We haven't been writing much recently. The store has been super busy and us owners have been packing and shipping your orders. We are playing games though. Currently on our gaming table we have Return to the Dark Tower which we backed on Kickstarter a few years ago!
This is a reinvention of the Dark Tower game published in the early 80's. This edition was spearheaded by Isaac Childes (Gloomhaven) and Rob Davieu (Risk Legacy, Pandemic Legacy). It has quickly become one of our favorite games!
We enjoy cooperative adventure games and the thing about Return to the Dark Tower is that they have so many scenarios you can play. When you setup the game, you choose who the main companion is to help you on. your quest and you choose the main adversary. This combination of companion and adversary is what makes each game unique.
The game comes with an inpressive 16 inch tall tower that not only looks amazing on the gaming table, but also connects via bluetooth to the game's app, which we run on an iPad.
The game's structure is pretty straightforward. Each Scenario takes place over the course of 6 game "months". The first month allows each player to have a turn, then it moves to month two. From then on, each month consists on 7-9 turns per player depending on the number of players and the app. What do I mean ..."and the app"? well the app varies the length of each month. Each month (except for the first) you have not only the main objective of the scenario but also a companion and adversary objective to complete.
In the scenario we're playing, we have to get three caravans from one kingdom to a village in another kingdom. The way that works is our characters need to move to the caravan's location and perfrom a quest in the app. We tell it which caravan and it pulls up a "dungeon" screen - some scenarios have actual dungeons, this scenario uses the dungeon a little differently. There is one single path you must take and you must complete each in-app challenge to proceed. The challenges require you to spend warriors, spirit or items to proceed. Once you complete the route of the caravan in the app, you move the physical piece three spaces.
That is the main goal of the scenario we chose, however as mentioned before each month you have to complete other objectives. We also played using the Monuments expansion, which adds more complexity to the game. The physical miniatures for each monument are impressive and highly detailed.
So why did we choose to revisit a game instead of playing something new? Well, like you we don't always want to read a new set of rules every time we sit down to play. Sometimes we just want to jump into something familiar. We absolutely love this game especially how the tower interacts with everything. It even "laughs at you" (insert evil laugh) if you fail to complete a task.
We do have a Retail copy of this in the store (our version is the Kickstarter) if you want to give it a shot!
We will try and write more over the coming weeks. We can't guarantee we will write much, but we will try.
