Dark Souls at Salute

Last weekend I attended Salute 2016 with Marquee Models, as part of their boardgames demo team. I helped demo Zombicide Black Plague all day, but I did manage to sneak away from the table to make a few small purchases and try out Dark Souls.

The boardgame has been created by Steamforged Games Ltd, who have been working with Bandai Namco Entertainment to emulate the experience of the popular video game. I have not played the video game before, I am more of a Cake Mania or Katamari kind of a girl. The people around me playing the demo had played before, though, and they agreed that the boardgame captured the essence of the video game well, especially in the form of combat and the brutally hard nature of the game.

We played a quick demo of the game, jumping in at the deep end and confronting an end of level boss character; the dancer. It is a cooperative game (which is good as you need the back-up!) where you embark upon a perilous a dungeon exploration. Players take it in turn to move and attack. Each action you make depletes your stamina, which is shown on a nifty character card. You use a dry wipe pen to mark off the actions taken and to mark off your health when you are attacked. The stamina is on the left side of the card, and the health is on the right, but if they are all crossed off then you die! Luckily you can replenish health by drinking from your limited Estus Flask or replenish stamina by resting, so timing is a key element for survival.

The boss character we fought was controlled by a small deck of cards, all showing the boss's attack, movement, damage and where she will be vulnerable to attacks. These cards are reset once used up, and recycled, remaining in the same sequence so it is easier to predict the boss's actions. When the health was down to halfway on the boss things got crazy, an extra powerful card was added to the deck and it was shuffled to mess things up! I died fairly soon after that, and had to run back to my demo table before they sent out a search party. 

The kickstarter campaign for Dark Souls is launching today, you can check it out here.

Thanks for reading!

Marisa xx

Paradice Found

Last week I finally got the chance to visit Paradice; the new board games cafe in Bromley. After bowing out of work early, my partner in crime and I jumped in the car and drove through perilous traffic to reach the cafe in time for a few games and to check the place out. As we had limited time at Paradice we only managed to squeeze in a couple of games, but we also got to meet the Managing Director, Jason Grimwood, chat to other staff members and munch on some snacks before closing.

Paradice is large, plenty of room for gaming! Downstairs is the board games cafe and shop, upstairs has a nice set up of tables and scenery for war gaming and miniatures gaming. The cafe offers a good selection of hot and cold snacks, and scrumptious cake, of course. The board games library is quite large already, even though the establishment has only been open a few months. There is a lot of choice, with many different genres of games, and I wanted to play so many games! The ground area is spacious, and it soon filled up with people of playing and laughing.  

The two games we got to play were Ghostbusters and Click Clack Lumberjack. Being a Ghostbusters fan, I had been eager to play this and was happy to finally get the opportunity. I had heard of it being compared to Zombicide, so that made me rather excited too. Ghostbusters, by Cryptozoic Entertainment, has the same levelling up system as Zombicide, they are both cooperative games, they share the same movement and point system but Ghostbusters is much lighter and more predictable than Zombicide. The set up was easy, and the rules were simple to grasp, which was a bonus. I did enjoy the nods to the movie, my favourite being the symbols on the dice and gates mirroring the cards Peter Venkman uses to test his subject's psychic abilities. 

Click Clack Lumberjack by Justin Oh was an unexpected gem of a game! A fun dexterity experience where you get to swing an axe at a log. No, you should really gently tap the log! Players take it in turns to GENTLY tap the log with the plastic axe to allow bark segments to fall out, but not enough to knock the tree core out. Knocking out the bark segments will give you one point, knocking out a bark segment with a hidden grub inside gives you an extra point, and knocking out a tree core gives you minus five points. In one clumsily fuelled swing I managed to knock down the entire thing; an instant failure in the game but maybe good Lumberjacking in the real world? This game was easy to assemble, very easy to learn and extremely fun to play. I was surprised that we played it so many times, it is addictive and perfect for a very light session. I felt quite sad packing it up, as it meant the end of our boardgames cafe excursion and a long drive home.  

Bromley is where I grew up; I had lived there my entire life up until last year. The addition of Paradice is a fantastic thing for Bromley, it needs a place like that for people to gather and enjoy quality time with friends and family. Like all boardgames cafes, it reinforces friendly socialising and using your brain to have fun. 

Thanks for reading!

Marisa xx

       

Hey, you guys!

I am rather late jumping in on this, but I just had to give a shout out about The Goonies: Adventure Card Game, from Albino Dragon, that is currently on Kickstarter. The Goonies is one of my favourite childhood movies, that I still enjoy today. Combine the adventure and excitement of The Goonies with the thrill of a card game and you are onto a winner. The Kickstarter has smashed it's goal, raising over $49,201.00 so far, with just 52 hours remaining on the clock. 

The game is cooperative, you play as a lovable yet troublesome bunch of kids from the Goon Docks, just like in the movie, and you are in possession of the map that leads to the fabled One Eyed Willie's treasure. You and your team mates will be going on a treasure hunt, and will be hotly pursued by some really disgusting people; The Fratellis! Find One Eyed Willie's rich stuff, avoid the booby traps, survive the underground cavern and escape The Fratellis!

It sounds like a whole lot of fun, and it is greatly appealing with the nostalgia aspect. Check out the Kickstarter campaign here.

Thanks for reading!

Marisa xx       

Massive Darkness

Good news for folks who enjoy a good old dungeon crawl; there has been a new Kickstarter announced, coming out next year from the team that brought us Zombicide!  

The game, Massive Darkness, will encompass the experiences of a dungeon crawl RPG and include beautifully sculpted miniatures, like the ones created for the Zombicide games. 

In the tradition of a true RPG campaign, there will be an array of heroes to choose from, a class to decide upon and skills or traits to spend XP on. Then your heroes will be unleashed in the dark foreboding dungeon, to seek out their fortune and kill the monsters that lurk inside.

Massive Darkness uses the Zombicide system of gameplay, giving your designated DM or game master the chance to become a player rather than controlling the enemies and making the decisions. I doubt the game will be as sympathetic as my DM when I make bad choices, perhaps this is my time to stop with the bad decisions?

You can read more about it here. It is a while until it is released, but that is probably a good thing for our bank accounts! In the meantime, there is always Massmorra to look forward to this year, a dungeon crawling game published by Cool Minis Or Not and it looks fantastic. Being a huge Arcadia Quest fan, that game had to be backed on Kickstarter or there would have been trouble in my household.       

Thanks for reading!

Marisa xx