The concept of the ‘encounter deck’ – or some thematic equivalent thereof – has been fairly abundant in the world of board gaming since time immemorial. Even stretching back to the micro narrative flairs of, say, Monopoly’s ‘chance’ cards (apologies, of course, offered to the board gaming community for employing such a Kryptonitic reference), the idea of drawing a card for a quick fire flash of storytelling, consequence and decision-making is by no means a new or innovative concept.

Meanwhile, the boom of fantasy adventuring, roleplaying and choose-your-own-adventure making in the seventies and eighties in particular – from the obvious candidates (something to do with dungeons?) through to the various Livingstone offerings – carved an audience for narrative and consequence-driven gaming experiences within high fantasy realms. A genre that steadily ticked away until a notable resurgence in the past decade in particular (thanks, Youtube, Community and a certain pandemic…).

In many ways, the offerings thus far from Norwich-based Themeborne represent a melting pot of these disparate elements.

Jetty that first word from each game’s respective title, though; the fantasy offerings of Escape the Dark Castle and its sci-fi successor, Escape the Dark Sector, share precious little in common with that other relatively-recent burgeoning craze in home and tabletop gaming; the escape game.

Rather, Dark Castle and Sector both are focused, deeply thematic, card-based narrative adventure games. Pivoting around a simple (with each game boasting a slightly generous 2-minute setup time) layout and premise, players cooperatively make their way through a deck of ‘chapter’ cards, revealing each individual card in turn, and working together in their attempt to tackle obstacles, vanquish foes, overcome challenges and ultimately defeat one final, fearsome adversary, in order to escape their confinement and win the day.

And, not entirely uncommon for a cooperative title, if even a single player falls, it’s game over and everyone loses.

There are certainly distinctions and gameplay wrinkles between the two titles that stretch out beyond their thematic trappings – and where appropriate, this review will seek to point these out – but generally speaking, Castle and Sector offer a broadly identical calibre of experience.

Escape the Dark Castle, Themeborne’s first offering, is the clear tentpole and foundation here. It offers the cleanest, simplest and most straightforward of experiences – though on balance, whether this makes for a better game than the slightly more robust Dark Sector, will likely be a matter of personal taste and preference.

“…generally speaking, Castle and Sector offer a broadly identical calibre of experience.”

Fashioning a deck of fifteen chapter cards (from the 45 provided in the base kit) to serve as that session’s adventure, each player then selects one of a starting group of six playable character classes, each with their own unique character die and consequential strengths.

The gameplay of Castle and Sector both hinge on the same three dice-centric ‘traits’ – ‘might’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘cunning’. With each character having their owm unique die with varying configurations of these three traits upon them, different roles will offer different strengths. The ‘Cook’ of Castle, for instance (in a neat, idiosyncratic move, every role in the two games are named after what can register as both a profession and possible surname at once), is high on might, with their character die showing four instances of that particular trait’s icon, but on the flip side, when it comes to wisdom they come up short, with only a measly one-in-six chance of rolling it.

Given that the action of both games is almost entirely decided by dice rolls, it’s shrewd – particularly in smaller player counts – to try and strike a balance of traits across your party, as you will almost inevitably come up against situations and encounters that will actively involve every one of them over the course of an adventure. The aforementioned Cook, for instance, pairs up well with the ‘Tanner’, who has high wisdom, yet pathetically low might.

With characters picked (and once you venture into the realm of expansions, you can opt for some real specialists and wild card options), you then begin to make your way through the chapter deck, turning over each card and dealing with the corresponding narrative and happenings.

It’s here where the neat ‘You’ concept comes in to play. Players will need to agree amongst themselves which of their party will turn over each card to read the corresponding narrative and challenge. That player becomes the designated, slightly ominous ‘You!’ for that particular chapter (and again, a dip into the expansions offers up a suitably foreboding metal plaque to identify who currently holds the dubious honour). On a fairly regular basis, there will be rules, challenges, restrictions, forfeits or even encounters that will only affect or target the poor, unfortunate, eponymous ‘You’, so pick wisely.

It isn’t uncommon for the choice of card turner and chapter reader to alternate early on in some sort of rough turn order, but when the inevitable sting of either game lands, and HP and resources start looking low, there can be a tension and fraught energy in deciding who will unveil the next card. There’s no real security in just handing it off to whoever has the highest health, either – particularly in Sector, there are plenty of nasty surprises, encounters and traps hidden in both decks that will affect everyone outside of the card turner.

For the most part, chapter cards will present some sort of die-based challenge, an individual or collective choice, or similar thematic challenge, or even outright combat encounters. Perhaps you happen upon a crumbling staircase, requiring each player to roll a double on their encounter die to avoid a damaging fall. Or maybe you come across an aloof nobleman, and as a group have to choose whether or not to trade with this suspicious-looking individual or attempt to steal from him, knowing the latter runs the risk of creating a potentially vicious combat, should you fail.

For some, there may be mild disappointment that there is relatively little surprise or unknown factor to any of the decision-making that Dark Castle or Sector ask of your party. The downsides and consequences of each choice and failure are outlined and printed for players to read and discuss before they make any sort of decision. At almost every instance, you will know beforehand what the penalty or outcome of your failures or choices will be. It certainly keeps things flowing, and given the dependency on dice there’s always some element of risk involved to any choice taken, but it would be nice to see Themeborne perhaps consider some form of blind decision-making or unknown consequences in future franchises and releases.

Whilst there isn’t a dizzying breadth of variety to the types of challenges and conundrums you face across either game, with most revolving around the dice mechanics as mentioned, it keeps progress pacy, and the cards themselves prove suitably evocative and atmospheric. Between the well-written storytelling and palpable sense of place afforded by Alex Crispin’s characterful black and white sketches (that offer more than a passing resemblance to the Fighting Fantasy interactive novels), it’s easy to become quickly immersed by the tale you go on in Dark Castle and Sector.

“Between the well-written storytelling and palpable sense of place afforded by Alex Crispin’s characterful black and white sketches… it’s easy to become quickly immersed by the tale you go on in Dark Castle and Sector.”

At some point throughout your adventure, should your plans go amiss, your decisions backfire, or should you just be unlucky enough to draw a card that immediately starts an encounter, you’ll enter combat.

The basic premise of combat in both games is simple enough – each adversary is listed with a certain number of each trait that must successfully be rolled, and thus removed, before it is defeated. A lowly beast of burden, for instance, starts with just a single cunning on its profile, followed by an extra trait that is rolled and added for each player in the game. Each round, players then roll their own character die, and for each trait they roll that matches one of the monster’s, they can remove one of that trait.

At the end of each round, where each player has rolled their character die but the adversary is not yet defeated, the foe will then strike back and inflict damage. That is, of course, unless a player was lucky enough to roll their ‘shield’ icon on their character die (of which every character has two), in which case they scrape by this round of combat unscathed.

Once all monster traits have been successfully rolled and removed, that creature is vanquished, and the party may celebrate their victory by drawing an item card.

It’s a slick, simple engine that proves surprisingly addictive, and works instinctively and quickly. Many creatures have additional conditions and rules that complicate things further – making them harder to hit, isolating certain members of the party, causing certain hits to be re-rolled and other such twists, but generally speaking combat remains fast-paced and organic throughout.

As mentioned, over the course of encounters, events and chapter choices, players will draw item cards. These are rarely anything game-breaking or earth-shattering – normally offering one-time uses such as restoring HP or permitting re-rolls and other useful tidbits. Some items are more valuable than others; a tattered shield which caps the damage you can take per hit can become particularly valuable late-game, as the players’ healths begin to inevitably dwindle.

But generally speaking, the impact of items is limited. In Castle in particular, each player is limited to holding a maximum of two items, and even a major combat will only yield a single new item for the party to fight over as a reward. Dark Sector switches this up somewhat, with combat victories offering varying numbers of item rewards, and allowing each player four item ‘slots’. It also introduces the concept of powerful, horizontal/double space cards, though, meaning that in practice, you’ll rarely have more than 2 or 3 individual items or weapons per character (as the two-handed weapons are almost invariably the stronger options).

And there isn’t a tremendous amount more meat to the Escape bones than that – particularly not within the base games.

With Dark Castle serving as predecessor and tentpole, Themeborne do consciously extrapolate ideas and mechanics further with Dark Sector. Taking a swing into the sci-fi offerings of a similar era – with echoes of Ridley Scott’s Alien and Blade Runner aesthetics, along with graphic novels of the era amongst other influences, Dark Sector crucially sacrifices none of Castle’s grim sense of tone, mood or place. It simply transplants it – very successfully too, it must be said – to a whole alternate genre.

Crispin’s artwork and depictions, of everything from haywire cyborgs to grotesque mutants and malfunctioning engine cores, remain just as unique and characterful as those found in its predecessor, leaving it to be the gameplay refinements where Dark Sector’s only real noticeable changes materialise.

Firstly, the base deck of 48 chapter cards are separated into three ‘acts’, in a fashion similar to deck building experiences such as some of the Legendary series. This goes a considerable way in trying to establish a gradually increasing difficulty curve. One of the madcap joys yet occasional frustrations of Dark Castle is how its chapter deck is completely random from first to last, without any structure or ratcheting difficulty whatsoever. It keeps things unpredictable, but by extension means you can quite feasibly turn over your first card and come up against a hideously powerful foe or, conversely, spend the penultimate few cards of a chapter floundering around in relatively anticlimactic harmlessness.

Sector certainly affords a more gradual ascension of danger and threat.

Combat is given an extra dimension of strategy and nuance here, too, with the inclusion of ranged combat and gunplay, to supplement the conventional ‘close’ combat of Castle. Players may initiate a combat in ‘ranged’ mode – exchanging fire with their adversaries using powerful guns, with different ammo types representing different weaknesses or resistances for certain opponents, but as soon as they run out of ammo or otherwise enter close combat, there’s no slipping back.

“Dark Sector’s combat is undoubtedly more strategic and involved than Castle’s.”

Some enemies will hit back harder in close combat, whilst others will be deadlier at range. Some encounters will even make the decision for you, forcing you immediately into close combat, meaning that some of the tactical flexibility of a ranged approach – which includes extras options such as the ability to ‘flank’ an opponent and take a quick shot at them without risk of return fire – become lost.

Dark Sector’s combat is undoubtedly more strategic and involved than Castle’s. Given that the game also provides each character with a choice of special cybernetic implants, contextual benefits which may make a player better at certain types of actions or combat roles, there’s generally a lot more to discuss and consider when battling in Sector, when compared to its predecessor.

And yet, chalk it down to personal preference, there’s just something about the simplicity and immediacy of combat in Castle that makes it just that bit punchier and snappier. The extra options and choices in Sector are certainly welcome, and some will doubtless prefer the extra depth and dimension to it all, but on occasion it can feel needlessly bogged down and complicated when you’re juggling ammo types with weapons, cybernetics, flank attacks, different retaliatory damage, and so on and so forth.

On balance, Escape the Dark Sector is certainly the richer and more involved experience. It has more rules, more components, more things to remember and at almost every turn more options to ponder and weigh up. If this sounds like a no-brainer that it must therefore be the better experience, take a moment to consider that despite all the extra flourishes and dimensions, it’s still ultimately centred around the same simple concept of card-based events and die-driven actions. It’s here that Castle feels the more streamlined and accessible of the two.

“Irrespective of which setting and title you opt for, one defining characteristic of both Escape titles is that they are fiendishly difficult.”

Irrespective of which setting and title you opt for, one defining characteristic of both Escape titles is that they are fiendishly difficult. In fact, despite its extra mechanics and options, and the more structured, three-act approach to its chapters, Dark Sector feels particularly brutal and unforgiving, especially at lower player counts. During play testing, not a single two-player party of ours managed to get to the final boss (the last chapter card), and even at counts of three or four, it was not uncommon for a particularly nasty event or encounter for which our team were not especially well-equipped, to quickly turn the tides against us. The extra options of Sector mean that a single bad strategic choice – say, going into close combat too quickly against a foe you’d have been better off peppering at range – can backfire spectacularly within an instant.

Given that even the more intricate Sector can be reset and started again in a matter of minutes, though, the unpredictable, challenging nature of play, and unrelenting and occasionally downright unfair randomness (you can easily get unlucky and draw consecutive encounters or challenges that your party is ill-suited toward), means that for many it will simply embolden them to reset the game and give it all another go. Castle is particularly well-suited for this, as even with a full player count its rare for any adventure to be much longer than a half hour.

Which all leads to perhaps the most important consideration of all when it comes to either game – replayability and repetition.

The base game of Dark Castle ships with 45 chapter cards, and considering each session will use up 15 of these (randomly, admittedly), it doesn’t take long for you to begin encountering the same cards and challenges on repeat. Dark Sector mitigates this slightly, providing 48 starting cards for a deck that only requires 12, so there’s scope for a touch more variety, but both games get familiar fairly quickly.

With so many of the mechanics and challenges taking nigh-identical forms, a lot of the heavy lifting of each experience in either game lies with its artwork and narrative snippets. And when you’re turning over a card you’ve already seen and read numerous times over, a lot of the fizz and excitement can begin to ebb out of the overall experience.

Fortunately, Themeborne have offered up a wealth of expansions and extra content for both games, and if, as we turned out to be, you’re a big fan of the core Escape experience, they build upon the offering and variety considerably.

“…if, as we turned out to be, you’re a big fan of the core Escape experience, [the expansions] build upon the offering and variety considerably.”

Whilst we only explored and played through Castle’s expansions, these beefed up the core deck several times over, introduced neat new mechanics such as companions, character ‘flaws’ (Castle’s equivalent of Sector’s cybernetic enhancements), status effects such as being ‘cursed’ or ‘plagued’, and a roster of new items, chapter cards, bosses, characters etc.

Neatly, the expansions can operate as standalone adventures (provided you have the base game), or all used interchangeably and mixed together, allowing for a far bigger, more robust and even more unpredictable pool of adventures and options.

With the expansions for both games ranging from between £10-18 each in the UK, they’re fairly modestly priced for the diversity and extra variability they noticeably afford your overall Escape experience. With the base games themselves currently retailing at £34.99 for Castle and £39.99 for Sector, you will likely have to be fairly invested in the mechanics and experience of either game to justify the overall cost of either game and all of their expansions.

For some, the limited number of chapter cards provided in the base games will lead to too repetitive of an offering, and they will not find the gameplay absorbing or varied enough to justify the financial sink into expansions. But again, at less than £40 each, the base games are hardly on the steep end of the board gaming market.

So much of the joy and fun of these games lies in the immersion, the storytelling and decision-making, not to mention the narratives and stories that will naturally, inevitably unfurl over the course of your adventures, such as when you hit upon a particular stumbling block or implacable foe, take an ill-judged decision that puts your entire quest in jeapordy, or perhaps even when you manage to pull of that one heroic, daring, last-ditch roll.

It is fun, addictive, accessible and immersive stuff. A game played with a group of under-elevens was particularly well-received, as is often the case within the fantasy and adventure genre.

Ultimately, Escape the Dark Castle and Escape the Dark Sector operate within something of their own niche, and it’s an interesting and idiosyncratic corner that Themeborne have carved out for themselves, and already look set to expand upon significantly with their recent acquisition of Naughty Dog’s hugely-popular The Last of Us IP. The Last of Us: Escape the Dark is currently in development following a successful Kickstarter campaign, and looks set to be an evolution of the formula laid down here in Castle and Sector. It will certainly be interesting to see where Themeborne’s development instincts take them, with such a major franchise and brand in their hands.

Before that, though, there’s plenty of fun, and challenging, unpredictable, immersive adventures to be had with their debut offerings. The experience won’t be for everyone, but the uniqueness of approach, excellent presentation and quick fire, pacy adventuring means that, for those who can overcome some repetition (or invest in the expansions), you’ll likely find yourself wanting to Escape from Themeborne’s rich, grim fantasy and sci-fi tapestries over and over again, for many bloodstained moons to come.

A cursory glance over Scythe, its components and glorious artwork – Jakub Rozalski’s rural dieselpunk vistas having been one of the game’s central inspirations – could easily suggest a game firmly ensconced in wargaming territory. Its board – a sprawling, intricately segmented map of a fictional 1920’s Europe (named here ‘Europa’) – offers glimpses of territory control a la, say, Risk or Game of Thrones. Elsewhere, the double-dip of character and action boards that each player has at their command, littered with cubes, meeples, wooden tokens and insignia, suggest engine-building, worker placement and resource management reminiscent of another hit from the Stonemaier catalogue, Viticulture.

It’s a testimony to the thematically and mechanically rich, yet relatively intuitive, design of Scythe, then, that this is a game that is all of those things (and more) at once, with little-to-no baggage. With its stunning depictions of hulking mechs – neatly realised in plastic form, to boot – and warfare-tinted symbols and embellishments, it’s perhaps the militaristic elements of Scythe that make the strongest first impact. And yet, despite clashes for territory and resources being indeed part of the tapestry here, combat plays a perhaps surprisingly minor part of most games of Scythe. Indeed, as we discovered in our sessions, even hotly-contested four or five-players games can play out on a knife edge with relatively few direct tussles even taking place.

Much like the aforementioned Viticulture, there’s a fair amount of visual language to Scythe. It can make for a slightly daunting first impression, but once the basic mechanics and symbols are understood, it all becomes pleasingly straightforward and responsive.

Play is divided between the main boad – a central map of ‘Europa’ – and each player’s pair of character and action boards. As expected, the map is where you will place and move workers, build structures, harvest resources, and send your unique ‘character’ on a journey to experience ‘encounters’ – narrative cards with one-off, multiple choice bonuses – and perhaps even engage in a combat or two. When you’ve gathered enough resources, you can start fielding your mechs – combat and movement-focused figures who can help carry your workers about, support your character in combat, or even engage in fights of their own.

How you do all of this is dictated by your two boards. Character boards, for the most part, govern special rules and unlockable bonuses tailored to whichever faction you are assigned at the start of the game. Your mechs, for instance, begin the game here, covering special ‘peekaboo’ bonuses; every time you field one (moving it from your board onto the map), you get to use the bonus rule that revealed when you do so. One such example is ‘riverwalk’ rule – which means that once that particular mech is fielded, your character and all mechs now gain the ability to cross otherwise impassable rivers that weave throughout the map.

“There’s a fair amount of visual language to Scythe… but once the basic mechanics and symbols are understood, it all becomes pleasingly straightforward and responsive.”

Elsewhere on the character boards, unique rules for each faction are available from the offset. The fairly self-evidently inspired ‘Rusviet Union’, for instance, get to bypass restrictions on not repeating actions, whilst the workers of the ‘Nordic Kingdom’ are allowed to move through those previously-mentioned rivers, that otherwise bar passage to other factions. Each faction and character board have unique unlockable bonuses, too, including those hidden mech bonuses, meaning that your overall strategy and approach will likely differ depending on which faction you are randomly assigned at the start of play. The aforementioned Nordics, for instance, in being able to cross rivers, are not as territorially-restricted in the early game, meaning fast expansion and aggressive resource grabbing can be a legitimate approach. The ‘Polania Republic’ player, meanwhile, will want to be planning to send his character out to as many ‘encounters’ as possible, as their special rule allows them to harvest two benefits (of a possible three) from each encounter card, whereas other players are restricted to picking only one.

Moving over to the action boards, these are sub-divided into four sections, and each turn players must move their marker to a new section from the one previously on – in a vein similar to, say, Ravensburger‘s Villainous titles – and may fulfil one or both of the actions of that section. There are some conditionals – if choosing both actions, you must complete the top one first, and you can’t complete an action if you don’t have the required amount of resources to pay for it.

These actions are the crucial mechanics enable you to fulfil the key objective of Scythe – which is, namely, to be the player at the end of the game who has accrued the most cumulative wealth. Sample actions include being able to move your pieces across the hexagonal territories of the Europa map, harvest various resources – wood, oil, food and more workers – from territories currently under your control, engineer buildings and structures for further resources and bonuses, enlist recruits to get short term but also game-long benefits, build and field your four mechs, and even upgrade and tinker with your boards in ways that will make future actions cheaper, and the benefits from doing so even better.

A fairly straightforward but robust ‘star’ system tracks both individual players success, and the overall progress of the game as a whole. Each player begins with six stars, and when certain achievements, thresholds or milestones are hit, players will place a star on the respective section of the board. Much like actions, the variety and breadth of options for star placement is fairly broad – max out your ‘reputation’ by doing good deeds and avoiding scaring off enemy workers? Place a star. Win your first combat? Place a star. Successfully complete one of the unique ‘objective’ cards you’re given at the start of the game? Place a star. Manage to field all four of your mechs? …You get the idea.

As soon as any player lodges their sixth and final star, though, the game ends immediately (even if this takes place in another player’s turn), meaning Scythe as a whole is something of a managed and calculated race. With wealth being the final barometer of victory, though, you can easily get situations where a player may hold back on placing their final star (thus ending the game) until they’ve spread out a little further, or acquired that extra bit of wealth or resource. The worst thing you can do is prematurely end the game, only to realise that one of your fellow players actually has notably more territory or gold in the bank.

It’s the sheer wealth of options and approaches that makes Scythe such an absorbing and multi-faceted puzzle of a game to tackle. Unlike many other games of its ilk, it’s rarely about being just the most overtly aggressive or expansionist player. Indeed, for some factions, the resource and reputational cost of simply going all-out on the offensive can be entirely counter-productive. Some players and factions may yield success by carefully cultivating their own area, focusing on getting their mechs and buildings out, and possibly never encountering a fellow player at all. Others, such as the aggressive ‘Saxony Empire’, contrarily, have unique rules that favour being combative and warmongering. The stars system and action boards are robust and diverse enough, though, that there are countless approaches and strategies that can be tackled with practically every faction.

For some, there’s the risk that this can cultivate a curious dichotomy in the wealth of choices and pathways that Scythe entrusts its players with. Once the initially intimidating catalogue of iconography, actions and mechanics become understood and familiar – which is, to say, likely quite quickly (so neatly-designed and instinctive as they are) – it’s very easy to become lost in a broil of attempting to do all things at once. Indeed, Scythe gives you so many options and routes to victory, it is very easy to get bogged down trying to accomplish too much at once.

“It’s the sheer wealth of options and approaches that makes Scythe such an absorbing and multi-faceted puzzle of a game to tackle.”

It isn’t really so much a criticism of the game as it is a word of strategic warning, but it’s still likely that the more focused thinkers will dominate early games, until the realisation that targeted efficiency is the name of the game here truly sinks in. Said efficiency, and being willing to disregard (or at least not prioritise) entire chunks of the game’s mechanics, isn’t something that the surplus of options makes immediately obvious or organic, though.

Indeed, there are whole elements of play we haven’t even touched upon yet, too, such as the ‘power’ scale, a chart that your faction will climb up and down on, and one completely separate from the similarly numerical ‘reputation’. ‘Power’ governs your ability to dish out damage in combat (more on which, shortly), but can also be both another resource and another pathway to placing a coveted star. Of ‘reputation’, your faction’s placement on this important scale provides an at-times decisive end-game multiplier to your wealth, territory and resources. And then there’s the ‘factory’, a unique space in the centre of the board that not only counts as multiple territories during endgame calculations, but also gives a powerful expansion to action boards for any players that manage to guide their unique character figure there (which can, in and of itself, be a risky, exposing journey).

Which leaves combat. Again, often neither as ubiquitous nor decisive as perhaps expected, it nonetheless hinges upon another neatly-realised mechanic. Any instance of shared territory – where one player moves a mech or character into a space occupied by an enemy counterpart (lowly workers do not initiate fights, they simply flee) – immediately initiates combat. Courtesy of a hidden dial, each combatant then secretly assigns some – or none – of their accumulated power (which is then lost, win or lose) and can further buttress this with a number of combat cards equal to the number of fighters (characters, mechs) they have in that particular combat. It’s a hidden numbers game, essentially, and when both players reveal their combat ‘total’ – power spent and any bonuses on cards played – the highest wins (attackers breaking a tie), sending the loser packing back to their starting spot. The secretive nature of assigning power and cards can lead to genuinely tense stand-offs and, like much of Scythe, there’s flexiblity to try out different tactics. Can you bluff or double-bluff your opponent into thinking you’re not even going to add any cards, or perhaps even force another player to overspend and waste power on a combat you are going to throw anyway? It’s another enjoyable and flavoursome wrinkle in what could have very easily been a simple card or dice throwdown.

“Combat… another enjoyable and flavoursome wrinkle in what could have very easily been a simple card or dice throwdown.”

Moving from mechanics and gameplay over to realisation and design, and the components, build quality and aesthetic of Scythe prove just as impressive and absorbing as its gameplay. Rozalski’s sumptuous, evocative artwork underpins it all, including a well laid-out and accessible rulebook. The myriad cards, player boards, character designs et al, are all at the pinnacle of what you can expect from a contemporary board game. It all looks and feels premium, quality and, crucially, sturdy. The five plastic faction characters – each complete with animal sidekick – are suitably detailed, distinctive and dynamic, which extends through to each faction’s mechs being of a unique design, too.

There are some quality of life and future-proofing touches, too; whilst initially a 2016 release, it’s nice to see the base map and board natively providing spaces and insignia for its eventual expansion factions. A bespoke deck and additional set of rules for solo mode (courtesy of Automata Factory) are further indicators of a considered and inclusive approach to the game’s design and release. Whilst we have yet to test the solo mode, Automata have a solid reputation in this area, and general consensus from both critical and user feedback seems to be that Scythe’s 1-player experience can be an exciting – not to mention surprisingly aggressive – experience.

There’s a fair amount in the box, and if the recycled plastic bags that contain many of the wooden components and cards are expectedly flimsy, it is nonetheless always nice to see a manufacturer being environmentally-conscious. Two branded Stonemaier plastic tubs are included (and can open out to provide four trays for in-game use) for the numerous card tokens that the game requires – currency, encounter markers etc. – but you’ll likely want to handle the bags with care, or otherwise source some inserts, as there is plenty to keep tidied away that you really don’t want left loose rattling around and getting mixed up in the box.

For a relatively recent release (first landing, as mentioned, in 2016), Scythe has become rapidly established within the board game community as a title of real substance and renown. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from playing and reviewing the game, is how it isn’t at all as ‘heavy’ an offering as first impressions could perhaps suggest. Again, it’s reflective of the hallmark of Stonemaier’s approach (and doubtless exhaustive testplaying) that its expansive, diverse catalogue of strategies, options and approaches become second-nature remarkably quickly.

“That its gameplay excellence is equally matched by its aesthetic and artistic quality only sweetens the deal.”

For certain, it likely won’t sway casual gamers, and at higher player counts you’re likely looking at a circa 2-hour time sink, but it cannot be overstated how this is an intuitive, responsive and engaging board game experience that will likely appeal to a far broader base than its optics (and reputation) may first suggest. Contrarily, for those who may enjoy getting lost in the headier, day-consuming, endlessly-intricate machinations of, say, Twilight Imperium or its contemporaries, then Scythe will perhaps feel a breezier, lighter affair (for better or worse).

On balance, though, this is a masterfully and robustly designed offering from Jamey Stegmaier – a rich, involving, asymmetric playground of consequence, competition and choice. Part worker-placement, part engine-builder, part territory-control, part resource-management, Scythe practically demands repeat plays. To test out the elasticity of its factions, to try out different approaches and strategies, and simply because its mechanics are so damned fun. That its gameplay excellence is equally matched by its aesthetic and artistic quality only sweetens the deal.

It may not be for everyone, but for those who take the (refreshingly brief) time to get a grasp of its gears, they’ll find in Scythe a rewarding and compelling dieselpunk challenge of very few equals.

The worker placement genre is a (fittingly) busying world. Whether reaching quite literally upward with the treetops and expansionism of Starling Games’ Everdell, or plucking at Hollywood IP with the deck building and placement hybrid of Dune: Imperium, it’s an ilk of board gaming that has stayed the course, and continues to evolve at a rapid pace.

Whilst this review lands just as a brand new expansion – the co-operative Viticulture World – releases, it still makes Stonemaier Games‘ core Viticulture game, at just shy of a decade, almost a relic in board gaming terms. The original release, back in 2013, which sees players competing to build the most successful and productive Italian Vineyard, garnered praise for its gorgeous styling and simple-yet-versatile mechanics. Reprints and expansions inevitably followed, which added extra options, wrinkles to the formula, and additional components, but at its core, Viticulture remained refined but relatively untouched; a taut, accessible yet compelling worker placement puzzle.

In 2015, Stonemaier released what is now the definitive (and only available) version of the core Viticulture boxed set – Viticulture: Essential Edition. Most notably, this Essential release bore a small handful of quality of life improvements (for instance, merging the alternating versions of the game and player boards in to singular, perfectly honed compromises), as well as improved card decks and a handful of extra refinements and add-ons from the popular Tuscany expansion, in particular.

And yet, as mentioned, the board gaming world continues its international explosion, only fuelled by the pandemic boon, and seven years, let alone nine, can prove an eternity in game development.

So, does Viticulture remain an Essential addition to a gaming collection?

For the most part, it’s a resounding yes. The core Viticulture experience remains a polished, fairly easy to learn/difficult to master gaming challenge, buttressed by gorgeous artwork and, typical of Stonemaier, faultlessly-executed theming.

Players compete to be the first to acquire 20 XP, which they gain through a variety of tasks as they build up their Vineyard empire. One of Viticulture’s best and most unique ideas is how each round consists of a ‘year’, split up into the four seasons. The first, Spring, sees players bid for what position they wish to spend the rest of the ‘year’ starting in. Bid lower, and you risk going late or even last in every phase, yet the compensation for doing so can be bonus XP or even a free extra worker for the year. ‘Spring’ is one of the best mechanics in Viticulture, introducing strategic risk-reward considerations from the off.

Skipping ahead, Autumn gets players a free card or two, but the real gameplay lands in the worker placement of Summer and Winter. Anyone familiar with the likes of Lords of Waterdeep or many worker placement games will be in recognisable territory here, as your finite number of workers can be sent out to fulfil an impressive diversity of tasks – from gaining currency, drawing or playing cards, constructing vital buildings, and, of course, the multi-step process of making your precious wines.

“Wine-making is a fun, addictive and multi-faceted mini-game in and of itself.”

Wine-making is a fun, addictive and multi-faceted mini-game in and of itself. In Summer, you can draw and discover the best vines, juggle the process of planting them in fields where you grow them (each field having a maximum value that you cannot plant above), and then, in Winter, go through the process of harvesting your grapes and then crushing them into wine. Naturally, at the end of each year, all of your wines and grapes age, making them more valuable, but you’d best hope you’ve constructed the improved wine cellars as you progress through the game, or risk losing some of their ageing progress.

If it sounds at all impenetrable, it really isn’t. At first glance, the difference between planting, harvesting and wine-making may seem a little complicated and obtuse, but it’s remarkably intuitive and easy to pick up, with a palpable sense of pride and joy as you watch a lowly Pinot harvested and ripen, before merging it to create, say, a hugely valuable blush or sparkling wine.

One of Viticulture’s best ploys is how it forces players to strategise between Summer and Winter. Your pool of workers – which, inevitably, you can add to over the course of the game – are for the entire year. Of course, half of the essential mechanics are split fairly evenly between the two seasons, so it remains a perpetual balancing act on how many you wish to conserve for later in the round.

Complimenting this is the relative variety of ways you can go about charting victory. The main, and often most lucrative, method is to complete Wine Orders, where you are required to cultivate specific values of red, white, blush and/or sparkling wine, and then use one of your workers in Winter to fulfil this order. You lose the respective wine, but often garner big XP in return, as well as ongoing, residual end-of-year income.

“One of Viticulture’s best ploys is how it forces players to strategise between Summer and Winter… a perpetual balancing act.”

Outside of these orders, though, which in and of themselves often help direct your strategies, there’s a wealth of additional ways to accrue XP. Many of the optional buildings you can construct will yield annual XP bonuses. For example – build yourself a Tasting Room and you get an XP every time you ‘give a tour’, itself already a popular placement action as it yields you 2 – 3 currency. The Windmill, likewise, is a powerful early go-to, giving you, as it does, bonus XP for the core action of planting vines. Many of these are limited to a maximum bonus of 1 XP per round/year, but even so, funnelling them together with the myriad of Summer and Winter cards (each season having its own deck) that can give circumstantial XP, can easily chart a player on a steady course to victory. In one of the games played for this review, I comfortably won whilst fulfilling only a single wine order, so lucrative were all the side hustles and XP card plays that I managed to pull off.

On the subject of decks, Essential Edition features improved seasonal decks, which mean that the vast majority of cards you will draw will have some utility, even if not immediately. One of the major criticisms of the original Viticulture was that the visitor decks (i.e. Summer and Winter) were stacked with highly circumstantial conditions and effects that would rarely prove useful. Now, in Essential Edition, spending two valuable workers to pick up and then play a card is almost always valuable, and can even occasionally prove game-changing.

Much like its contemporary Waterdeep, Viticulture: Essential Edition is showing hints of its age in places, but is still a thoroughly pleasant and immensely repayable offering, and certainly more immediately accessible for less hardcore gaming groups than the likes of, say, Scythe.

Perhaps its biggest potential ‘flaw’, reviewing seven years on in 2022, is that whilst it does what it does extremely well, and with superb presentation, it doesn’t really do a tremendous amount more. The aforementioned Everdell and Dune: Imperium layer tableau and deck building, respectively, on top of their worker placement mechanics, whilst other contemporaries such as Marco Polo and Hallertau throw dice and card play into the mix.

“Much like its contemporary Waterdeep, Viticulture: Essential Edition is showing hints of its age in places, but is still a thoroughly pleasant and immensely repayable offering…”

There’s also little by way of direct player interaction, too. Some of the seasonal cards can give you the chance to offer your opponents circumstantial ultimatums (i.e. ‘give me one of your coins or I will get a free card’), but these are relatively few and far between, and for the most part you’ll be far more focused on your own turn and strategy.

Similarly, the concept of ‘blocking’ your opponents feels a little too forgiving, namely owing to the inclusion of a special ‘Grande’ worker. For context, depending on the player count, there is always a limited number of spots available at each action space. Let’s say you want to draw a card, only you ended up bidding low in Spring so you are third or fourth in the turn order, meaning that by the time you get the chance to place one of your workers, the two ‘draw a card’ spaces are already taken by other players. You’d be forgiven for thinking this could lead to a wealth of tense moments where players strategically block one another or deprive a position out of spite or competitiveness, and yet every player has one special ‘Grande’ worker, who can take an action even if its spaces are blocked.

It’s a neat idea that prevents completely wasted turns or overt nastiness, and you do only get one Grande worker, so have to consider carefully when you will utilise him each year, but there’s no denying it’s a mechanic that does suck some of the tension and conflict out of proceedings, and can sadly undermine some of the consequential hustling of Spring in particular. In larger games, there are ‘bonus’ action spaces which give extra benefits to the player who places there first, and which Grande workers can’t benefit from, which does go some way in making games with players counts of three or more a trifle more competitive (the bonus spaces not being accessible at all in two-player games).

It means that, for the most part, Viticulture is a pleasant, mostly non-confrontational experience where, at worst, you may temporarily inconvenience an opponent, rather than stopping them dead in their tracks.

“…a gorgeously crafted board game, with fantastic, high-quality components and beautiful art direction that reaches into every nook and cranny of its execution.”

For some, all of this will be no bad thing, but for others, the lack of extra mechanics and relative lightness of player interaction may make Viticulture, even with the enhancements in this Essential Edition, perhaps a little too slight.

For everyone else though, the game remains, even in the bustling genre it helped define, an easy recommendation. Viticulture: Essential Edition is a gorgeously crafted board game, with fantastic, high-quality components and beautiful art direction that reaches into every nook and cranny of its execution.

It’s also, crucially, supremely playable, impressively polished, and a benchmark release in the worker placement crowd that, whilst perhaps missing some of the bells and whistles, extra heft and cutthroat interaction of many of its successors, brings enough charm, variety and thematic uniqueness to make it, for the most part, Essential indeed.

As the fortieth (gasp!) anniversary of social deduction favourite Mafia, and its equally popular reskin, Werewolf, looms on the not-too-distant, you don’t have to glance too far afield to see the countless pretenders to the throne that they have inspired.

The core Mafia structure, which sees a group of players split into two groups, with secret evil players gradually picking off the rest, whose job it is to try and survive and identify the lurking ne’er-do-wells in their midsts, has been frequently imitated, rarely bettered. Some notable successors include Bruno Faidutti’s more card-centric Mascarade, the mild questing of Resistance/Avalon, and, of course, the wildly popular ‘One Night Ultimate’ franchise, which distils all the action of a typical game of, say, Werewolf, into a single manic round of accusations and finger pointing.

Elsewhere, other more conventional releases have injected tendrils of the social deduction gene into a broader tabletop experience, such as the potential ‘Traitor’ mechanic in Plaid Hat Games’ Dead of Winter, the nefarious, backstabbing objectives tucked away in the decks of Awaken Realms’ recent hit Nemesis, and gaming experiences more directly oriented around hidden identities, such as Evan Derrick’s Dark Moon (itself a reskin of the hugely popular Battlestar Galactica Express).

In short; social deduction, hidden identities and, let’s face it, the fear, thrill and possibility of a fellow player throwing a decisive wrench in your strategy (or dagger in your back), remains an increasingly popular and present ingredient in the tabletop oeuvre.

Enter designer Steven Medway and The Pandemonium Institute who, in Blood on the Clocktower, seem to have thrown down the gauntlet to their genre competitors to offer up the most exhaustive, expansive and – they hope – exhilarating social deduction experience on offer.

Firstly, there’s no getting away from the sheer size and heft of Clocktower. It’s a weighty thing, and, having gone through various incarnations, redesigns and prototypes, the final delivered product is an impressively present beast.

Everything comes housed in the ‘Grimoire’, an oversized, mythical tome that each game’s ‘Storyteller’ – Clocktower’s version of a DM or games master – will carry round with them to help assist in their omniscient duties in running this almost intimidatingly variable experience.

“…there’s no getting away from the sheer size and heft of Clocktower… the final delivered product is an impressively present beast.”

The Storyteller will almost invariably be the arbiter of how enjoyable (and successful) a game of Clocktower will turn out to be. Much like Mafia, they are an overseer to the action; they will not be assigned a role, character or team, but will instead adjudicate and direct the gameplay, as the other players are secretly assigned roles (each with their own special power, rule or ability) and, if they are good, seek to take out the head of the evil forces (the ‘Demon’), who will, in turn, slowly be picking off good players for death, with the help of its ‘Minions’.

Clocktower proceeds over a cycle that will be instantly familiar to Mafia/Werewolf fans. During ‘Day’, players discuss what information they may or may not have, point fingers, call for executions and, in some cases, use their abilities. By ‘Night’, the Demon and his minions lurk, attempt to kill players, whilst a variety of other special roles and abilities may be awakened and put to use, too.

It is, initially at least, a tremendous amount of information to absorb and remember for one individual, but Clocktower shrewdly provides a number of quality of life aids, from the aforementioned Grimoire, with inserts that run through the Storyteller’s duties in a step-by-step, night-by-night fashion, and a full character reference sheet for every player, so they can try and deduce which roles may or may not be in play (good and evil alike). For, unlike many other social deduction experiences, players do not even know which roles are in circulation in any given game (it is entirely up to the Storyteller to decide this at the outset) and, even when a player is killed, what their role or alignment was.

Another interesting wrinkle being that here, death is not the end. Whereas being killed in, say, Werewolf, would see a player essentially sat out of the rest of the game, their role exposed, in Clocktower deceased players continue to partake in all of the discussions – their role and allegiance safely secret – and even get one final ‘ghost’ vote on executions (more on which later).

It leaves Clocktower as a perpetual puzzle, right up to its climactic moments. Twists in the gameplay, such as ‘poisoning’ and ‘drunkenness’, can mute players’ abilities without them even realising, or allow the Storyteller to give information-seeking characters incorrect clues. More than any of its contemporaries, there is always doubt and suspicion circulating every claim and supposition of Clocktower, even your own.

For instance, let’s say you’ve drawn the ‘Fortune Teller’, an information-savvy character aligned with the good team. In the dead of night, when all other players are ‘asleep’, you have been awoken by the Storyteller. You point at two of your fellow players, and the Storyteller nods, revealing to you that one of the two whom you indicated are in fact the Demon; the essential role that your team must identify and execute. That’s great… only, you don’t know which of the two it is. And, even more than that, you can’t even really be sure that you can fully trust that nod you’ve just been given. A fiendish minion called ‘The Poisoner’ may be in play, and if they’ve targeted you earlier this round (which you won’t know) then the Storyteller can give you completely inaccurate information. Or perhaps you accidentally pointed at your ‘Red Herring’, a character that will register as the Demon to the Fortune Teller’s power, even though they aren’t. Or perhaps you stumbled upon the ‘Recluse’, an Outsider character who, whilst on the good team, can also incorrectly register as the Demon, should the Storyteller see fit.

Or maybe, just maybe, you are in fact ‘The Drunk’, a secret character that can be assigned at the start of the game, that means you aren’t even who you think you are, and certainly don’t access have that power (though the Storyteller, naturally, must act as if you do).

If it all sounds overwhelmingly complicated, then you’re witness to what is, in many ways, the genius of Blood on the Clocktower, and what makes for such an absorbing and almost endlessly replayable experience. Conventional social deduction titles can easily fall flat if a pivotal role falls in the hands of a less capable bluffer, or if one of the special characters gets off a lucky guess or target with their ability. Quarterbacking can easily creep in, when more confident or vocal players get certain powers or roles.

“If it all sounds overwhelmingly complicated, then you’re witness to what is, in many ways, the genius of Blood on the Clocktower…”

Here, the Storyteller routinely has tremendous leverage to balance a game that is heading too quickly or decisively in a particular direction, buoyed by the fact that there are no vanilla characters; everyone has some form of special rule or ability and, as just detailed with the Fortune Teller, you can never be completely certain that what information you do have is infallible.

Heck, even the pivotal, evil mastermind of the Demon is given access to three ‘good’ identities that aren’t in play that they can bluff as, as well as cheeky ways of avoiding their own death and thus ending the game. A particularly cunning Demon, for instance, can even kill themselves in the night phase to avert suspicion, in which case one of their minion teammates is promoted to the role. Or maybe they will choose to ‘kill’ an already dead player, meaning there is no fresh death that night, thus throwing the good characters into a state of confusion as to how and why.

More than pretty much any of its contemporaries, no two games of Blood on the Clocktower are remotely similar, and yet the anchor behind all of this does hinge on the game’s biggest potential caveat; namely, the importance of the Storyteller.

Firstly, disregard any notion that the Storyteller somehow gets an inferior, sidelined or truncated experience. It’s a devilishly fun role, and one that is extremely active throughout, with decisions regularly needing to be made on how much you help or hinder each team, as well as conducting pivotal moments such as the votes for executions that take place in each Day phase; the democratic voting process that is, in many instances, the good players’ only opportunity to kill those who they suspect may be evil players.

“…disregard any notion that the Storyteller somehow gets an inferior, sidelined or truncated experience. It’s a devilishly fun role, and one that is extremely active throughout…”

It is nonetheless a lot to absorb though, and, as solid a job as the Clocktower base set does in gradually introducing the elements of play for new Storytellers, in addition to the aforementioned visual aids and tokens, there will likely be a number of mistakes or oversights made in initial games particularly. Thankfully, given the variable and unpredictable nature of the game, these are often easy to mask or recover from. The breakthrough moment invariably comes, though, half a dozen or so games in, when, with the general ruleset and mechanics now understood, a Storyteller really awakens to the potential of the gleeful chaos and narrative possibilities they have, quite literally, at their fingertips.

There’s scope for plenty of player-induced skullduggery, too, for unlike many social deduction games, Clocktower actively encourages players to facilitate private discussions between themselves – including the Storyteller. Keen eyes – and keener ears – may be privy to plotting or secret information this way. Who isn’t going to raise an eyebrow when that person – you know, the one whom you are absolutely certain is up to no good – decides to cosy up in a corner and plot with your most trusted teammate.

And yet, there’s no avoiding the fact that the experience lands a heavy onus on the Storyteller role. There are, already, a number of websites and fan-made apps available that replace the need for much of the physical assistance that the Grimoire and its nest of tokens provides, but in truth, not only are these digital alternates fettered with errors and potentially game-breaking shortcut the tactile, the very manual nature of a physical copy of the game not only lends an extra layer of appeal and immersion to Clocktower, but physically manoeuvring the respective tokens, reminders and the like provides the best possible practice for new Storytellers getting to grips with roles and mechanics.

There’s a lot of content found in the base game, too. Three different game modes, beginning with the introductory Trouble Brewing, followed by the more adventurous and varied Bad Moon Rising and (the marvellously-named) Sects & Violets, each offers a completely separate rosters of characters, tokens, reference sheets and even character rulebooks. The starting mode, Trouble Brewing, has enough variety and diversity to get likely countless games from, whilst Rising and Violets not only introduce wildly different characters and Demons, but whole new mechanics, too, such as ‘madness’, which compels players to take actions they’d probably rather not. Then there’s the roster of Travellers & Fabled included, too, an additional set of extra powerful and even more unpredictable characters, that can be included in any of the three modes to expand the player count, or spice up proceedings when smaller groups start getting a bit too savvy or complacent.

The roster of ‘Fabled’, in particular, are an excellent inclusion, and should be an early read for all new Storytellers, including as they do, extra roles and rules that can make the game more accessible (including for those with cognitive/sensory impairments, disabilities or learning difficulties), more inclusive (such as roles that silence veterans for the opening minutes, or protect newcomers from early death), or simply deal with complications and frustrations. Issues catered for here include everything ranging from early leavers, truncated game times, and even those unruly few who refuse to stay quiet whilst you’re undertaking your essential Storyteller duties. Even the most bullish and vocal of flocks shall come to fear the wrath of a Storyteller aided by the ‘Hell’s Librarian’, whom, if you dare to speak over, can doll out instant punishment, and even death.

In regards to production value and finish, the various rulebooks, reference sheets and included accessories – such as a stand to rest the Grimoire upon, incredibly useful storage boxes to compartmentalise each mode, an accompanying fabric token bag – all help give the finished product, for the most part, a sense of real craft and artistry. The rulebooks in particular are beautifully characterful, doubly so when compared to their more rudimentary prototype versions. There are a couple of choices, such as the fact that the two halves of the Grimoire are held together with three provided binder clips (of all things), that feel decidedly less polished, though, and although there are clear improvements on some of the early prototype versions, there still remains some degree of concern as to how future-proof some of the felt-backed tokens may be; a couple were already threatening to peel apart when punched from their sprue.

It leaves appraising Blood on the Clocktower in relation to its not-insubstantial retail price tag of $145 (roughly £120) an especially contextual consideration. It’s a big, heavy and impressive chock of social deduction excellence. It’s as visual and atmospheric an experience as it is social and highly entertaining. Not including a modified free version for smaller player counts, you really need a minimum of 6 players (Storyteller included) to field it, though games of 7 or 8+ really provide the optimal experience. And of course, at least one of these whom must be able to be, or at least develop into, a half-competent Storyteller. If you can meet these numbers, you will doubtless get many hours of incredible, varied and highly memorable play out of Blood on the Clocktower, that will easily evaporate its hefty up-front cost.

Pushing aside cost, though, and for some the prohibitive player count requirements, and, if you are able to field it, you have in Blood on the Clocktower what is almost certainly the apex of social deduction gaming. It is the natural evolution of almost four decades of tabletop bluffing and backstabbery. Sure, there’s a lot to ponder and learn, but, by extension, this gives every player something to say and do, and crafts an experience where every role is important and potentially game-changing. It is an elaborate, engaging party game of almost breathless invention and tireless variety, an experience of deduction and accusation steeped in doubt and uncertainty, where every decision you make will be predicated with apprehension, where every action a fellow player takes will see you question their allegiance, all underpinned with a breadth of original and creative flourishes too numerous to mention here.

Some may perhaps quibble that a party game doesn’t need to be this big, this in-depth and complicated, or have this many options and characters to choose from, but to levy such an accusation at Clocktower would be to bypass its raison d’être entirely.

Anyone could be anything. Nothing is certain. Trust no one… including, potentially, even yourself.

It’s difficult, if not downright impossible, to name another social deduction experience that can make such claims so boldly, and have them so firmly ingrained into every element and aspect of its gameplay.

It is, quite simply, excellent, matchless ‘tabletop’ trickery.

Nearly four decades on from Mafia and Werewolf, a new claimant to the throne is come.

Long live Clocktower. May its reign be bloody.