Author: Shaun

This week’s lunch is Doom Machine by Nathan Meunier.  It’s a solo dice game which was on Kickstarter a few years ago, but can still be bought as a print and play. This version of the game fits neatly into a mint tin, making it highly portable.  The premise of the game is that you need to defeat an ever-evolving machine that wishes to wreck death and destruction on humanity.   It’s incredibly tough to win, I’ve never beaten it but then again maybe that’s just me playing badly! 

How it plays 

There is minimum set up to the game – take it out the tin, and place the two cards that track your health, and the machine’s sentience. Find the machine’s core then shuffle the rest of the cards (these represent the different parts of the machine. Remove 6 cards and put them back in the tin, then add the core to bottom of the stack of the remaining cards. Turn over three adding dice to represent their HPs, and you’re ready to go.   A turn consists of you rolling your dice and try to utilise them to both damage the machine and protect yourself from it. You begin with only 5 dice so choices at the start are limited and as a result a little angst-ridden.  Aside from assigning dice as damage by matching a die to the required symbols on a card, you can also use them to act as shields or activate things such a reroll or adjust the die number.  Your dice pool grows if and when you beat parts of the machine. Once you have taken your turn the machine makes its move usually doing you damage or making itself stronger.  To represent its actions the dice on each card moves along a track. This lets you try and plan for what the machine will do each turn, thus hopefully allowing you mitigate damage etc.  The good news if you survive the machines turn, you start a new round, the bad news is that each round a new part of the machine is added thereby giving you another thing you have to deal with. And so the game continues, if you survive until the last card is turned over then you reveal the machines core, defeat that and you win. 

Good for lunch?  

Being a game in mint tin it’s perfect for playing at desk be it like me at home or if you have to go into the office (it’s a small and not heavy tin so easy to transport.).   Even when all the cards of the machine are in play it doesn’t take up much room.  There are a few icons that you need to get to grips with but game play is easy, roll and use dice, move the machine’s dice then rinse and repeat.  It’s an easy but fulfilling gameplay especially when the dice roll in your favour.  Since the game has a random set up with random cards removed it means each game provides new challenges as the machine is built in different ways. That said, this random order can be very frustrating when the tough cards all come out first! Any game based on dice throwing can have an element of frustration, even with the game’s inbuilt way of mitigating throws there’s little you can do if you throw a bunch of ones and twos and none of the cards bear that number.  Games last around 20 minutes with a growing sense of tension as the machine gets closer to its core and you foolishly think that this time round you’re going to finally defeat it.   As they say ‘it’s the hope that kills you’  so if you like your dice, false hope and a chance to save the humanity from annihilation then Doom Machine is pretty good lunchtime fare. 

Lunch this week is FateFlip: Washed Ashore by Alley Cat / Red Cat games. It’s a game built upon the choose your own adventure mechanic and centres on you being the survivor of a shipwreck who has been ‘washed ashore’. The game is basically a deck of 68 double-sided cards split into three chapters that create the story and you interact with them.   It’s a game I dip in and out of from time to time as I have yet to discover all 13 of the possible endings! 

How it plays 

There is a very small bit of set up, which includes separating some of the cards and assigning your resources for the first chapter. These are safety, energy and food which are shown by the neat use of the paperclips on one of the cards. Be warned! Should, during gameplay, either energy and food end up at zero you face dire consequences. 

To play you simply have to navigate through the cards, each has a little text relating to the story and then the different options you can take. This usually means flipping card in a set direction depending on your decision. If you’ve played Palm Island or more lately Kingdon Legacy Feudal  Kingdom then you’ll be familiar with the action.  You can see it in the photo below, which is part of the first card of the story to avoid spoilers. Depending on your decision you’ll likely exhaust some of your resources, but hopefully gain items etc to aid your survival. Your aim is to make it to the end of chapter three. 

Good for lunch? 

The box states that each chapter should take around 35 minutes which makes it ideal for a lunchtime gaming fix, and given for the most part you simply have a small hand of cards it’s ideal both for portability and  for playing at your desk.  So tick tick there.  You might find it a little annoying at first as there are a number of icons you need to know, and the instructions to the game are a little short (though fair play for trying to have a small instruction book!). As I said at the beginning of the review I dip into it every now and then as I know I have to yet to discover all the endings so from that point of view there is a certain level of replayability. However the more I play it the more I find myself led by what I have done previously i.e. I remember a decision so deliberately take the other path or knowing that taking path X will lead me to jeopardise a resource level I deliberately take the other path. I feel this impacts on my enjoyment of these further plays.  That said, it is a small game deliberately designed as such and retails at a price similar to one shot type games so it’s understandable that there are some limitations. In that light for a bit of lunchtime escapism you can’t really go wrong.