Murders of the retail variety

[slipjig3]

Van Ryder Games: Hey!
Me: Hey yourself.
VRG: Lookee! Final Girl board game!
Me: Ugh, pass.
VRG: Solid horror themed content!
Me: Hard nope.
VRG: Designed specifically for solo play!
Me: [stops mid-syllable) ...I'm listening.
VRG: Infinitely replayable!
Me: I've heard that one before.
VRG: With expansion sets out the yin-yang!
Me: [scoots chair closer] Go on....
VRG: The packaging is also the game boards!
Me: Keep talking.
VRG: That you can mix and match!
Me: [audible whimpering noise]
VRG: And you can create custom cards right on our website!
Me: [carefully keeping hand away from wallet pocket in desperate attempt to retain some modicum of sensible control] Okay, hang on, expansion sets cost m-o-n-e-y.
VRG: Yep.
Me: So I—
VRG: Under 20 bucks.
Me: ...fuck. [whips out debit card Annie Oakley-style]
VRG: Told ya.
Me: I'm getting ONE. Base set and one—ONE—scenario. Period. I mean, I don't know if I'm even going to like th—

[45 minutes later]

Me: [screaming into phone] WELL THEN WHO DOES BUY BLACK MARKET KIDNEYS? I HAVE NEEDS.


(Seriously, I was not expecting to go all in on this.)

Comments

[rubian77]

Solo play? How's that work?

[slipjig3]

You're basically given a Final Girl to play as, a horror movie location (summer camp, abandoned hospital, space station, etc.), a bunch of non-player victims scattered around, and a Big Bad who targets both them and you. There's a set of cards that allow you to move, attack, rest, and search for stuff; you have a time budget each turn, which you use to attempt the actions you have in your hand and buy cards for the next round. Each one of these actions is subject to a dice roll: good roll means things go well, bad roll means things go wrong. As the game progresses, the Big Bad's blood lust rises, making them stronger and faster at each step, and there are cards that bring about Bad Things Happening and a fluctuating horror level that affects how many dice you get to roll, but you can also rescue victims to get benefits of your own. Kill the Big Bad, you win. Big Bad kills you, you lose.

But the omigod cool thing is that each scenario you buy comes with two Final Girls, one location, and one Big Bad. Each Final Girl has a different set of benefits and talents, each location has a different set of additional rules and variations and items to find, and every Big Bad has a different set of evil powers and possibly minions to make your life harder—and you can mix and match them all you want, which completely changes the game. So if you want Laurie Strode from Halloween fighting Freddy Krueger in the Antarctic base from The Thing, you can totally do that, and now you're facing a whole new set of challenges. It's a solo board game that feels like a full game, and not like it was just kludged together as a stopgap for when your friends can't come over.