Issue 3: Flip-and-fill games
Hello! I hope you’ve all had a good week. This week, I’d like to focus on flip-and-fill games as a bit of a sequel to last week’s edition, when I talked about roll-and-write games.
I’ve also got some interesting links for you, as well as a little look at a wonderful new documentary, Gamemaster, that premiered last week on streaming services. Let’s get to it.
Links, Reads, and Assorted Thoughts
Here’s a particularly interesting thread on Reddit about Kickstarter prices. It starts as a discussion on high prices for Kickstarter games, but the thread has some interesting insights on how it might be a good thing for the games industry. It’s an interesting read!
I know I’m not terribly focused on news in this newsletter (which, uh, hmm. Maybe “newsletter” isn’t the right word. Oh well.), but Z-Man Games announced Pandemic Legacy: Season 0, which has me excited. I’ve really enjoyed both seasons one and two — for someone different reasons, it must be said — and I have full confidence in this third installment. It appears it’ll be a prequel, which has the potential to really open up different mechanics that haven’t been explored in the other games. I’m waiting now with bated breath.
There’s also something of a Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 augmented reality game going about to some board game personalities, which have been collected on Reddit in this thread. I’m not personally huge on ARGs, but I see the value — if they’re your thing, have a look!
I’ve been curious about the rise in prominence of solo RPGs — reviews for games like Thousand Year Old Vampire are really fascinating. This set on Kickstarter from Travis D. Hill titled Our Innermost Thoughts also has me curious, and it’s quite cheap to order, too. I’m all in for strange, unique experiences, especially right now.
Gamemaster
Eric Lang interviewed in Gamemaster | Photo courtesy of Gamemaster
So! This is actually quite cool. Gamemaster is a feature-length documentary on board games, and it touches on so many really interesting aspects of the industry, from game design and publishing — arguably the two most prominent points of discussion in the documentary, if just by the amount of time spent on it — to the importance of diverse representation in games, how few designers can actually make a living in the industry, and so much more.
It really is a lovely documentary and worth the cost to rent or buy. It features interviews with some names and faces I knew well, like Eric Lang, Scott Rogers, Bruno Cathala, and Klaus Teuber, and some I’m so glad I learned about, like Nashra Balagamwala and Jason Serrato.
I can’t recommend the documentary highly enough. It’s on iTunes and Amazon and maybe a few other places by the time you read this. Do check it out. Oh, and here’s their Instagram, too.
Flip-and-fill games
So last week I wrote about roll-and-write games, which are just super cool — they’re not a new idea (I mean, just look at Yahtzee, which fits perfectly in the genre) but they’re also a genre that’s grown immensely since 2018. Growing right alongside those games are flip-and-fill or flip-and-write games, which I’d argue are part of the same family as roll-and-write games.
It’s really been fun to watch these genres grow and change and evolve. Here are four of my favorite flip-and-fill games.
Cartographers
This is a very cool polyomino-drawing game in the Roll Player universe, where all players will draw the patterns flipped over on personal sheets in various terrains, scoring each round for two of the four objective cards set out each game. But if a monster is drawn, you’ll have to pass your sheets to your neighbors, who will try to draw it on your sheet — and you’ll lose points each round for empty spaces that are adjacent to monster tiles. It adds an interesting direct interaction to the game.
I love the breadth of strategy a game like this can encompass. Sure, it will never get terribly deep, but it does require a good deal of planning for the goals you score each round. Those are easily the most exciting elements of the game — scoring for different sets of the four randomly drawn goals each round — and they are the ones that have hung me out to dry the most.
It’s also a great game to play with colored pencils — it’ll take two or three times as long as it might otherwise, but it’s a nice way to spend a couple hours relaxing with a bit of strategy involved.
Welcome To…
Welcome To… is an absolutely delightful flip-and-write game, and it's one of the games that helped cement my love for games of its ilk when I first played it.
It's also one of those games that advertises that it can be played by 1 to 100 players, which, honestly, I would love to see. I bet it's happened at a convention at some point, right? Or maybe a live stream? Hmm.
Turns are, thankfully, simultaneous, so if you do decide to gather 100 of your friends (remotely, please!), you won't be waiting for several hours between turns. A player (or a well-trained dog, maybe) will flip over cards from three stacks, giving you three different options of effect-and-number pairings to use. If you're anything like me, you'll then build your extremely imperfect neighborhood, writing house numbers (and being sure not to duplicate them on a street, and being doubly sure that they're in the right order), drawing fences, building parks, and so much more.
It's a wonderful game, and I firmly believe that it was one of the heralds of the roll-or-flip-and-write genre that really started flying in 2018. (Did you know that over 12 of the 17 pages of games listed on Board Game Geek with the 'Mechanic: Roll and Write' label were published in 2018 or later? So interesting!)
Patchwork Doodle
Games in which you draw polyominos on a piece of paper should probably be their own subgenre right now, if just to help us categorize them a little more easily. Patchwork Doodle is that — it’s sort of a spin on Patchwork, but it’s much more personally focused. There’s no hate-drafting here — you can’t take a piece somebody else wants just to drag them down a bit, because everybody gets the same piece.
Scoring is an interesting thing here, because you score in each of the three rounds for your largest filled square on your sheet, plus a little extra. (If you play the game, it’ll come easily, but I can’t take the whole newsletter explaining rules. Or maybe I should. I don’t know!)
Many games aren't great in groups that love to talk. In a crunchy game that's described as "multiplayer solitaire" or something similar, you often end up with downtime, but it rarely becomes an opportunity for meaningful interaction out of the context of the game.
Games that involve players in interaction can keep players focused on the game. But roll-and-write games (or, at least, some of them) can offer an opportunity to converse and play without being interrupted for long periods of the gameplay, which makes them a lovely option for groups that want to talk.
Second Chance
This is another one of those ‘talk and play’ games — at least for the first 80% of the game. It’s actually even a lot like Patchwork Doodle, which isn’t terribly surprising, considering they’re both designed by the one and only Uwe Rosenberg.
Of course, Second Chance is a good deal simpler, with planning options reduced considerably. See, in Patchwork Doodle, you’ll roll a die each turn and move a pawn around, so you know what tiles might be played each turn. In Second Chance, you just flip the next card. Scoring is significantly simpler, too: Player(s) with the fewest empty spaces win the game.
The twist: When you can’t place the drawn pattern on your sheet, you aren’t immediately out. You’re instead given a — wait for it — second chance to draw a pattern that only you pull from the deck. If you can draw it on your board, you're back in the game. It's a surprising level of tension for a relaxing game.
Second Chance is a pleasant flip-and-fill game, and it’s one I’ve enjoyed every time I’ve played. I’m not amazing at it, but it’s so nice to play that I really don’t mind when I lose.
Well, that’s about it for this week. Hope you’re all doing well and staying safe. If you have anything you’d like to share, send me an email or DM (Instagram is good for that!)