think it can still be a pretty good starting point as a cooperative game.

Even though this is an “easier” cooperative game, the cooperation, interaction, and combos that emerge from the game will also appeal to more sophisticated gamers.  It’s a good cooperative game!

I’d say the solo game is good at 7.0/10, but the cooperative game is better! I’d personally give it a 8.0/10, but as a group, my friends probably average this at about a 7.5/10.  Still, that’s good!

Alibis: A Cooperative Word Game! Does it Get a Pass?

Alibis is a cooperative word game for 1-6 people: think Cooperative Codenames!

This is a game about guessing words cooperatively as a group.

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing/Gameplay

This is a very smallish game: see can of Coke above for scale.

Each player gets a little white-erase board to write a single word on (two of these boards of you play 2 or 3 players).

The white-erase boards are used to write a single word; players are trying to connect two “words” together (much like So Clover, where you try connect two words with one word, or Codenames where you give a word clue to connect some words together).

Each player is given some guys to alibi: in a 2-Player or 3-Player game, you get 4 guys.

The single words are supposed to provide “alibis” for two of the guys in the line up!  See above!  For example, “magma” (the + board, upper left) is providing alibis for guy 1 (“island”) and guy 7 (“dragon”).

So, you’d mark a + on the guy 1 and guy 7 on your board! You are keeping track of everyone who has an alibi!

Basically, there is always one guy that’s “the perpetrator” and you, as the players, are trying to alibi everyone else!  It’s a word guessing game!  Can you guess the perpetrator by alibiing everyone else????

This game really isn’t very thematic; the line-up with weird villains has nothing to do with the game.  It’s just a cooperative word-guessing game.  To be 100% clear, there is no real communications among players EXCEPT for the words given.  (That part is very much like Codenames, but not So Clover).

No Solo.

There is no solo mode for this; this is nominally a party game for 2-6 players.

Two Players

My 2-Player game with Don went great.  It works well, as you get 4 guys to alibi, so you have to provide 2 words!  You actually get more options in the 2 (and 3-Player game) as you can choose how to group your 4 guys into 2 groups.  There are 9 guys on the board (see above), and you have to alibi 8 of them!

2-Player worked well, it was fun.

Three Players

In 3-Player mode, like 2-Player, in 3-Player mode, each player gets 4 guys to alibi. See above as me and Caroline and Nathan play!   The difference is that there are more guys out on the board! There is ALWAYS must be one guy out (who is the perpetrator).  In the 3-player game, the players alibi 12 guys, with the 13th guy being the perpetrator! See above.

The 3-player game worked great.

Four Players

The 4-Player game wasn’t … quite as fun.  See above as me, Sara, Teresa, and Andrew play! It’s the same game but you only get 2 guys to alibi (instead of 4), which means you only get to craft one word!  There are 9 guys out, and the 4-Players alibi 8 of them.  See above.

This means you have to come up with a single word to connect two guys.  What does “stuffed” (above) mean?  I don’t know, and I wrote it!!!  And the two words (guys) you get may suck and have nothing in common.  Sure, this happens in Codenames a lot, but at least you start with many many words to connect! You only get “stuck” with two bad words at the end.  In this scenario, you only have two words!  Hopefully they will be easy to connect!

The 4, 5, and 6 player game all play like this; the players each get 2 guys to alibi which means they only get to write/craft one word.

Scoring

The scoring is a little wonky.  Every time you guess something correctly, you remove “heat” (see heat above) from the game!  The more your remove, the better you do!  At the very end of the game, you get told you how good or how awful you are by how mush “heat” you remove.

Eh, it’s nominally a party game, so the score doesn’t matter too much.

Conclusion

If you love Codenames, you will probably love this! If you hate Codenames (Joe, I am looking at you), you will probably hate this as well.

I think Alibis is better at 2 and 3-players, as the players get choices as how to group their 4 guys, so they can come up with better groups of 2 words.  The 4-Player and higher count game “works”, but it’s just not as fun; It like the worst part of Codenames when you have exactly two words that don’t have anything in common … and you don’t know what to do.

This is a fun game, but I’d recommend So Clover over this. I think So Clover is a stronger party game, partly because you have more words and more opportunities to connect things.  Probably more important is that in So Clover players can talk amongst each other, rather than just be quiet (like in Alibis).  That interaction is so much more fun in a party game.

Still, this is light and easy to get into.  It’s fun to play: I’d give this a 6.5 or 7/10 as a 4, 5, or 6 player game and a 7.5/10 as a 2 or 3-player game.

This would probably make our Top 10 Cooperative Party Games, maybe just not near the top.

An Epic Struggle! A Review of Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship

Over the course of a few weeks, I played Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship many many many times and different ways trying to find the joy and fun. I have to admit, it was an Epic Struggle! I gave this game way more chances than I should have because of its theme and designer, but I struggled with it. Follow me in my journey to see if I keep Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship in my collection or throw it into Mount Doom along with the Ring!

My journey to play Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship began back in January 24, 2025!  The game was up for pre-order on the Asmodee web site, and I pre-ordered with an expectation that it would arrive in late May or early June (as was the original promise).

Well, things changed (Asmodee had trouble shipping) and it didn’t deliver to me until Monday August 19th.  This was frustrating because I had seen SO MANY people put up reviews on BGG, and yet, as a paying customer who ordered early, I didn’t get mine until 7 or 8 months later.

I was very excited for this: this is a game in the Pandemic System (see above)!  What that means is that it’s not quite Pandemic, but if you squint, you can see the elements of Pandemic in the game!  I generally love Pandemic and its ilk (see reviews of Pandemic: Ibera, Star Wars : The Clone Wars Pandemic, and World of Warcraft Pandemic), but I have not loved all Pandemics (see our review of Freedom Five).  Will this be a good Pandemic or a bad Pandemic? (What a strange sentence)

Let’s follow this Journey!

Rulebook

The rulebook is very good and is the first thing you see when you unpack the game.  This rulebook gets an A on the Chair Test!

The rulebook opens up and stays open on the chair next to me.  The font is big, the pictures are well-annotated, and it’s easy to read on the chair next to me!

The Component page is well-labelled with pictures and text: see above.

The Game Board Features is really nice as you try to understand this world.

Generally, this was a good rulebook with a Table of contents (yay), but no Index (boo!).  The back of the rulebook shows useful info and icons.

There is one issue with solo rules that’s not well-specified (see below).

Generally, this was a good rulebook.

Unboxing and Set-Up: Building the Dice Tower!

Total time: it took me about 2 hours to unbox and set-up for my first game

See Box above with Can of Coke for scale.

The first part of the game unboxing was building the dice tower: this consumed about 20 minutes!  The directions are pretty good, but it was annoying.  Unfortunately, this was a little foreshadowing for the game itself.

In the end, the Dice Tower looks really cool (see above), but holy cow, this was kind of annoying to build.  Once you’ve built it, it does come apart easily and go back into the box (in 3 pieces: see below).

The board is a huge 6-fold board.  It’s very busy and very daunting at first glance: see above.  It does get better once you get to know the board, but, yes, it is very busy.

I was told by my friends who LOVE Lord of the Rings that this board is very accurate and consistent with the map at the front of the books. 

If you squint, you can see the Pandemic underneath!  The Region cards feel very similar to the player cards we’ve seen from Pandemic!

Just like Pandemic, there’s Events (of course, they are flavored for this universe).

The Skies Darken cards (above) are very much like the Epidemic cards from the original Pandemic!

Like the original Pandemic, you divide the deck into fourths and put one of these “bad news” into each part of the Region cards.  That way you get one Skies Darken at about every quarter of the game!

The true Bad News deck is the called the Shadow Cards; you get two (or more) per turn.  This is just like the Infection Deck from Pandemic.   There’s a big difference though!  If the Shadow Card to the left of the card you play is a red banner (see above), you activate the TOP part of card!

If the left card is a black Banner, you activate the BOTTOM part.  The bad news you get depends on the top card of the deck!  This can have wild swings to the game!

Like Pandemic, these Shadow Cards go to the top of the Shadow Deck and will come out again and again, whenever you draw a Skies Darken!  You seed the game with “troops” (not disease cubes) very much like the disease cubes.

If you’ve played Pandemic in any form, those Skies Darken cards will feel VERY familiar.

Every player will play TWO characters! Not just one! That’s different!

The characters should be very familiar to the LOTR fans! See above!

One characters gets 4 actions (like Pandemic), and other only gets 1 Action Point. That’s a little different.

With those 4 Actions (see documented above), you do things like Pandemic.  However, there are a lot of differences here!  This is where the game starts to drift from the original game a LOT more, as you can attack (with dice), capture Havens, Prepare, Fellowship!  There’s SOME Pandemic here, but the actions you get really are very different.  For example, you can trade in a card for token for hand-management reasons, but only at a Haven!

So I decided to start my journey using the Solo Rules/Set-up! See above as I operate 5 characters (well, 4 and 1).

Winning, as you might guess, is throwing the Ring into Mount Doom: see above, top right!  But before you can do that, you must fulfill the previous three missions!  Each of these missions (see above) is very different: Attain the Blessing of the Elves, Challenge Sauron, Sauraman Your Staff Is Broken!  This is reminiscent of Pandemic, where you had to stop 4 diseases!  Here, you have to fulfill 4 very different missions!  (There are actually a number of different missions to choose from, but you always have Destroy One Ring as the final mission!)

At the end of Day 0, I was pretty exhausted!  Putting together the Dice Tower and setting up the game took a lot of work!

The Set-up actually spans 5 pages!  That’s right, 5 pages! 

At the end of Day 0, I was too tired to move forward and play my first game.

It looks cool set-up on the table though!  See that Dice Tower!  That cool LOTR board!

Playing Solo Mode Using Two Kinds of Solo Rules

The solo rules are well documented on page 22.  See above! (And thank you for following Saunders’ Law!)  These rules are generally very good and very clear. One problem I had: it’s not quite clear if you can share the tokens between all 5 characters, … but you can sort of infer that you can (because when a single players plays two characters, they can share tokens); it should have been stated more explicitly. EDIT: Yes, the rule is there! I missed it, and I could have sworn I looked like 3 times. My mistake!!!

The solo player plays 5 characters … well 4 characters and (Frodo and Sam).   You choose 4 characters to play (although the rulebook suggests characters for your first few games), but you always get Frodo and Sam (since Frodo has to throw the Ring Into Mount Doom) as the fifth character.  Yes, Frodo and Sam is considered one character.

There is only one hand of cards for the solo player, so all the cards are shared among the 5 characters.  This is both boon and bane; you don’t have to worry about sharing cards (indeed, the Fellowship action which shares cards, is disabled in the solo game), but you also are stuck with the 7-Card hand limit for all characters.  

You move the little green solo token around (above) to show which character you are activating this turn; the character you activate gets 4 actions, and then Sam and Frodo get one action.  That’s right, Sam and Frodo always get one action and the other character gets four actions.

My first game ended in a loss after about 14 turns as my Hope went to zero.  That’s right!  If your Hope track ever goes to zero, you immediately lose!  There are MANY things that cause your Hope to suffer: Search Checks, Losing a Haven, running out of cards.   In other Pandemics , the end generally comes when the player cards runs out.  Every game of Fate of the Fellowship I have lost was because the Hope went to zero very early in the game.  It’s VERY EASY to lose via Hope in this game. You have to be very careful with Hope, and it’s generally hard to get Hope back (but not impossible).

It was very weird to me that I lose before I was even barely one-fourth through the game: I had only gotten one Skies Darken!

Although I lost because I lost Hope, generally my combats were terrible; I rolled poorly.

Nonetheless, I realized I had played a LOT of rules wrong.   You have to understand that there are lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of little rules in this game that you have to keep track of.  As someone who has played many many many games of Pandemic, I think I expected something more akin to the original Pandemic.  Nope!  This game is very different and requires you to bend your brain a lot more.

I was grumpy how hard I lost (as I said, I have played lots of Pandemic), but I realized how many rules I got wrong and things I missed, so my first game just got me the “feel” of the game; I should expect to lose.

My next solo game was a win, but I realized I STILL got a bunch of rules wrong.  

My third game was a complete loss in 3 turns.  That’s right, 3 turns! I got two “Shift The Eye To Frodo’s Region” and the Eye was there.  I had 5 search dice to roll, twice.  I lost because I lost all hope.  In turn 3.  That’s right, 3 turns.

I was ready to throw this game into Mount Doom; this games feels so messy and random.   Sure, I’ve had games of Pandemic go bad, but never this bad. Lost. In. 3. Turns.

I played a fourth game and lost after about halfway through the deck. By losing Hope of course.

I took a break to think about this. I realized that one of my problems was that I sometimes felt like I couldn’t do anything because I ran out of cards quickly.  This is because all 5 characters share the (7-card limit) deck.  When you have turns where you maybe don’t want to move (or can’t move), then you can spend some actions turning cards into tokens at a Haven.  With all characters sharing this hand, this “sometimes” action causes your hand to go to zero cards quite a bit.

So, I decided to play the traditional solo game: play the cooperative game two-handed, alternating between two players. See above.  After playing this way, I don’t think I can go back to the solo mode as written.  With playing 2-handed solo, I felt like I had more options (“how should I activate my characters? 4 or 1 or 1 and 4? Who should move?  Do I need to share?”).  Basically, the Fellowship option is important, but you don’t use it that much in a game—it’s generally better to have more cards in the 2-Player mode.

After 7 solo games, I think that the two-handed solo game is superior way to play solo. The solo player simply feels like he has more choice in actions (to choose how to divvy actions), more cards work with (spread over two hands), more mobility around the board (to deal with bad news as it pops up). To be honest, I didn’t start having fun until I started playing 2-handed solo.

I felt like the built-in solo mode might actually do the game a disservice. I kind of hated my first five solo games; it wasn’t until I went to the two-handed solo mode that I actually started having fun. If you had caught me in my first 5 solo games, this game would be burning in Mount Doom right now. I am someone who loves Pandemic, I am someone who loves Matt Leacock designs, I am someone who has played a lot of Pandemic in his life. Yet, the built-in solo mode almost caused me to hate this game. Caveat Emptor.

I recommend the two-handed solo mode.

Two Player

One of the things that convinced me that the 2-Player solo game was superior to the built-in solo mode was playing two players!

Over one Sunday, my friend Don and I played a 2-Player game and had fun!  Now, be aware that I had played many many solo games my this point, so I had the rules down, I had the strategy down, I had the teach down.  

I think we lost, but I don’t care?  We had fun: Don definitely knows like LOTR better than me and he thought it was fun.  He also reminded me that several of his Pandemic games went south in a few turns.  

It felt like there were more options in a 2-Player game. This cemented, in my mind at least, that the 2-handed solo mode is superior.

4-Player Game

So, after teaching the 2-Player game, we went into the 4-Player game.

The game was fun, but we saw more of the randomness emerge  It was also frustrating that sometimes players couldn’t do anything.  The muster action can only be done on certain locations IF you have friendship cards.  The Prepare action can only be done on a Haven.  So, if you didn’t have friendship or weren’t on a Haven (because you were out fighting), sometimes turns felt a little anti-climactic (as you couldn’t do much).

I was reminded by friends Charlie and Allison (after they played Pandemic Legacy: Season 1), that 2-Player Pandemic is easier than 4-Player Pandemic.  Usually because 2-Players can deal with Bad News “quicker”, as you only have to alternate players.  In a 4-Player Pandemic, the only person who can deal with some “bad News” is 3 turns away.

I think we saw this in our game of Pandemic; we came close to winning, but needed just a few more turns.  We didn’t “quite” deal with the Bad News as efficiently as we should have.

Did we have fun? Yes.  Did we love it?  No?  We liked it.   We would play again, if only to wipe the shame from our faces for losing.

Randomness

There are 4 major axes of Randomness in this game.

Axis 1: The Search Dice.  These must be rolled whenever Frodo travels (if he can’t sneak), or if a Shadows card forces a Search roll.   The number of dice depend on the number of Nazguls in your region.  See above for all 6 faces.   If you roll an “evil tree” (see above), you lose Hope.  Remember, if your Hope goes to 0, you lose.  You can re-roll some dice, at the cost of some resources.  They are re-rolls, not guarantees.

Axis 2: Combat dice. See above for all 6 faces. The red faces mean the bad guys lose a troop. The white faces mean the good guys lose a troop. A particularly bad roll can wipe out all the good guy troops and completely screw you. You can re-roll if you have a character in the region, at the cost of a ring. You can use swords to eliminate bad guys if you still have anything left (if you have a character there).

Axis 3: Shadow Cards.  What bad news do you get?  Even though the Shadow cards go back to the top of the deck (like Pandemic), the bad news you suffer depends on the next card at the top of the deck.  That little difference almost adds an extra axis of randomness.

Axis 4: Cards.  Which cards do you get? In one game, I waited 10? 12? 14? turns and could not get a sword!  See above! This basically meant my mission to win Isengard was thwarted and wasted time/resources.

This 4-axes of randomness (5 axes if you count the extra randomness of Shadow cards) can be debilitating.   There are ways to mitigate this, of course, but sometimes you just get screwed.  Pandemic kind of only had the 2-axes of randomness, and it felt plenty hard.

Be aware.  This game is much more random than the original Pandemic.  It may be too random for you.

Conclusion

It’s hard to recommend Fate of the Fellowship.   The extra randomness (relative to base Pandemic) inherent in the game with the Search Dice and Combat Dice can really bring your game down.  I also think that the recommended solo mode is flawed; and I think it will do a disservice to players if they decide to start with that. If you do want to play solo, I recommend 2-handed solo: you will feel like you have more options and more choices.

The game also feels like you can’t do things sometimes; you can only muster at hubs, you may only prepare at Havens, you may not move Frodo unless you either sneak or roll search.  The game feels like there are a lot more constraints on “useful” things you can do you on your turn … because there are more constraints, I think part of this experience is just realizing how important Havens and hubs are and getting used to that.  But, it “feels like” you can do less and that can be frustrating.

It took me almost 6 plays before I started having fun and figuring out the game works.  There are a lot of complex systems, there is a lot more randomness, there are many more constraints on player actions.  It may take you a while to really get this game; it has a huge learning curve.

Having said all that, Fate of the Fellowship is incredibly thematic, with the map, the missions, the special powers, and the characters!   All of my friends who love Lord of the Rings really feel like they nailed the game.

So what’s my final recommendation?  If you love the theme, you can probably suffer through learning the rules and love this game.  If you are a Lord of the Rings fan, you will probably enjoy this world despite all the complexity and randomness.  Losing is just excuse to embrace this universe and game some more!

If you just like Lord of the Rings, be aware that this game has a huge learning curve, a lot of complexity, and a lot of randomness! Much more so than base Pandemic.  If you can get past all that and learn the game, you can come to like it, but be aware it may take quite a number of plays to get to that point.  However, if you have a good shepherd (someone who knows the game and strategies), those first few games can be much more fun: my friends all had fun playing right away because I had done all the painful prep work.

My final score is a range: 4 to 7 out of 10.  That’s a huge range because I hated the extra randomness (that’s the 4), but when it was fun, it was fun (that’s the 7).  So am I keeping it? Yes. 
Be aware this probably won’t work for you right out of the box; you may have to live with it.

Was this a good Pandemic or a bad Pandemic?  It was a Grey Pandemic.

Top 10 Cooperative Roll-and-Write/Flip-and-Write Games!

When most people think of roll-and-write games, they think of games like Yahtzee!  See above!  Players roll dice, mark things off a sheet, and try to get the best score to win!  Surprisingly, there have been a considerable number of cooperative roll-and-write games over the last few years! That’s right! Players roll dice and cooperatively mark-up sheets to solve/win together!  Now, flip-and-write games are very similar; instead of rolling dice, you flip up a card to show what you are dealing with.  It’s the same idea, it’s just the randomness is a deck of cards instead of some dice!  

Below, we list our Top 10 Cooperative Roll-and-Write Games!  We also rate each game from 1 to 5 on how cooperative it is, with 1 being “multiplayer-solitaire” and 5 being “very cooperative“!  We also note if the game works solo: surprisingly, not all play solo!  Most roll-and-write games are about getting the best score you can collectively, but some have a more precise win condition!

10. Legends of Storm City


Supports Solo?  Yes
How Cooperative? 2/5
Player Count? 1-4
Print and Play? Only means available
Type?  roll-and-write
Win Condition? Defeat all Elite Villains or Deactivate the Main Plan

This roll-and-write has a special place in my heart, because it was the first print-and-play I have ever done!  And boy, was it a learning experience!  It also has a cool Superhero theme!

In the end, I liked the game a lot more that my friends; so that’s why this makes the bottom of our To 10 list.  

I liked the way this looked, and I loved the Superhero theme!  Take a look at our review of Legends of Storm City to see if this is something you might like!

9. Mmm!

Supports Solo?  Yes
How Cooperative? 2/5
Player Count? 1-6
Print and Play? No, must buy box!
Type?  roll-and-write*
Win Condition? Mark off all the food!

This is a little bit different than most roll-and-writes on our list: it’s intended for kids 5+, so it’s pretty simple.  The kids roll the dice every round and mark off food before the cat reaches them!  The cat only moves if some piece of food isn’t completely marked off, so kids have to learn when to push their luck and when to stay!

This is also a little different because the “write” part of roll-and-write is “mark-with-a-token” rather than write-on-a-piece-of-paper.  See above.  But it’s the same idea: you are just marking up a board!

It’s also interesting that the board is shared cooperatively among all players, so players will need to talk to help each other “set-up” the board for them on their turn!  This is a Renier Knizia game for kids, but it is kind of a neat little roll-and-write kind of game, even if it’s not “quite” roll-and-write … more like roll-and-mark!

8. Roll or Stand: Forbidden Adventures

Supports Solo?  Yes
How Cooperative? 1.5/5
Player Count? 1-100
Print and Play? Only means available
Type?  roll-and-write
Win Condition? Make it through all 4 puzzles on a page!

This roll-and-write has 4 puzzles per page, and has a “blackjack-like” mechanism where you push your luck to get more actions and more directions!  But if you get a number that busts, you lose an entire set of actions!  

Each player has their own sheet and uses the dice as given to them, so it’s mostly multiplayer solitaire!  There is a mechanism for sharing, but resources are so limited in this game, we found that we didn’t really use the sharing too much! That’s why it’s 1.5/5 for cooperation … this is a mechanism, but we found we didn’t really use it!

Still, there’s a really neat physical aspect to this roll-and-write as you have to use the numbers marked to move around one of the four puzzles!  See above!  All-in-all, this is a pretty neat roll-and-write game!  See our review here of Roll or Stand: Jurassic Adventures to see if this might be right for you!

7. Mission Control: Critical Orbit

Supports Solo?  Yes
How Cooperative? 4/5
Player Count? 2-4
Print and Play? No, must buy box!
Type?  roll-and-write
Win Condition? Success in mission!

This is an interesting perturbation on roll-and-write games: First, there’s no solo play!  This is only a 2-4 Players game! Second, one player (Mercury) hides information behind a screen, and the other 1,2, or 3 players each operate some other boards!

This is also a polyominoes game, where the Mercury player has to fill in a grid!  It’s a weird cross-section of roll-and-write, hidden information, cooperation, and polyominoes!  But it’s really fun!

6. Escape: Roll and Write

Supports Solo?  No (but you can simulate solo my playing as-if it were a 2-Player game)
How Cooperative? 2.5/5 
Player Count? 2-4
Print and Play? No, must buy box
Type?  roll-and-write
Win Condition?  Collect enough gems and all players need to be on their end space!

Those of you who know the original Escape: The Curse of the Temple game might be confused by this: “There’s a roll-and-write Escape game?”  Yes! 

It even uses the same dice as the original Escape game!  This roll-and-write is all about the active player rolling dice, using them to move around the temple, and the remaining dice are used by everyone else!  So, there’s some cooperation and discussion about which dice the active player takes!   It’s not super cooperative, as each player moves through their own board separately, but there are still some elements!

This game didn’t take the world by fire, but it’s colorful and fun!  See our review of Escape: Roll & Write to see if this is a game you might enjoy!

5. Luddite

Supports Solo?  Yes
How Cooperative? 1/5 
Player Count? 1-100 (1-4 in base box, but you can keep expanding)
Print and Play? Yes, but there is also a boxed version with really nice components!
Type?  roll-and-write
Win Condition?  Move your hack marker to the end, making sure you do enough damage along the way!

This game is probably the least cooperative and least interactive game on this list!  It’s cooperation is really to average the scores of all players and make sure that average exceeds a threshold to win!  That’s the only cooperation! 

Other than the averaging scores, this game is pretty much multiplayer solitaire!  See above! So, why did this make our list?  Firstly, some people can suspicious of cooperative games: this is a first game that’s easy for people who want to put one toe into the water of cooperative game!

Secondly, this game has quite the story, in either graphic novel or movie form (see above)!  This story really keeps everyone involved in the game!   Luddite can be a real interesting experience if you let it!  See our review of Luddite here!

4. Zombicide: Gear Up

Supports Solo?  Yes
How Cooperative? 3/5 
Player Count? 1-6
Print and Play? No, must buy box!
Type?  flip-and-write
Win Condition?  Take out the Big Bad!

This is a gorgeous flip-and-write in the world of Zombicide!  The components are really great with nice dry-erase boards and cards!   This game is very thematic, as it simulates zombies invading your personal space! But in a flip-and-write game!

Each player deals with zombies on “their board”, but can help out their neighbors (on adjacent boards) using ranged weapons!  This is surprisingly cooperative as you have to decide (with your group) who takes which zombies, and when to use your limited resources to help your neighbors!  

Zombicide: Gear Up went over surprisingly well with our group!  It really felt like zombies were invading … in a flip-and-write game!

3. Roll For Great Old Ones

Supports Solo?  Yes
How Cooperative? 2/5 
Player Count? 1-4 
Print and Play? Yes, but there is also a boxed version with really nice components!
Type?  roll-and-write
Win Condition?  Take out a Great Old One!

Players roll dice and must each choose one of the dice to use on their sheet!  The cooperation comes out in having players decide, collectively, who gets what dice!  After that, each player focuses on their own board to do things!

The art is a little odd, but this game is surprisingly thematic! This game made our Top 10 Solo Games of 2023!  Check out our review of Roll For Great Old Ones to see if this is something you might like!

2. Find the Source!

Supports Solo?  Yes
How Cooperative? 3/5 
Player Count? 1-3 
Print and Play? Yes, but there is also a boxed version with really nice components!
Type?  roll-and-write
Win Condition?  Find the Source! … then get the best score you can.

Find The Source was a game from Kickstarter; it was originally a print-and-play, but the Kickstarter upped the ante and delivered a very nice production with nice art and high-quality board!   See above!

The solo game is quite fun, but the cooperative has players sharing resources easily for one action point.  There’s still a lot of multiplayer solitaire on your own board, but the sharing of resources and hacking inspires a lot of cooperation and discussion!

This was really fun to play!  It even made our Top 10 Solo Games of 2023!  See our review of Find the Source to see if this is for you!

1.  Super-Skill Pinball: Ramp It Up! (Pin Pals)

Supports Solo?  Yes* 
How Cooperative? 5/5 
Player Count? 1-4 (but really only 2 or 4 players for Pin Pals)
Print and Play? No, have to buy box!
Type?  roll-and-write
Win Condition?  Get the best score you can collectively: it’s pinball!

This is a weird choice for #1 for many reasons!  First of all, there’s only one cooperative scenario of the four in this box!  That is the Pin Pals game! The rest of the scenarios are solo/competitive!  Second of all, the cooperative game is really only for 2 people (although you can have two groups of two playing at the same time), so it has limited playability!

Despite these limitations, this was our favorite cooperative roll-and-write game!  You mark off things to help your compatriot all the time as you are playing!  The game moves so quickly!  It feels like pinball!  This was very interactive as we both played pinball on our own boards, but talked as we tried to give each other bonuses!

The wrestling theme was goofy, but worked really well as we “tag-teamed” each other, marking off bonuses for each other as we played!  Even though there is only one cooperative scenario in the box, it was worth it!  I highly recommend the Super Skill Pinball system and the Pin Pals board as a cooperative roll-and-write!  It just moved along so quickly and cooperatively!