Actualol Newsletter - February 2024 (Patreon)

Allo allo actualollers!

I’m taking a break from my big Top 10 Games of 2023 video to bring you a newsletter. This month, I’m providing the antidote to that upcoming video by giving you my NOT 20 - twenty games from last year which I wouldn’t recommend.

I’ve also got an exclusive video coming very soon - my Top 20-11 games video will be a patron exclusive release, much like my Top 100 video series last year.

I apologise for the delay in getting my Top 10 Games video to you - it’s always the biggest task of the year, in the shortest month (leap year though, yay!). And it’s been a difficult time of sleep, illnesses and allergies for baby Aurelia lately, which has made everything a bit harder.

NOT 20 - Twenty Games from 2023 I didn’t like

Disclaimer: These are my raw opinions on these games - they’re not carefully considered reviews, so take them for what they are.

Freelancers: A Crossroads Game

I don’t feel any agency in this game to control my destiny - it just feels like a very complicated way to listen to an audiobook with friends. And like all of these types of games, you’re not the protagonist of the story - you’re a silent tagalong, and the characters who actually go on a journey are the fixed, voice acted ones. I’d rather play a real roleplaying game, where the story can adapt to our choices and characters.

The Art Project

This co-op game felt so mechanical to me. None of the theme came through in the gameplay. The icons and resources and dice rolling all felt so soulless, and it has such a transparent balancing mechanism. And sure, it functions - but a game needs to be more than just a cube-pushing exercise. I’ve scarcely been so disappointed by a co-operative game. It’s light years behind Burgle Bros as thematic immersion goes.

Deep Dive

I can’t hate a simple push your luck game. It’s a neat design - I like the set collection that makes you want to carry on and get certain fish. For me, it lacks some interaction with the other players. I’d rather play PUSH or something bigger like Diamant, in which the other players have a reason to care about what you’re doing. But I much prefer it to Deep Sea Adventure which I tried again recently and is just so comically punishing that I can’t understand why anyone likes it.

Noobs in Space

This felt like an innovative design - very similar to the app “Space Team”, in which you’re communicating in real time what you can see on your cards and completing challenges together. It’s a bit repetitive, you complete similar challenges in each mission. And it’s a bit too whimsical for my tastes these days. Good for kids, I think. I’d rather play Perspectives, a more involved co-op game about communicating what you can see, which is mercifully not played in real time. (Video coming soon!)

Havalandi

A Reiner Knizia tile-laying game with a shared board felt like an easy win, but this one was really “meh” for me. I didn’t think the dice rolling added anything other than extra admin, and I found the tile placement restriction annoying compared to Blue Lagoon or Through The Desert which I much prefer. The interaction also felt more accidental than something you could really consider and fret over.

Sunrise Lane

I was hyped for this Reiner Knizia/Horrible Guild collaboration. They made some clever additions to the old design which make it much better, but they weren’t enough to make it worth keeping around. There’s not enough room for forward planning with the luck of the card draw. It just feels too thin to be worth your time over something like Ticket To Ride.

JokkMokk: The Winter Market

I was totally unimpressed by this game - a set collection game that involves walking round a market picking up cards, a la Toikado. The different card scoring mechanisms were really dull. I felt none of the tension of Parks. It was as light as Sushi Go but with so much more faff, and less fun.

Art Society

This auction game in which you collect art and put it on your wall felt like a bunch of solid ideas that didn’t come together to produce an interesting game for me. The auctions weren’t tense enough - you’d either bid high because you wanted something or low because you didn’t. The art placement was fairly prescriptive - and with no way of knowing what’s coming up, you just have to make the best decision at the time. Compare it to something like Ra and the excitement I get from them is night and day.

Dice Manor

This felt like a good idea - taking the dice mechanism from Las Vegas to win rooms to add to your manor. But in this more complicated game getting outbid has a much bigger impact, which makes it more frustrating. I didn’t mind this one, but after playing it I question whether it’s needed - Las Vegas is more fun in less time.

Sky Team

I’ve played this 2 player cooperative game about landing planes a lot, trying to find what everyone else loves about it. To me, it feels like it’s testing my ability to pay attention and not much else. I don’t see any space for strategy - if we lose, it’s either because we made a glaring mistake-  forgetting to do something vital, or we just couldn’t get the dice we needed. Perhaps that’s hubris on my part - but the game is so “on rails”, that I can’t point to “well, if we’d gone down this path, we might have won” like with other co-op games.

Faraway

This card game has a unique feel because you score your cards in reverse order from when you played them. It’s hard to describe, but it feels unusual because it works differently to what you’re used to. And I didn’t really take to that novelty - it feels like a designer’s experiment. There’s a reason card games aren’t usually like this, and that’s because it’s less fulfilling - at least for me.

Skyrockets

I loved the sound of Skyrockets, which takes the simple real-time sandtimer game of Kites, and adds different levels that change the rules slightly, making it different each time. But I realised my hype brain doesn’t understand my normal brain, because when it came down to it - all the added faff of learning new scenarios, some weaker than others, just wasn’t worth it. I don’t want 20 mild iterations of the same thing - I want one solid game that works every time - and I already had that in Kites.

General Orders

I should love General Orders, an incredibly distilled 2 player war game, in a small box. But for me, it’s so tight and so balanced that there’s little joy to be found. The margins are so small - you get 6 cards, I get 5 cards - I get 6 troops, you get 5 troops, that hardly anything happens. A neat distillation it might be, but I need more excitement in my war games - like I get from Blitzkrieg.

Lacuna

Lacuna impressed me by its ingenuity - it’s strikingly different as a design. It’s a 2 player game that plays with space - you must put your pieces near to coloured flowers to try and win them by simply being the nearest to them, physically.

It totally works as a game, it just didn’t quite get me going. It’s harder to explain why with a game like this that works mostly on vibe. I wanted to care more than I did. I really respect that it exists, and perhaps this is just my blindspot, like how some people don’t click with The Mind.

Timeline Twist

This is Timeline reimagined as a cooperative game - it’s okay, but it doesn’t need to exist. It’s more fun as a competitive game, and this one is more complicated. Even worse is that the cards aren’t compatible with the original. You can still play the old game with them though - so there is that.

Romi Rami

This is a modern twist on Rummy - and it’s a very solid, simple card game. You’re trying to complete objectives, and there’s also these trophies that you’re competing over, like having the most objectives of a certain suit. I like this game, I’d happily sit down and play it again (which isn’t true of most of these games), but it didn’t grab me beyond that. But I’m also not a Rummy aficionado, so I’m probably the wrong audience.

The Same Game

This party game from the designer of Wavelength and The Mind is better in theory than in practice. You have to come up with an object that is the same as another object, but only in one specific way, such as Length, Price, Quantity Worldwide. It’s an interesting challenge but one that really invokes analysis paralysis to think of the perfect clue. And unfortunately the game is just too fiddly to run to be a successful party game, compared to Wavelength which is really smooth. A near miss.

Pan T'Es Mort

One of the worst games I’ve ever played. Just a complete luck fest with no decisions. Certainly not doing any favours for the wallet game community. This game shouldn’t exist.

Acquire and Big Boss

These are both long, stock-market games about building real estate that originally came out decades ago and were reprinted last year. Acquire inspired Big Boss and I think the original is the better game. But both are guilty of being influenced by luck of the draw that undercut their strategic money-making pretensions. I wouldn’t recommend either.

Song of the Month - Not Strong Enough by boygenius

I won’t spoil what games I’ve been playing - because they’re all in my Top 10 and 20 videos!

Actually yours,

Jon