Thoughts in the Dark

Escape the Dark Castle will not appeal to everyone and...

Read more...

bump

In the current design climate where every game gives you dozens of levers to pull and knobs to twiddle on your way to a victory point tally, this one seems to give you a single lever: dread. And it pairs this with atmosphere that you can cut with a knife. Hell, I don't own the game and I feel it from just looking at the art design.

And I really dig that.

I've gone all-in on Dark Sector but this has convinced me that I really should try out its predecessor, because I do enjoy this style & setting quite a lot.

Also, I've gotta say... this was really nicely written. Thank you.

This is a game for people who like to play rather than solve.

HiveGod wrote: This is a game for people who like to play rather than solve.

I very much play games in order to play rather than solve, and the same goes for my kids (7 and 10) whom I played this with. There is a lot to like - especially the art work and the size of the cards that gives it room to shine - but we ended up selling it pretty quickly.

first of all it's obvious that the game doesn't hold that much game. You rarely (if ever) make decisions that will impact neither the outcome of the game nor the flow of the story. Which can be fine - the combat system works pretty well and make the encounters feel more different that rolling towards a target number or some such would. But the real issue is that to us the game didn't make us feel the dread, the hopelessness or anything else much. Because in the end all encounters pretty much do the same thing: whittle away at your life points. So it's not until the end that you feel that stuff depends on your choice of who goes first or on the roll of the dice.

As I've said elsewhere I'm not trying to take anything from people who enjoy it. But this stuff about how you hate imagination or only play dry Euros unless you love this game is plain garbage.

And finally: I do appreciate the review and I especially like the notion of the game not having important decisions precisely because you are not important people. But personally I would have liked the game to feel more dangerous. Or to have the story be more important than it ends up being.

Fair enough. We approach this way more like an RPG than a board game, and much of what happens revolves around accusations of exactly why you were imprisoned on the Dark Castle to begin with, and the vehement denials and counter-accusations:

"If we're gonna get out of here alive it would be better if you really were the reason all those kids are missing... rather than just a simple tanner."

So we pretty much just argue a bunch and then fight while snot-crying and then go back to arguing.

That sounds like a lot of fun. But I don't believe anything in the game encourages that kind of storytelling.

Reading this again along with mads b.'s take makes me wish that Ignacy had considered this style of setting for the Robinson Crusoe sequel, rather than the boring Martian... thing he made. Or a haunted mansion in the vein of Steve Jackson's House of Hell. His basic model of action placement, delayed consequences, and those dreaded dice would be amazing in any of these settings. I'm always averting my eyes & taking a breath when flipping an event/adventure card or rolling the dice, knowing that I've done whatever I could in some self-deluding hope that I've "prepared" sufficiently, something that probably feels very similar in Escape The Dark Castle.