Prophecies have foretold a coming doom, can you travel forward through time to stop this future from happening in a 1 or 3 player cooperative game, ThreeTale by Boarderia?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/boarderia/threetale?ref=discovery_category_newest

Pros

• Thematic Game
• Time Travel
• Artwork/Aesthetic
• Cooperative/Solo

Cons

• Graphic Design
• Hero Drafting
• Player Count

The Page

This is a nicely done page. I like that they have a pretty big section on the game play, granted, it’s all snippets but it does lay out what is going on pretty well. Some of the wording on things has me a bit concerned though. They obviously have put a lot of effort into the game and gotten it into people’s hands, but some things make it seem like they don’t know board games that well. I put it as a con, “hero drafting”, I’ll talk about it more in the game itself.

It is interesting that this is a 1 & 3 player game. They make a point of saying that their “research” determined that 3 was the ideal player count. However, that makes it much harder to get to the table. If my wife and I want to game with another couple, this game is out. And really, since this is a game where you need to control 3 characters, it can be played with two just fine. You just need to know that someone will be controlling two character.

And finally, I do think that the art is good on this page. I like what they are doing and the feel of each separate piece. But I do not like the graphic design. While the graphic design does look functional, it doesn’t look modern. This again throws up a flag to me that this game is going to feel dated or limited in what it does. Now, I have no idea if that is actually the case, but the graphic design of the cards in particular, doesn’t instill confidence.

The Game

So, let’s talk about this hero drafting. There is no hero drafting in this game. You pick your heroes based off of the prophecies that you have. And the same with card drafting. You draw three cards and keep one. If I were then passing those cards on to someone else, that is drafting. I know I keep on harping on it, because the previewers seem to like it, but this game feels like the developers and designers need to play more games.

I am also worried about tracking everything for three characters. This seems, like I said, that it’d be a game that I play solo. And if my counting is right, I’d be keeping track of 39 different cubes on the players for different things. To me that sounds like I am doing some book keeping with this, which isn’t that fun. And I’m assuming these fluctuate some, otherwise why not make it simpler and just set numbers.

Back or Brick

You can probably guess, but this one is a Brick for me. It has a lot of positive comments from content creators who I trust to give a fair quote for a preview. But this just seems too busy for me and it has a cool concept but feels too small for everything it’s trying to do. If it weren’t for all those quotes, some of which are not really positive but just good sounding, I’d say this one gives me red flags. But, I think this will be a solid game, I’m just not sure it’s the right one for me.

How about for you is it a Back or a Brick?

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