Review: The Perfect Heist

Yet another of the games I've backed on Kickstarter has arrived, this time it's The Perfect Heist.  On the surface, this is a heist movie flavored Munchkin, but after playing it, you'll realize that it's much more than just that.  Players cooperate or compete in various heists to earn Notoriety points.  The game ends when any player has been involved in a certain number of successful heists and at that point, the player with the most Notoriety points wins.  Each heist has a difficulty rating (that also determines how many Notoriety points it's worth).  Players build an Ability deck with a series of traits (Quick Thinking, Pyromaniac, Brute, etc.), weapons (brass knuckles, guns, flamethrowers, etc.), kit items (rope, ladders, high tech cameras, etc.), and a specialty (Driver, Gunman, Technician, etc.) to improve their ability to tackle the more difficult heists.  If a heist is too difficult for a player, they can recruit other players to join them on the heist by offering them a cut of the loot or Notoriety points the heist gives them or cards they already have.  Other players (even ones on the heist) can try to sabotage the heist to make them fail.  If a heist fails, the leader of the crew (the player who started the heist) has a chance to escape (by rolling a die) and if that fails, the player(s) with the least amount of Notoriety get to take some of their cards.

The part that makes The Perfect Heist so much more fun than Munchkin are the History cards.  History cards give you a special advantage targeted at one other player (e.g. your Sabotage cards are more effective against the targeted player), but the fun part is that you start to build a story between you and that other player.  Maybe that other player left you for dead.  Further twist, maybe that player was also your ex!  Further twist, you were family members with another player who was cuckolded by your ex who left you for dead!  As the game goes on and you play more and more of these History card, the story developed by them just gets more and more entertaining.  The game is for 3-6 players and technically you are supposed to only play History cards with the players sitting to your right and left, but if you can manage to keep track of how the various game rules affect you, there's no reason why you can't build an intricate web of ridiculous backstories with all the other players.

This game is easily worth the $35 it costs on their website, even if you don't care about your games building their own story, but for people like me who love it when a ridiculous story develops while you're out-negotiating and out-thinking your friends, this game is fantastic!

PlaneQuest Kickstarter

My dream future involves a wonderful combination of tabletop gaming and video gaming.  The closest I have seen to the future I envision is this Settlers of Catan on the Microsoft Surface.  One problem with that is that a Microsoft Surface is super expensive and difficult to get into my house.  The next closest thing I've seen is what the company TabletTop is trying to start with their Kickstarter for PlaneQuest.  Quick synopsis, they are developing a game for the iPad and other touch tablets that uses special figurines to control the virtual avatars.  I'll be perfectly honest, it's not the specific game they're creating that I'm supporting, but more the idea behind it.  Unfortunately, I get the feeling other people aren't willing to be so forward thinking with their money because this project doesn't seem to be going so well.

It was at £2,900 or so when I backed it over 10 days ago and it needs £150,000 total...this may be the first project I've backed that fails, but if it pops up again, I'd gladly help again to strive for this future.  Just imagine a world where you don't have to do any of the tedious board setup or having the game be able to compute things for you to make games go faster, but still getting cards and tokens and figurines that make board games so fun to play in the first place.  I guess for now I'll have to keep dreaming.  Either that or buy myself a Microsoft Surface...

Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter

If you have not already heard of this, there is a Kickstarter to make a spiritual successor to the old Infinity Engine CRPG, Planescape: Torment.  The people in charge of this are mostly people who worked on the original game, but due to licensing issues (and also in my mind because The Nameless One's story is already told), they are switching settings from Planescape to Numenera.

This Kickstarter has already broken a large number of records by achieving its goal in 6 hours, reaching $1 in under 8, and reaching $2 in two days.  It seems to be majorly slowing down now (possibly due to the weekend), and I think that needs to stop.  Both the original and this one have a focus on telling a deep story more than anything else, so all the extra money that goes in to the game will be spent towards making the story better and better.  If gaming is ever going to have its Citizen Kane, I think it's going to be in a game like this.  Also, on a more personal level, my brother, Adam, was a part of the original Torment game and they have gotten him involved in this one, too.  So the better it does, the more steady a job my brother has.

Lastly, I think it's important to fund awesome video games like this through Kickstarter because it not only tells publishers that gamers do want games like this and that we'll pay good money for it, but also funding games through Kickstarter helps free the developer from the chains of a publisher so they can make the game they want more than what the publisher says is popular right now.  The closer we can get to a video game business model with few publishers, the better.  I'd say no publishers, but I think they have their place as well.  I think there is room in this town for the the two of them.  Anyway, so if you haven't backed the game already, please do so!

Kickstarter Is Dangerous

Growing up I always saw commercials about getting out of credit card debt and TV show episodes where people got in trouble due to credit cards, so I always was smart with them and didn't understand how people could get into trouble with them.  Then I started backing Kickstarter projects and I started to see how it's possible.  No money is actually taken out until the end of the deadline and that's only if the project is fully funded.  Although, unlike credit cards, your reward is very much not immediate.  With the projects I back, it seems to take 3-6 months before I'll see any results from my money if they ever actually pan out (the first project I backed isn't going to have any product to ship until March of next year).  Once you're set up, it's also really easy to back any project because you just click a button and you're done.  Dangerous.

But in case anyone is interested, here is what I have backed so far:

• Brawl In The Family: Volume One - A physical book version of the first 200+ comics from the webcomic series, Brawl In The Family.  I just love the webcomic and what this guy to succeed in everything he does.  5x their goal achieved and funding is closed.
• Reaper Miniatures Bones - A new line of miniatures from Reaper Miniatures.  I love miniatures and games that come with them, but don't actually have any myself outside of the games they come with, so this was a cheap way of getting lots of miniatures (I think it ended up being like $1 per miniature or something) of all sorts of types.  This should be great for prototyping in the future or a D&D game or something.  114x their goal achieved and funding is closed.
• Project Eternity - Isometric RPG in the vein of the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dales series.  I have always had a love of Black Isle Studios and Obsidian Entertainment is where most of those guys now work, so I support them in all they do.  Plus, my brother was a part of making Planescape: Torment and this is its spiritual successor, so I really want it to succeed (and I also want to get my brother involved somehow...).  Over 2x their goal achieved and rising.
• Lost Valley - A board game about the Klondike rush in the North.  A lot of the mechanics in this game sound similar to another game I'm designing, so I'm curious to see how the game works.  Plus, it looks like a pretty fun game.  1.5x their goal achieved and rising.
• The Perfect Heist - A card game about being the best thief out of your band of thieves.  I have always had a weakness for thief protagonists - Oceans Eleven, Thief (the PC game), etc.  This game looks like it really captures that feeling wonderfully and the gameplay mechanics sound similar to Munchkin, so it should be loads of fun!  Over 3x their goal achieved and rising.
• Mr. Card Game - A deck building adventure card game based on the Kingdom of Loathing.  The game itself sounds fun (from the few details we've really gotten), but I was a big fan of Kingdom of Loathing years ago, so I'm a fan of something that comes from that universe.  Who doesn't want to be a Disco Bandit or a Pastamancer?  Over 6x their goal achieved and rising.

Brawl In The Family

One of my absolute favorite webcomics is Brawl In The Family.  First off, it's all Nintendo-based humor (generally related to Super Smash Brothers Brawl, hence the name).  Secondly, it's all very family-friendly humor.  Thirdly, there are a ton of visual gags/puns.  For the most part, the comic is just a series of random gags that either make fun of something very video game-y:

or character specific things:

The first set are mostly about Kirby eating something and what happens to him afterwards:

But every once in awhile, story arcs will appear or the artist, Matthew Taranto, will compose and perform a song that goes along with a comic.  I think those are my favorite.

So, yeah, there's a reason I gladly supported his Kickstarter to make a book of his comics - which is the first Kickstarter project I've given money to.