Initiative review: a genre-bending board game with lots of tricks in its genre

In recent years the house has exploded with a series of escape room games Exit: Game Simulating the experience of being locked in a room to solve puzzles with your friends. The initiative There is a new tabletop game from an experienced designer who wants to take that model to the next level. The result is a multi-level board game in the form of a found object, complete with a mystery. This is unlike any experience I’ve had before.

The initiative It is a big deal. It is inaugurated by the unexpected games of Corey Konzekka. He is known for 13 years of prolific design work in fantasy flight games, such as crafting absolute classics Star Wars: Rebellion And this Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game board game. But this game feels fundamentally different.

inside The initiative Alternative reality is a type of role-playing game. It conceals players in the role of teenagers of the 1990s who have discovered a strange puzzle game key At a yard sale. Each of the 14 missions draws players deeper and deeper into the form of a fascinating book, touted as a comic book. It is a high-concept game that expresses a sense of expert surprise and amazement.

This is accomplished primarily through layered immersion. First, you and three other friends will sit down to play key. The goal is to raid a secure office building for files. It is quite light with 30–60 minutes of playtime. The challenge mainly comes in managing the intersection of multiple tasks with one hand of the card. To perform an action – such as going to the next room or crawling one of the files – you need to run one of these cards in a stack.

Here is where it gets a little tricky. Each card has a number between one and 12. On your turn, you should play a card with your hand, the value of which was higher than before. Communication is limited, and each scenario is on timer, creating a wonderful sense of tension between collaborations, mimicking real-world escape rooms.

But this is the first layer of the Nifty Co-operative Strategy Game The initiative. In fact, this may be the weakest part of the entire experience.

I had several missions in the story when the first major revelation occurred. with key And a comic, The initiative Also comes with a deck of secrets that players can only see when instructed. The reward for completing this mission was a specific secret card, but there was a strange series of symbols all contained in it – a cipher! There was intense discussion around the table. After a moment I raised my fist in the air and asked to be quiet. The set of encrypted characters kept staring me in the face and I knew what the game wanted us to do.

Ruffling through cards that were part of our last few games key, I realized that many of them had mission cards attached to them. Each placed a piece of cipher on this new secret card. Things took a stranger turn when a decoded cipher prompted me to question the motivations of a character who was lurking in the margins of the comic. This tether connecting the meta-story key The narrative was a real and entertaining moment for the comic. I will not make it worse, but be aware that similar moments recur throughout the campaign, each adding meaning to the new momentum.

Cooperative board game key There is an anchor to that pace, but the story expands and revolves around it. As you gather additional information from each mission, spectacular and unexpected connections will be made between the various elements that focus and form a unified whole.

Many of these connections are physical. Some of these surprises we have already seen in other house escape rooms, such as the secret components hidden inside the game box. but The initiative Some tricks I’ve never seen before, including an absolutely shocking experiment that required modifying a key component in the box. It was long after the campaign was complete, sticking with me and the box was emptied.

The risk with this type of narrative puzzle boxes is always that the gaming group moves away from the rails, skips a step, or otherwise breaks the flow that the designer created for them to follow. Konieczka is a very sophisticated design, with surprisingly few avenues closed to groups. The puzzles are not esoteric, but they manage to warm the sense of cleverness gained through collaboration.