The overlord category of co-ops gets a decent amount of attention in Meeples Together, but we probably could have written a whole chapter on how overlords interact with the challenge machinery of a co-op game. Instead, we offer up this case study, our first to discuss an overlord game. It describes one of the foundational…
Team Study: Blood Bound
We’re coming up on the night of masks and false faces, so it seems appropriate that we’re talking about another hidden teams game (and one that feels like a natural successor to Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space, which we discussed two weeks ago). As it happens, we’ve played a number of hidden team…
Team Study: Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space
The hidden team games are an interesting adjacent space for co-op design, both for the cooperative mechanics of their team-based play and for the introduction of deduction, something that any traitors game could learn from. So over the rest of October we’ll be looking at a pair of hidden teams games. Escape from the Aliens…
Case Study: Forbidden Sky
Forbidden Sky was the game that we really wanted to include in Meeples Together, but it came out too late in the year for it to meet our schedule. So, consider this a true addendum to Chapter 4, where we offered case studies of Pandemic, Forbidden Island, and Forbidden Desert. Forbidden Sky by Matt Leacock…
Case Study: Pandemic — Reign of Cthulhu
By this point, there have been a shocking number of Pandemic games. Some slightly vary the original formula, while others move increasingly far away. We expect to look at most of them over time, because variations to an an existing system are one of the most intriguing ways to examine the evolution of a game…
Case Study: Onirim
We analyzed co-op games small and large while working on Meeples Together. Onirim was one of the smallest: a 78-card game for just two players in a teeny little card box. But size can be deceiving … Onirim by Shadi Torbey Publisher: Z-Man Games (2010, 2014) Cooperative Style: True Co-op Play Style: Card Management, Set…
The Betrayal Legacy Chronicles, Part Two
When we started playing Betrayal Legacy last year, I decided to chronicle the entire adventure, to detail how the game has changed over time, and how its co-op and Legacy elements worked. The Betrayal Legacy Chronicles, Part One discussed the first four adventures, while this continues this series with Chapters Four through Six. And this…
Case Study: The Captain is Dead — Lockdown
The Captain is Dead, which we studied two weeks ago, has a sequel, “Lockdown”, a standalone game that uses the same core system. However, whereas we thought the design of The Captain is Dead was wildly successfully (in large part due to its great theming), we found Lockdown lacking (in large part due to its…
Case Study: The Captain is Dead
One of the more notable traditional co-ops of recent years was The Captain is Dead, a bright and evocative science-fiction game that followed in traditional design patterns. It’s since been followed by Lockdown (2018), which will be the topic of the next case study. The Captain is Dead by Joe Price & JT Smith Publisher: AEG…
Competitive Case Study: Oar Else!
When is a co-op not a co-op? When it subverts its own framing. Nonetheless, there are lessons to be learned in this competitive game. Oar Else! by Jason Fleming, Bob Heubel & Julia Huff Publisher: Flatcar6 Studios (2013) Cooperative Style: Faux Cooperative Play Style: Card Management, Take That Overview Oar Else! is a competitive game…