Interviews and Playtesting - a Perfect Combo
Visit them at www.nobthegame.com
We absolutely had to make time to speak with Eye Level Entertainment. Not just because they make great games but because they won the Game of the Year Spewgie in 2007 for Nature of the Beast (NOB) and followed that up with a 2008 Best Board Game Spewgie for Estimated Time to Invasion (E. T. I.) and we wanted to see how things were going and try to get information on their next endeavor.
Mark Anticole, always full of energy, was demoing Nature of the Beast when we walked up to talk with him. This was a “drop by” interview but no matter what we have a rule. Business first. At Spewgilist.com we’ll rip your game or product apart if it sucks but we’ll never interfere with a sale. After all, our reviews are indisputably (by us) the best in the industry and are amusing to write and informative and entertaining to read but exhibitors at conventions are there to cover costs, get the word out on their product, and interact with as many consumers as possible. We know it’s hard to believe but people do not exhibit at conventions merely to talk to Spewgilist.com.
Hey, we were a bit shocked to find that out too, but we adapted and are moving on.
Mark finished the demo which concluded in a sale of NOB and we spent a few minutes catching up. Nature of the Beast is still doing well and there are plans, on the horizon, to expand the game further. Estimated Time to Invasion is tracking well and half of the first printing run of the game has been sold thus far. Perspective retailers should contact Alliance Games Distributors (http://www.alliance-games.com) to make certain they get the copies needed to fill their store shelves. You can take a little break from this article to do so now.
So with both games doing well and with two award winning games in different genres, what’s next for Eye Level Entertainment? A family/party game, of course.
It’s not that late and you didn’t misread anything. We said a family/party game and that’s what we meant. The game is, at its heart, a resource management game. “Whoa,” we can hear you thinking (did we mention how amazing we were?), “how can a resource management game be a party game?”
Seriously, did we just imagine that you asked that? Don’t you know that almost every board game is a resource management game? Where have you been? Monopoly? Chess? Risk? OK, perhaps Risk is a bit obvious.
ELE’s entry into this genre goes by the working title of Flat Acting and while it is still in the development and play-testing phase, Mark was good enough to sit down with us and let us take it for a spin.
The components of the game are fairly straightforward. There are four (4) board pieces which can be fitted together in a variety of manners by matching doorways. Within the assembled game board there are rooms worth 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, or 12 points and there are internal doorways on the boards allow movement from one room to another or one board to another. Also, there are a total of 50 tokens, 10 for each gene (Western, Detective, Romance, Horror, and Crew) each of which has a value from 1-5. And then there is the card deck that has two cards for each token value and a few special cards that allow, well, here’s a surprise, special actions.
The premise of the game is simple: The ELE studio only has enough money to make one (1) film and there are four genres hoping to get their best ever script into that slot. Each player will work for one of the genres, trying to maneuver members of the various genres over the board to control key points, each worth a set number of points, with the final goal being control of the highest total value of control points.
Although the values of the various rooms on the board never change, the board is modular pieces and can be connected via the doorways to create new scenarios and layouts. Marked doors connect the pieces and the rooms on the individual boards, giving you pathways and bottlenecks and dead ends you can use to foil and annoy you opponents.
There’s that word annoy. For some reason it brings a smile to our lips.
During actual play, there is a slight twist. You do not have a hand of cards, you do not have any secret plays; rather everyone plays from a common deck. What this means is simple. On your turn you draw a card and play that card, unless it’s one of the special cards mentioned above. If it’s a special card, set it aside and continue to draw until you get a playable card. Each card will have a picture of two characters from a genre and their point value. If neither character is in play you must choose a character from the card to put into play on a spot of your choosing. The token you place on the board cannot exceed the value of the spot, including any tokens currently residing.
Now, now, it’s not that hard to understand, we just are not explaining it well.
It’s like this. You draw the Cowboy (Western genre) who has a point value of 5 and place him on a spot worth 6. Western now has control of that spot. But let’s say you’d dropped him on the spot worth 12 and there were two other characters already there, the Director (Crew genre) worth 5 and the Statue (Horror genre) worth 2. The Cowboy and Director cancel each other out since they are the same value so now the Statue controls the room AND no other characters can be added since the point value of the room is met. You can never exceed the point value of a room.
This is a great play for the Horror genre, and quite the pickle for the Crew and Western genres.
Now, if a token pictured on a drawn card is in play, you can choose to move that token via the connecting doors, just so long as the place you move the token can handle the value of the piece. If both tokens are in play and a card is drawn with a picture of the token on it, it’s time for fist-a-cuffs as someone is cheating.
You can use the special cards to move tokens, lock and unlock areas, and generally annoy folks, always a good choice, and while they can be powerful they are rarely decisive.
An added level to the game, which we fully embraced, is to make up dialogue when you place a token. The romantic with flowers and the Zombie? There’s got to be a story there somewhere and it’s up to you to tell it before someone else jumps in. You’ll get no points for style, but at lease you’ll have style. After all what’s winning the game without first demonstrating your superior wit and intellect?
Game play is quick and fluid. A six (6) person game took less than 30 minutes to play. Pugilist won but we believe that’s because he cheated by some nefarious but yet unknown means. We’ll track it down and let you know about it later.
Flat Acting is slated for a 2009 release. There’s some additional play testing work to do, some update and extension of the art, and some variant rules that may be tweaked or added but the Spewgilist crew had a great time playing the game and could not identify any major flaws.
The game itself will act as a gateway game for your family. You can introduce it to them at a family reunion, get them interested, and then move onto NOB and ETI and before you know it they will be paying your way to Origins so you can see all of this stuff live and in person and meet the great folks behind the games you love.
And then you can meet us and your life will be complete.