Special Episode 07 - Fog of Love: Couples Therapy

Happy Valentines day you wonderful people!

In this special episode we tackle the rather unusual Fog of Love, the roleplaying experience / boardgame where you create two characters to experience relationship bliss or train wreck nightmare where breakup (and potential victory) is the only escape. Unusual, intriguing, but is it any good? Listen to find out!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hello everybody and welcome to a very special, very romantic episode of Board With Each Other. We are the board game podcast that looks at board games and reviews them to see how well they play with two players, whether that be with your BFF, your significant other, or Big Dave from the Board Game Club, who you think should broaden his horizons in terms of the games he plays. I'm your host, Alistair Simpson, and I am joined by ever as ever by my player too and lovely wife, Hanna Kelly.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Hi guys.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

And today we are going to be talking about Fog of Love.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Ooh la again.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Is it a board game? Is it a role playing experience?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Is it both?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Is it both? We'll find out. Fog of Love is a two-player only board game slash role playing experience, as I said. The game revolves around you taking control of a character and playing through a scenario represented by a deck of cards. Each of these cards each of the cards in the scenario are representative of chapters, and within each chapter you will play a certain number of scenes, which are cards that the players have in their hands. When you play a scene, you will either have to both make a choice, sight unseen, out of four options, usually, or your partner, so your other half in the scenario, will make a choice. These choices affect your personality. I think there's eight categories of personality, I might be wrong there.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I feel like there's five, but there's two dimensions on each.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

So you will either be gentle or a rough, loud-mouthed kind of person, for example. You'll be very studious and very put together, or you'll be a bit slovenly. The downsides are not always negative, they're just sort of two sides of the same coin in terms of uh personality aspects. Um, and the choices that you make will usually impact both your personality and it will also impact your overall satisfaction within the relationship. And that's represented by a uh that you have a card where you have a counter that sort of goes around representing how much satisfaction you currently have. Personality tokens are important because you need them to achieve your traits.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Your trait goals.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Your trait goals at the end of the game. Your trait goals are something you draw right at the start when you create your character, and they will have requirements on them. So, for example, you may need a total of three in shyness um individually, or you'll need a shared balance of five and something else. So you take both your yours and your opponent's counters into effect on all the personality aspects, and you subtract the the north from the south, and vice versa. Um so you need to basically swing your character into a certain way to achieve those at the end of the game. Achieving those at the end of the game will achieve you more satisfaction. The game is either cooperative, semi-coop, or head-to-head, and you don't know which of those things is going on while you're playing. You are dealt uh a set of destinies at the start of the game, and those destinies have particular win condition requirements on them. The majority of them, I would say, require you to both be happy or fulfilled in a certain way, and usually have a certain balance in one of the personality aspects. But there are some introduced in later scenarios which actually require you to break up. But you only win if you break up with your partner and they don't break up a deal a lot of the time. Um so you never quite know what it is that your partner's going for in terms of actually winning the game. And again, you can both win, one can win, you can both lose all the permutations of that. Um there are a few other different types of cards. When you when you draw a card, you have a hand of five cards and you draw from three decks, which are sweet, serious, and drama. There are another few different types of cards mixed in there that are just simple sort of scenes that you play. Um there are secrets, which require you to put a card down sort of face down underneath your board, and something may happen in the game that reveals that secret and then it has impacts, or it will have impacts at the end of the game that it was never revealed. So, for example, uh one of your you might, your character might be starting a business in secret. That's that's just one of them. You also get things called minor scenes, which usually have impacts on either the card that was previously played or the next card. So you play a scene and the next card would be worth double satisfaction points, whether they're positive or negative, for example. Play goes back and forth, so one card per turn, and each chapter has a set's uh length of cards, so it'll be eight cards for a chapter, and then you draw a new chapter, and it all starts over again. Most of the scenarios are over three chapters. The last one we played was over four. Four. Yeah. When you create your character at the start of the game, you also uh get a occupation, which is you know, Duty randomly, and you also each start with a hand of uh feature cards, which you have to describe about your opponent and give them to them. Or your partner. Uh can also be both in this, and you give them to them to explain what it is that attracted you to them. At its core, this game can be played straight faced, where you read the cards, you do things, you make choices. How the game is meant to be played is as a role-playing experience. So you are supposed to create and inhabit a character, and when you are putting your scene cards down, you're supposed to take those as prompts to sort of describe what's actually happening depending on what the relationships are. All of the different scenarios have different bases for them. So, for example, you are high school sweethearts, or you know, you were you started dating and you decide to lock in and give it a year. There's different starting scenarios for that, and it is heavily expandable. There's a large amount of scenarios out there. The reasons for that we'll get to in a little bit. That's basically it, I think, rules-wise.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Yeah, play time, I would say about 45 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

I'd say closer to an hour, my perception. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

I think bringing the later games with more chapters.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

It does depend which scenario you play, some of them are a lot quicker than others. Interestingly enough, it's worth mentioning that this game comes with a tutorial introductory scenario that is designed to actually teach you the game in its entirety as you play. That how good that is, we'll also get to in a little bit. Um, but yeah, anything else you want to mention?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

No, I think that's probably about it.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Okay, well, that's back on the subscoring link.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Alright then. So, as always, we start with our general rating scale, and first up is components. So essentially, what's in the box?

SPEAKER_00 6:52

And how nice is it? Um I'll gonna say right off the bat, this is exceptionally well made.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Do you know it strikes me as the Ferrero Rocher of board games? Yeah, like everything, the box itself comes in a sleeve. The um colour it reminds me of an Apple.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Yeah, it's like opening up an iPad, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Yes, a little bit. You've got these really solid, chunky chicks. You've got um a nice little card stand, you've got um like a little box with all your little counters in it, and it just feels super dull.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Yeah, it does. It reminds me of Stonemeyer's games, so Scythe and Wingspan and even yeah, I'd say it's even it's even excessive that. Um, yeah, it's really, really well made. Yeah. Um visually, I imagine it being a bit marmite-y, it's very white and clinical and Apple. Yeah, it it it it's that Apple aesthetic almost, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

And what I would say is there's not a huge amount of illustration on the cards. In fact, there are no pictures.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

No, there's no artwork, aside from the cover of each scenario, there's no artwork.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Yeah, there's no artwork. Um, and what I would also say is that your choices on the cards when you play a scene, there is a lot of often text, and it can be a bit like you have to sit there and read it for a really long time, which kind of takes you a little bit out of that play experience. Um, and I feel like that could have been improved in some way, shape, or form.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Yeah, it would just make this line maybe a little bit more vibrant, it can start to feel quite cold and clinical while playing it.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Just like how I deal with my relationships.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Yeah, exactly. Cold and clinical. Um, so yeah, I mean it's it's a wonderful package. The only thing I have a slight bugbear with is setup. It's not overly long or overly complex. It's just with each scenario, you get a bunch of um sort of extra scenes to put in. And you get a hand, different hand of destinies, and it just it can feel like a bit of a fiddle sometimes, getting its all set up. Um, I don't know what the solution would be, but I feel like the icons on the card from the scenario would be a little bit more pronounced.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Again, it's that aesthetic, isn't it? Everything's white and grey.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Well, it doesn't have any special icons on it to denote that as part of the scenario, as far as I could tell. And that's not too bad for setup, but for teardown, it means you have to go through every deck with a list of the names of the cards that you need to strip back out. Whereas normally in these kind of scenarios, you you it would have an icon on, so you could just see the icon and pull it out straight away. It does not have that, which makes teardown take way longer than it should.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

It shouldn't need to be, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Um, which is it's a shame. And I just feel like they'd be so easily solvable. So you could have just put a little icon in there that you, you know, you know. Um, and some of them do and some of them don't.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Well I will say though, I mean, the first time we opened this, I was blown away.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Yeah, it's a big wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, it was a real big wow, and I just I felt like we were having something really, really special. Yeah, yeah. Um, because of the way that it was packaged.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yeah, and the way it's presented. Um in terms of I I think under components, I'm gonna talk a little bit about the the introductory scenario.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Well, I was gonna talk about that under complexity, but we can talk about it here now if you want.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Okay, no, let's leave complexity for complexity, that's fine, but actually probably fits a bit better in there, doesn't it? So yeah, let's park that. Um, so how did you score it, components-wise?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Um so nine, because I really honestly think it's probably one of the nicest production values of a game that I've seen.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Okay, fair enough. I give it an eight. Um, I think it is very, very good. It would have got a nine or even a ten, actually, if it wasn't for that teardown issue, which I think is so easily solvable. I find it a bit frustrating. I also do find the style a little bit cold. It doesn't, it doesn't jive with me.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Yeah, I mean I think it's really interesting because a lot of the cards quite general gender neutral. So you you have one player who is blue and one player who is pink, but actually you can flip the sides of your cards so you can play a man or a woman, so you can play two men, two women. And I actually quite like and uh all the scenario, or not scenarios, all the scenes, the way that they're written, there is a gender neutrality to all of them, which I really like, and I also understand why they've gone for that grey-white scene to leave it open for imagination role-playing I guess. Um so I do understand why they've done it, but also yeah, I would agree.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah. Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

So then let's talk about complexity. So that's not necessarily about how complex a game is or isn't, but how well the game How well the complexity serves the game serves the gameplay and also things like analysis, paralysis, and arguing by rules. Yeah. So you've already talked about the introductory.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Yeah, shall we address that one?

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Yeah, let's start off there.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Yeah, so it comes with a sort of pre the way it's packaged, as long as you don't shuffle anything when you take it out of the box, it's in sort of this preordained order that's there to sort of teach you how to play while you play your first game. Which for a game like this I think is a really good shout because it means people can of differing, you know, uh however you go through rules as a couple or whatever, um, you can just sort of crack it out and give it a go.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah, and so I think quite often, especially when you're teaching people rules, it can be quite rules heavy, whereas this is very experiential and you get to play along with it. And I think as we started doing it, I was like, this is amazing. More games should absolutely do this.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

And then we found ourselves getting quite confused.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yeah, we found ourselves getting quite quite confused. There was an awful lot of reading in between actually playing.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Yeah, I think that introductory game took like two and a half hours.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah, and it really interrupted the flow. And given that this is very narrative-driven, I felt that that kind of impeded our ability to then play that first game properly.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Absolutely, and that narrative role-playing-driven ethos to the game comes through a lot more strongly in the actual rule book than it does in the introductory scenario. It doesn't tell you or point you in the direction of treating this more as a role-playing experience and hand-how to do that. So the first real game we played after that, we played in a very clinical fashion because we just didn't really get it. And then I sat down with a rule book and things changed, and we sort of changed the way we played it.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

What I would also say as well is that because you had quite a lot of rules dump in between playing a scene, it meant that some of that got lost because actually we were keen just to get going. Yeah. And so it meant that when we came to playing our first game, we were like, wait, hang on, we do this going, wait, this is all completely wrong, and we had to go back and we had to start all over again because we'd lost some of the finer detail about the rules.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Yeah, absolutely. Um and going back to rules, rule books not great. It's another one of these where things seem to be in an odd place, like where you would expect rules to be about certain things, where you would throw back to it, is it a different place to where you'd where you'd expect. I just I really wish games designers would start putting very similar rules about similar things together as opposed to just randomly putting them on different pages. But uh that that's an ongoing quibble of mine, I find. So yeah, but to go into the actual complexity of the game itself, it's not a complex game.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

No. You draw a whole bunch, you've got a hand of cards, you pick a card that you think is going to align with what it is that you want to, where you want to go, you play it, you vote, and then you move on.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yeah. Yeah, there are touches of complexity, particularly around destinies, I find, of knowing which ones you have in your hand. You have different categories of swap in a destiny, discard a destiny, draw a destiny, and it can become a little bit muddled after a while. And there's also I I at least didn't find clear rules about eventualities where you'd instructed discard and you don't have one, you only have one. Do you do you then? I'm pretty sure it's there. It's probably there, it just missed it somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Missed it somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Um, but the whole thing's was a little bit overwrought, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Yeah. I also would say there are some um scene cards like secrets, for example, but also other ones that allow you to impact gameplay. So, for example, I can immediately play a card that scratches whatever choice it was that you've made and make you choose what I want you to choose. And I don't think we've ever really used them because, again, they feel a bit overwrought, but it feels like a way of gamifying something that's actually a role-playing experience.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

And not really much of a game, but we'll get to that.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

But yeah, we'll come to that. But I feel like they were chucked in there to make it a gaming.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

But there's there's real problems with that. I think a lot of this is going to be saved to late in the review around the competitive cooperability uh category that we talk about. I've got a lot to say in that, so just hold the space and we'll park it for now and we'll we'll we'll get there. Um I think it serves the the complexity, serves the gameplay. Okay, it's slightly below average for me. I think some things could be tightened up, some things could be a bit smoother.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Yeah, but janky is again well I would quite. Um, and again, I also think because you're essentially trying to roleplay out these scenes, sometimes they happen in really weird waters. Yeah. So, for example, you might be making someone breakfast after your first date, which I mean to be fair, that's a very good first date. Well, that is a first date. There's a level of jank to it.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Yeah, there's also some incredible pivots like I'm pregnant, and the next scene is does my butt look big in this from the other person? That again, that feeds into some of the some way that's fun, which we'll get on to in a bit.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Um, so how did you rate it for complexity?

SPEAKER_00 16:09

I gave it a four.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Yeah, so I gave it a three.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Yep, fine.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Yeah, I felt it trying to gamify something.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Um, as always for the three.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Um, so shelf life then, including things like value for money and replayability. So, what's the price point on this?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

So this retails for 45 quid.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

So it's quite a spicy RRP. However, four reasons we'll get on to shortly. They're this is everywhere on the second hand market. And from what I can tell, the going price for it on the second hand market for a like a new copy is somewhere in the region of 13 to 15 pounds.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Because it's everywhere. Um, I think a lot of people bought this, and it is not very replayable at all.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

So I'm gonna play Devil's Advocate. I didn't necessarily know what the price point was on it. There is, I think, a large amount of replayability in this. I think it all depends about how much fun you have when you play it. So for a start, there are lots of expansions. You've already mentioned on that. We don't have any of them.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

But that's adding a lot to the price point of 45 already.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Yes, okay, admittedly. Um, but you've got a lot of variety in terms of your destiny, so whether you should be staying together, breaking up, admittedly, they're introduced in later scenarios, but you know, it's it's it's the core sort of inner box. And then, you know, in terms of things like your traits, etc. So if you really enjoyed that sort of narrative role-playing S thing, then I think there is quite a lot of replayability.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Perhaps I don't see it.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

I don't see it. I think that full disclosure for the listeners, this is the first game that we have ever reviewed that we have played less than six times.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

And the reason four times. No, five.

unknown 18:05

Five.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

I haven't planned for the first one because we scratched that.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

No, we still played it five times. Yeah, yeah, we played it five times. The the reason for that is I feel like I've seen everything there is to offer from it. After five plays, I don't think I would gain any additional insight into it or depth by the way.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

I think that's my point. I think my point is you wouldn't I don't think you would play this as a you know traditional ball game. You would play this as a role-playing-esque experience.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Yeah, I suppose. I suppose, but I don't know, maybe it's it's more leafy, but there's only so many permutations of you know absolute cretons that could create.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

Yeah, because obviously we never play, you know, nice same normal people. We play absolutely deranged.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

I mean, Hannah role-played as Theresa May the one time, so I'll let that, you know, I'll let you make your own decisions about that. Yeah. I don't love with a lettuce. Um so yeah, it's uh from for me personally, this has probably the lowest shelf life of any game I've played.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Um it it feels like a real one and done for me. And I think we were lucky enough to get this way after it came out. Um I don't know when it came out exactly, but it's been years. And you can get it quite cheaply now. And if I had played£45 for this, I would have been quite pissed off.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Yeah, so I think that price point is. I mean, we've talked about the box, and I understand. It's justifiable. It's justifiable quality of the box.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

I don't think they're ripping anybody off. No. But unfortunately, I think a game has been greater that just doesn't have that replayability to you can find things for half that that you'll be playing for years. Yeah. You know? I mean, it's all relative.£45 is less than a meal out. You know, if you have a great time with us a few times, then you know, it's worth it to some people. But I just I've come to expect a certain amount of longevity from the board games that I buy, and this does does not meet that at all.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Yeah, I think that's fair.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

So uh how did you score it then?

SPEAKER_00 20:07

I gave it a two.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Um, so I uh rated it a bit higher than that because I did think there was more replayability, but I didn't know what the price point was until you said. So I'm gonna knock it down to a five.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Okay, fine.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Because I do think there is replayability though, if that's what you're if that's your bag. If that's your bag.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Yeah, fine. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Um so then on finally, on to in our general criteria, we have uh fun. Did you have any fun when you played it?

SPEAKER_00 20:35

This is a shit ball game.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

There's no ball game to do it.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

It's a terrible ball game, but it's quite fun.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

It is really good fun, and we always have fun playing it, and we always laugh. Um, and um some of that narrative that comes out in it is is really good.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

It's entered into our running joke lexicon in quite a few ways now, hasn't it? I think you're this is this is an impossible game to assess as a board game reviewer because your mileage is going to vary so much depending on your personality type. Um you will have people that just love role-playing that play this completely straight and have a whale of a time with it. You'll have people like me and Hannah who just try and create the most cretinous people we can possibly think of, and then well, the only solution is to break up because why would anyone from their life? Or Mark, which is even funnier, and then just sort of bash them together like two action figures. And I have had an enormous amount of fun doing that. Um, but that's just how we are. We that that just floats our humour boat. You will have people who will be mortally offended by the other person playing this. I could see this ending relationships if there's a lot of insecurity going on. I think this could potentially be an absolute powder cake to throw on some situations. Um so I would absolutely say approach with caution, and you need to know your personality. Personality type and who you're playing with because you could get uh if people aren't very of favoured the concept of role-playing and the separation of character and person, or wanted to use it as a way of exploring things that are currently wrong in a relationship, this could be an absolute disaster. And I'm not saying that as a negative, I'm not I'm not criticizing people.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Use this as couples therapy.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

I wouldn't use this as couples therapy, especially not if you're playing with me, because it would be an absolute disaster. Um so yeah, I just I thought it's worth exploring that. The uh the fun you have this with this will completely depend on what kind of person you are, what your personality is like, and the person you're playing with, because this is a game that 100% takes two tatango. You can't have fun with this if unless the other person's having fun.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

And I think that's the crux of the crux of the issue, really, isn't it? It's it it's a fun, it's a role-playing experience. I rated this and I talked about this from a gaming perspective, and I think probably what I'll do is I'll park a lot of that and we'll come and talk about it in terms of co-op.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Yeah, I've left all my game stuff in our co-op competitiveness. I haven't left all of it because I do think it affects my score here, because I think my score would be a lot higher if there was a game underneath it as well. I mean, I'd be having a whale of a time, and I certainly wouldn't be knocking it down for value for money if there was an actual game.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

The game is so bare bones and such a fundamental mess.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Not in rules, but in terms of strategy or trying to win away any of that stuff you usually expect to get from a ball game.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

It's completely this is you need to tell a story, take each other on a story and have fun with that. And have fun with that and see what happens. And I think if you treat it like that, then and you haven't got relationship issues, um, then you'll have a way of time that'd be fantastic. I think if you were approaching it from I want to have a gaming experience and I want to win, and it just comes down like house cards and completely. Um so for that reason I gave it a four.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

I gave it a seven, but you'd be approaching it in different angles. But we have approached this from different angles because I have a good time playing this. Do I ever want to play it again? Probably not. But the five plays that we've had, even though each time each time we pulled it out, I've been a bit like, oh, I'd rather play something else, but uh go on then. I've actually ended up having a great time. So I can't I can't dispute that. It's fun, it's really fun. But a lot of that has to do with how you and I approach these kind of things, yeah. Which is very, very tongue tongue in cheek. Very tongue in cheek, massive. And huge, huge dollop of dark humour. Okay. Um, so yeah, seven, I think.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

All right, so let's add those up.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

So we total those up and average them out as always, and that gives us a general rating of five. Which I think, yeah, I'm okay with that.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Yeah, mediocre.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Um, there's some real highs and lows hiding underneath that five. Yeah. Um but yeah, I I'm I'm okay with giving us five.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Okay, so onto our two-player rating scales. And first up is table talk and getting to know you.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

But you've got to throw yourself into this as a role-playing experience for this to work. And when you do, it is absolutely banging.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Yeah, spoiler alert, the uh two-player category is gonna be a tale of two halves. Yeah, I mean, for everything you could ever want in terms of table talk and interaction over that. This is this is Trump's, this is fantastic. You want to play something to get to know. I mean, I wouldn't crack this out early on in a relationship, I think that would be intensely weird.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Well-playing game.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Crack it out, maybe crack it out with like your long-standing male friend who you know you haven't seen in a while, and just make things extra weird, which is kind of like I'm almost tempted to hang on to and just take around to one of my friends' houses and go, Oh, I've got a game for us to play. And refuse to elaborate further. But uh, yeah, it's great for that kind of thing. You're constantly interacting, you do get to know the other person.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

They are as far as you want. Yeah, you know, you can have a very quick scenario or scene, sorry, if that's what you want to do, or you can really role-play it out into the 90s, you know, and you can get into it if that's what you want to do.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Yeah, if that's what you want to take from it.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

So I I mean it just it ticks all boxes on this front. I I I can't see any negatives really.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Um, it's fantastic, and I've given it a nine as a result.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Yeah, so I gave it an eight. What I would say is that you do have to be in the right place for it.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Yeah, you do, yeah, yeah. If you're having a hard time, simply relationship-wise, wouldn't wouldn't advise it.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Yeah, um, but I think as long as you're as long as you know what you're getting into, I think it's absolutely brilliant, and yeah, it's it's it's a cracker.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Okay. So on to the competitiveness slash co-op rating scale. So as you've already alluded to, it might be that you are both the destinies that you end up with are where you are trying to stay together as a couple, and therefore you are collaboratively working together to improve your relationship. But me and Al don't play like that. We like to fuck with each other. Yeah. And so we usually end up on a road to heartbreak. Um, but what I would also say beyond that is it it's not really clear what winning is gonna look like.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

No, no, it never is. I think so. Here's my fundamental problem with this as a game. You have these destinies, which are essentially your victory cards, okay? And you can do some luck-based subterfuge with them with certain choices that are you to swap them in and out and all the rest of it. Um, but unless you're trying to trick your opponent and go for a soul victory, there's no point in that, anyway. If you are heading for a breakup scenario, a lot of the requirements on the cards, or even the co-optive scenarios, a lot of the requirements on the cards around the satisfaction of either you or your partner or both of you together, require you to take non-stop wild swings at that. So you either have to be this falling sycophant, or you have to be an absolute creton to your partner. Which is fun. Which is fun, but it's absolutely obvious what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Because otherwise, if you just leave it up to the winds of chance, and therein is my other problem with the choices, a lot of the time it is up to chance whether you get the same thing or not. And it it breaks the immersion to a certain extent because you then start trying to match what you think the person is going to do, not the character that they're playing. And if you're trying to get matches or not get matches, etc. etc. And the whole thing just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah, it's that gamey factor, isn't it? It it's it's game uh applied to a role-playing scenario game that it just lets it all down, really.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

And what happens with the heartbreak and breakup kind of stuff is you obviously start acting like an obvious twat, yeah. And your partner's gonna do one of the two things. They're either gonna start doing the same thing back because there's no real defense against it, or they're gonna go after a particular card which is a defense or for it, which is called I think it's called graceful exit, which if somebody breaks up with you, you end up winning. But that's just really flat from a gameplay perspective. You just go, Oh, they're trying to break up on me, okay. I'll just get that destiny and then I'll win.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

What I'd also say as well is that because you have you score your traits at the end, so you get three traits, and they're worth, I think, four satisfaction per it changes from scenario to scenario.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

I think normally they're worth plus five or minus three if you fail them.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Yeah. So if actually they achieved all their traits, that might still push them over the edge in terms of their satisfaction, anyway, so you you lose. So it becomes this real sort of mental arithmetic.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

And they're too easy to achieve.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Yeah, they are really. Well, actually, I failed all of mine in the last game.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Yeah, but that's because I kept putting cards down, they kept wiping all of the scores from the board.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Um which is another thing that you can do, which again is that gamey factor, which doesn't just game reserve the narrative.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

No, it's like a game was created and then the theme and the crux of the game was built on top of it, and nar each shall the two meet.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

It it just doesn't it doesn't work in concept. Um as a concept, it's fantastic, but as a game, it just fails on every single level.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Well, I think if they'd have just picked a lane, in fact, that's what I've written here, you need to pick a lane and decide what it is that you want to do with this game because it it it the the two just don't gel, and I don't even see how you would get them to marry. So you could house rule it in some way that you could get it to to kind of function on on a on a you know, yeah, on a game level.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

And I I I think the problem is the game. Yeah, I think the concept and the idea is fantastic, but I just don't think they ever managed to come up with a game to support it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

And actually, I think if you took the game out of it, that would be absolutely cool.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Yeah, it's just uh you could you could strip all of that mostly away and still have an amazing role-playing experience. All the fun stuff that I have from it, I get from the other side. None of it is from the game. Yeah, none of it is from the game. The game itself is dire.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Yeah, absolutely. It's literally just admin.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Yeah, it's admin, aimless admin with really obvious tactical choices, both for yourself and what they appear to be to your opponent. And for a two-player game where you're not getting sort of obfuscated by other people's moves, it's just it it's an absolute damn squirt in that regard.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Yeah. And I'm still not sure if it is a cooperative game or it is a competitive game.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

It's all of these things, which is also a problem.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Um I I think the idea of a transforming into one of those things during gameplay. I mean Destiny, not Destiny, um, Nemesis does the same thing. Yeah. Um, but it does it well. Yeah. Uh this does not do it well. But it's sort of, yeah, it's just this blange. It does not tick any of the boxes I would look to be ticked from a board game. So yeah, I think I am going to give this my first one.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Oh, yeah. So I gave it to you because I felt that was quite harsh.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

No, I'm I'm gonna be harsh. Yeah, no, I think I think it's a good one. It does not tick any box whatsoever. It's a dreadful game with a really cool idea and a really cool theme and content attached to it.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

It's still quite fun to play.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

And it's still quite fun to play, which we made quite clear in our previous category. Okay, so as this is a two-player only game, we we NA the uh put more people making this more fun. I would love to see the sports explanation. I want the polyamorous expansion. I want to play that. There we go, let's kick the actually scratch that. I'm gonna pattern that. Um okay, so we'll add those up. And that gives us an overall rating, unsurprisingly, of five. Two player rating, sorry, not overall, not general rating. Um as I said, complete tale of two halves. Great experience, table talk-wise, dreadful game. So we've ended up somewhere in the middle. But hopefully you should know what's important to you about it. I think overall, just a general general point, if you are sort of any anything like us that can have a laugh of role-playing, etc., and you see this for really cheap on the secondhand market, I give it a whirl.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

What I'd also say is DD can be really intimate. So we play DD Cheap Player, you are my forever DM, and I play a myriad of characters. Um but if you just want to test the waters of whether role-playing is gonna work, this is a and you can pick it up really cheaply for like 15k. I would absolutely go for it. It's a really nice launching point that's really quite safe and contained, and you get a little bit of a chance to create characters and inhabit them. So I think a really good way of testing the waters before you leap into something like DD with all your dice and you know, thick, heavy rule books with post-it notes on the side.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Yeah, absolutely. All right, so I hope you've enjoyed this uh Valentine's Day episode. Um, no, not yet. Uh, but until next time, uh have fun. Be extra good to each other, don't break up, and play some short ball games. Until next time, see you later.