Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My Name Is Ryan. I'm Kirby.
Hello. Today we're gonna be over a game
called A Bilge from Neon Rot. You may have seen Neon Rot on
the show before. They were on here for an
interview and we went over the game BDSM, BDSM.
Sure it is unrelated, themes also unrelated, but the letters
are the same. Or the themes could be related.
Well, this one says battles, Dragons, swords, and magic.
I was thinking themes of the other BDSM, right?
I mean, either works. I'm fine with both.
You know, that works for me, remember.
How are you doing tonight, Kirby?
I'm actually doing pretty good, yeah.
Got a lot of things like wrapping up right now, so it's
been very wonderful to be honest.
Am I allowed to do a little flashy flash?
Yeah. Flash away.
What is this? What is this next to me?
Could this be? Could this be guilt?
Could this be? Certainly could be.
I got mine right here. This is also the Guild Adventure
diary. What is this?
And for those out in Podcast World, this is Guild In my hint
it is both the Guild Zine and the Adventure diary.
Check it out on disastertourism. Dot Games also have the the, the
bookmark here and these beautiful character sheets a
whole handful. Didn't they?
They did. They really do look really nice.
Yeah, they do. They do look really nice.
I love that this is the thing. I know that people did this
before, but I know that Stockholm cartel has really kind
of made it blown up and a lot of people are doing it since then.
And I have like literally a pile of just tear off character
sheets from different games that I love to use.
But, you know, no in person games right now or ever again
play. We'll see.
But yeah, and at the end we'll talk a little bit more about
Kirby's stuff. But tonight we're doing build.
I don't really think we have a lot to talk about beforehand.
No. You ready to stop right into
this? Yeah, it's rock'n'roll, baby.
Yeah. So we are going over BUILD.
So, first impressions for Build? What are you thoughts?
Oh man, it's cool. It's a very cool.
And I have I had as I told you before when we started talking,
I had not, I have not played Liminal or even read through it.
So I didn't really know any have any like context for the game,
right. But knowing that.
Even or even not knowing that, I should say I this game looks
like a lot of fun to play. I I love the concept of the OR
the theme and the the setting of it.
This giant beast that like is below the sea and comes up every
once every three years to like be pillaged, basically.
I just think that's so cool. But yeah, it's it's it's a cool
game. Yeah, it's it's, it's really
neat. I think that's that definitely
is a highlight and the art and style generally of what Neon Rod
does too. It it is.
We did do Liminal on the show. We did a actual play on the
Adventure Archive and I was going to check that out.
That's Lexi Bella and Neon Rod did that together.
It's a fun game where you generate rooms as you move
through, like the back rooms of like the liminal spaces.
If you don't know what the back rooms are, just Google the back
rooms. It's like a shared.
It's like a massive shared fiction out there that exists
kind of like the SAP and shit like that.
The game is super fun. This system feels a lot like
that game, but gross and with combat.
So yeah, so we'll go over that. So we are this is game is I
think it's like 56 pages or something like that, it's almost
60 pages. So we are going to do a full
game review as opposed to just a Zine review because it does kind
of like I think we roughly do like 30 ish pages.
We do, we do the Zine review because it's a little less, it's
3 metrics instead of five. So that's, you know, it's got
less of an emphasis or less of some things are weighted
differently because it's being a shorter format.
I don't have things but this for the size and everything.
I think we decided to do the full thing.
So right off the bat, Neon Rot's art really great first page
here. It's very dark.
There is the word bilge across the top and this kind of like
it's a little bit pixelated. All the art there, the whole
thing is very pixel 90s like old school like Quake, you know
original Doom style all the way there.
So just assume everything is pixelated in a fun way.
I love neon rock style. When you did the interview with
us, they talked about how they get that style of art.
I don't know if they did the same thing for this, but it's
really fun. You should check out that
episode. But right on the front page also
is this kind of, I'm going to say sphincter with a creature
coming out at you. You know, it could be what it
is. Yeah, I mean, sphincters are
used in here and it's black and the cover is kind of like
lightish reddish. I'm going to say light red
pinkishness to it on the front. But it's supposed to be an
Oroboros. Actually, no.
You think so? No.
Because there's like, there's like a creature coming out of
you in the front. You see the open mouth.
I think the ring is supposed to be an oroboros, not a rectum
sphincter. Well, no.
So sphincters aren't just in your rectum.
You actually have quite a few sphincters at your body.
Oh, I know. I know all about them.
I don't know. We'll have to ask Neanra when he
comes on. Hey buddy, let us know if this
is a sphincter on the front or not.
Either way, it's a great piece of art.
I really love the cover. It's really fantastic.
Just had Neanra there and honestly like the art, the
style, the vibe, the pixelated stuff for the most part through
it's such good vibes. Like I really love, I really
love that. There are some critiques of some
of the use of that. They're out that we'll talk
about, but we'll see what goes kicking to the first page.
Here there's a it's very fleshy chunk as a background art that I
really enjoyed, very pink. And on the front there is this
kind of like banner that is used throughout the game.
It's black with a red outline and has this very old school
pixel squared off font that I think in this section here as a
big huge thing. Across the whole page it says
some parts of this journey may seem violent or cruel.
I think is a good use of this font.
I think we talked about it before stream though.
This is also pretty much the font used as body texture the
entire thing, and it becomes difficult to read pretty
quickly. Yeah it definitely, yeah.
It definitely works for the like highlighted text and important
or flavor flavor boxes and stuff like that.
But yeah, it's it's, yeah, we'll talk about it.
I would say I actually I took a bunch of notes because I read
this while while on break at work.
Oh, nice. But I would say that our
primary, at least my primary critiques throughout the game
are mostly like stuff like that. There's some usability issues,
There's some like copy editing issues or the entire thing.
But like as a system and with the vibe and the art and stuff
like that, I think it's really fantastic.
But I think, and I'll point this out as we go through, pass one
or two passes from a good copy editor would really tighten this
thing up into a fantastic project.
Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah.
Next page. Do not volunteer if you
subscribe to Fear of the Flesh. I love the word flesh.
It's a great word. Yeah.
I love flesh. Yeah, So this is the story.
And when we get to this page, this is pretty much the layout
through the entire thing. It's got this kind of like
pixelated, kind of like fleshy bits around the edges.
Everything has this red pixel outline, this white pixel font
throughout most of it. That as we said, like it's fine,
but there are definitely some issues with some of the letters
looking very similar. Sometimes it takes a little bit
to see the difference between O's and d's and five's and s's
and stuff. So it's not impossible, but it
is. It does make it slightly lower.
Oh, and also before we get cracking, we have tweaked the
the scores on the five metrics just a little bit.
Not not what we score, but kind of how we have are describing
them to kind of get better in mind with how we have been
scoring. So instead of art and style, we
are now doing art and layout all as one because it's like the
visual part of the layout versus stuff.
And instead of layout as a score, because we would always
have to say it's not about how the layout looks, it's about
like how it's used. We have switched that to
usability, so that includes digital tools, readable fonts
like maps, it actually makes sense, things like that, so we
can expand on the usability a little bit more and put layout
and all the visual stuff all into one category.
So visual sort of most part are in 1.
So I think most of us using this are usability issues.
So we'll see. But yeah, this is the story all
the way through, as you said. I think this is a really
fantastic setting, a vibe for what's going on.
And I'm going to, I'm going to read that for you guys.
So in the turn of the 30th century, humanity began to
extend their greed among the stars, harvesting what minerals
and life they could in their travels.
They discovered a previously unnoticed moon and perfect order
around Neptune. I think that was amiss.
I think Uranus would have been a really nice planet, perfectly
hidden by the planet's orbit. The moon, almost entirely made
of water, contained large underwater volcanoes, creating a
perfect soup to create and sustain life.
However, initial Rover missions yielded nothing but empty waters
and large bone deposits littering the ocean floor.
The mystery puzzled scientists for years, and many penal
volunteer ships that were sent lost contact with Earth.
That is, until the discovery of the Leviathan.
What was thought to be a large, excuse me, underwater landmass
began to surface an extremely territorial sea creature the
size of America. Every three years it was
recorded to surface, apparently looking for a mate that never
came. Initial scans of the creature
revealed what seemed to be the last remaining life of the moon,
flourishing in its guts, parasitic extraterrestrial
crawling through its organs, and even deeper still, the largest
deposit of ambergris known to man several fleshy caverns of
the stuff. From then, the race was on each
trillionaire of Earth, sending barely trained piano volunteers
in a ship to retrieve as much as they could.
Their freedom? Their reward?
Nope. Voicing over there.
Ryan loved it. Oh, thanks.
Yeah, like I said, I I just think I really like the vibe on
here. I think that throughout the the
thing, as I said some some copy editing would would be helpful.
I think there's just like little tweaks though that would just
help with readability, like at the turn of the 30th century, I
think would be better. There's some commas missing.
There's some extra commas throughout the thing.
There's some run on sentences, some weird kind of turns a
phrase. And I notice a lot of like tense
switching. So sometimes it'll be talking
about they, sometimes you, sometimes even the same
sentence. So like I said, I think a good
copy editor would fix a lot of those issues for the entire
thing. But yeah, Leviathan, I do like
this, what they do with a lot of the things.
So Leviathan isn't real big at the top and then in like a
grayish color underneath. It's written and what I assume
is like a bunch of different languages.
I think that's fantastic. I love the idea.
That was such a cool such a cool like header header style.
Yeah, it's dope. It makes me really feel like the
I missed like late 90s scifi movies that have like my
favorite kind of future shit is broken down future technology.
Because like right now the technology that exists in our
world is beyond what we're aware of.
What we get is 10 year old technology versus what like the
government or like the military has.
So in the future the average person is not going to have like
a gleaming perfect spaceship. They're probably going to have
like like a beater spaceship, you know what I mean?
So I love, like that concept, but I also imagine like a future
where there's like 30 billion people on the planet and
everything is written in like 10 languages because like, everyone
is everywhere. And I'd love that vibe.
And that's a vibe I get from this.
I don't know if you felt the same way.
Yeah, no, I definitely felt like that dystopian, like massive
cyberpunk kind of world where like, everybody's just crammed
on top of each other and everything is in 50 different
languages, you know? Yeah, that's the vibe I got.
Well, I love that it's it's such a good header style, so and
there is a great piece of art here, which is the art style
throughout the entire thing. It's a very pixelated image.
Sometimes the images are hard to discern a little bit, but I like
that. I think it feels like a 90s
video games where they were like doing what not.
But this is like a bluish green image, so a little bit more of
the the floor as we go. The ships would latch onto the
creature in the small time period in which it surfaced, and
the volunteers would mine into the guts of the beast in a race
against time, lighting their way with cheap lamps and hacking at
the flesh with metal pipes kitted out with cheap survival
suits made of wet rotting fabric and scratched metal helmets.
Failure to return to the ship for the Leviathans mating period
was up caused it to descend into the impossible depths, the
pressure crushing the latched ship to crumple, leaving them
entrapped in the belly of the beast to fend off the larger
than life parasites. That time has come again.
The Leviathan has surfaced and you have traveled there in
search of the grists and your freedom.
Maybe this time it will be different I think, and this is
the last time I'm really going to harp on it.
The this sentence, this the the thing I just read prior to that.
That's all one sentence it runs on and there's some, just some,
like I said some weird tense things.
So like failure to introduce the ship before the levy things,
mating period, it was up caused it to descend.
So you're returning the ship. I don't think it causes the
descent, I think it just descends and you need to get
there in time. So those are the little things
that I think copy editors would fix and just take a little bit
to help with, yeah. And like the font, the font
issue here where it says the pressure causing the latched
ship to crumple, I think you said crushing.
I could be wrong. But I'm pretty sure you said
crushing. And when I was looking at it, I
thought it was a typo, but then I realized it actually was the
word causing and not crushing without.
Yeah, because the a Yeah. So, yeah, they.
Are looks so similar or they they don't really when you're
when they're next to each other but upon first glance that's
what I that's what I thought it said yeah so like it it like
like we said there is a usability here.
I I do love the the vibe of the font but as far as readability I
think it there may be just a slightly different one.
I don't know you you would be sacrificing vibes for
readability and that's that's entirely up to what Neon Rot
wants to want to do with it. I do think maybe the same, the
same kind of vibe could be done with the text that's just
slightly more readable. And I love at the bottom of each
page there is these little bit of flavor text at the bottom,
like Parasitic Volunteers to Be terminated is written there.
At the bottom again, like one thing that Neon right, has in
spades is fucking vibes. I'll say that like BDSM, like
the the art, the lore, the kind of like, as they said, like the
late 90s kind of like gross stuff.
That's, you know, their their bread and butter is.
It sings to me and I love it and and again like you we have that
in spades here. So one thing that we'll say
right here at the beginning, they for a 60 page Zine,
hyperlinks and bookmarks would be great.
They are theoretically bookmarks in this Zine, but they're just
page numbers. So that's not like super
helpful. If they're already here, just
having the names of like what's on those page numbers would be
great. So like this, there could be one
here on page whatever. This is for creating a character
right there. That would be super helpful once
you get towards like 50 ish pages.
I really think that you need digital navigation tools,
especially since it only exists in digital right now.
Yeah, So what you need to play build a bunch of different dice,
pen and pencil counters, and some volunteers and a basic deck
of cards minus the jokers. There is a picture of a suit
here and enhanced it says enhanced black box, which in
another bit of lore later you find out is at the bottom of
this page. No, that black boxes record
everything. So all the trillionaires are
watching all of these penal colony volunteers and tracking
what's happening with them. And then there's a section here,
There's a little another line here that says remote mobility
locking. So I assume that also means they
can just shut your suit off so you can't walk anymore if they
don't feel like you're doing a good job.
Yeah. And I would.
That's so unsurprisingly what a trillionaire would do.
You know, I also love that this time the rich people are sending
other people into the submarine. I don't love that.
Sorry sarcasm there bud. So creating a volunteer, what
are you going to do for that? So when creating a volunteer,
decide on a name and back story and that's it.
As far as all of that, if playing single player use two
plus volunteers, so you you would play with two characters
by yourself. Why are they here?
What crimes brought them to this dark rock that they actually
volunteer or they placed here by a broken penal system?
Do they know the other volunteers?
I love those. That little bit of flavor there.
So there are three stats, Flesh, Spike, and Crunch, and you'll
roll 2D6 per skill and assign the results to your flesh, Spike
and Crunch. So these work a lot differently.
They're not. They're they're much more
gamified than a lot of attributes are used for, maybe a
little bit more obstruction. So Flesh is used for physical
acts such as lifting heavy flesh or prying off a dangerous
parasite. Again, a little bit of last time
I'm really going to harp on it, so I wouldn't use the word flesh
to describe what flesh does spike used for nerve related
acts such as finding a weak point to open a door or pinching
the correct bit of meat to stop an organ.
What that is explained is pretty far down into the game and then
crunch used for melding acts such as making a weapon out of
bone or tearing open an internal sphincter.
We love those sphincters doesn't love a good.
Sphincter, I I kind of. I kind of agree with you on the
flesh thing, but then I also don't because I think that one.
I want to say the way that he delineated these three skills
and what they do is very interesting and I like it a lot,
especially crunch, I think that. Having a in a three skill game,
one of the skills being something like your ability to
like craft basically or or deconstruct with like whatever
is available is just super cool. I do think that.
I think I feel like flesh works because it is the physical
strength. Quick movement kind of thing and
Spike works because that my first thing was when when it's
nerve related acts Spike being like your your heart rate or
your blood pressure spiking you know that was that was the way
where my brain went when I like because you're moving quickly
and trying to do something really fast you know so but
that's you know that that was those were my my first thoughts
upon reading those was I I felt like they made sense but I'm not
you're not wrong Yeah I so my first sense on Spike was the
same similar but then when you read what Spike actually is I
was like that also makes sense. But I do really enjoy that these
three stats are very game specific.
They're not as I said they're not like abstracted it's not
just like intelligence or something like that.
They're very you couldn't really take these three and put it into
a different game. They're very made for this game
and I really enjoy that that it's very specific to this.
So it shows a lot of like follow through in like the design and
stuff. The other two things you have
are also Vigor and fatigue. So rolling them out of D6 equal
to your flesh. So to get flesh, let's let's
just do you want to roll 2D6 and tell me what your you know,
let's just make a character. Why don't you just make a
character? I want you to roll 2D63 times.
We'll give you some flesh spike and crunch.
Just use a digital one, brah. Yeah.
I got an envelope here in Sharpie.
Boom. There you go.
So Kirby's going to make a character as we go through this.
We'll test some of the mechanics as we go to.
Someone did comment on one of our last videos that they
enjoyed when we did that, so we're going to keep doing that
until someone says they ate it, and then we're going to ignore
that person and do it anyway. So 2D6 for each of the three.
So what are your two D6? What's your flesh all?
Right. My flesh is 8.
Dope your spike. Sorry.
Spike. Shit.
Spike is 4, so I'm not good at that spiker.
Is 10? Yeah, it's a nice cruncher bud.
Cruncher, Yeah. Look at my notes real quick.
One of the other things towards the top that I did want to say
when we talked about the digital tools, I noticed especially all
the way through the end, there is no table of contents, so.
I actually did not notice that. Yeah, I think once you hit like
60th pages, I think a table of contents would be really helpful
and then hyperlink it. So going on to vigor and
fatigue, you roll an amount of D6 equal to your flesh.
So you you got an 8 for flesh right?
So you roll 8D6. Yeah, I'm just gonna do this in
the chat because I only have one D6 on my in my hand right now.
Roll. Wait, what is it?
Is it command roll? I believe it's just you can't.
You can't roll 1D6 at a time. D86 That's the exclamation
point. D6.
Yeah, there we go, 12 You can't roll 8D6.
You can roll 1D6 at a time. That's how the the bot works.
Oh, shit. My bad.
OK, I was. I was my one D6.
See, I'm just not paying attention, man.
All right, let's see. I got 253.
That's 10. 6, four, 26228, one and six.
That's 35, so 35 is is your total.
Is my total 35 on 86, so times the result by 10 so you get 350
and then split the total number any way you'd like between vigor
and fatigue. OK, so fatigue is lost, one per
room moved to, moved into, so every time you move into a room
you lose 1 fatigue. Vigor is lost in other more
visceral ways, usually combat and getting injured and stuff.
So it's important. This is a game that I think
you're going to play once, realize that you fucked it up
super bad and go back and be like now I understand a little
bit better, which is fine, I like that, I really enjoy that.
So you'll split it between fatigue moving from room to room
and vigor. As you know, probably your kind
of like quote UN quote HP ish stuff.
If your Vigor falls to zero, you are killed and must shred your
volunteer card. If your fatigue falls to zero,
you are knocked unconscious and must be dragged by another
player to a safe rest area about the cost of two fatigue instead
of 1 per room moved for that player, or you are killed.
Unconscious enemies are able to make arrest action here, so if
you do so, you don't die when you lose all your fatigue, you
just have to be dragged longer, left to die, and if to be
dragged along it double fatigues a person dragging you.
If all players are not unconscious, you are killed and
must shred your volunteer cards. You're ready to start exploring
your character. Most likely your character will
most likely change drastically as you play.
Be prepared for this. So those are your core stats.
Flesh spike, Crunch, Vigor, and fatigue.
I like it. Cool little piece of art here at
the bottom and there is some more writing and says if
parasitic embryo replaces a volunteer's heart or other
important organ, prioritize the safe capture of the foreign body
for further study. I love that.
I fucking love that. The little extra orbits at the
bottom are so important not to skip over.
All right, so parasite. It has the same kind of header
as Leviathan. Big Red at the top, all the
different languages right underneath it.
Again, love that. Really fantastic, right?
So sometimes during your exploration, so I'm not going to
read this word for word. As you go through the Leviathan,
you will find small parasites and they will lend their power
to you, enhancing you. So you are able to actually take
parasites into your body. And once they are part of you,
they are part of you. They are important as your lungs
or liver. It says upon coming across these
parasites, squirming in the fleshy walls or wriggling within
a defeated foe, you can choose to accept them into your body,
and accepting them increases your parasitic purity by 10%.
Each time you have an add one of these enhancements as you
explore, you'll come across para checks that will actually
determine your parasitic purity. And depending on that, a
sphincter enemy or item will react differently to you as if
as opposed to if you are a pure human recognizing and accepting
you as part of the system because you have enough parasite
making up your body. I love that.
I think that's fucking fantastic.
I think it's really cool. Very cool, yeah.
If a volunteer is 90% parasitic purity, enemies will not attack
them even if they are the target.
They're completely ignored in battle because they're just seen
as part of the system. However, a volunteer 90%
parasitic purity takes 1 vigor damage for each room moved into
as well as one fatigue as the multitude of parasites drains
their life. Chef's kiss love that volunteers
can have multiples of the same parasite, but the effects do not
stack. Then why I so?
I guess there are some things that are only like once per
rest, so you could have two so that you could use it twice so
the effects don't stack. But I assume like usages should
be able to use multiples. There's one that like causes
like a bright flash. If you had two of those, I
assume you'd be able to do 2 bright flashes.
Or at least that's what I would do, yeah.
Number one gives you feeling, so that's yeah.
But yeah, it seems like maybe things that like I'm trying to
think of there must be somewhere, like the effects are
stackable and so it doesn't. I'm sure it was an edge case and
that's why they threw it in there.
If a volunteer becomes 100% parasite, they lose themselves
into Leviathan, their mind warped by worms and other
creatures, and they become an enemy with vigor equal to flesh,
Resilience equal to spike and attack equal to crunch.
So you become a bad guy and it even tells you how you become a
bad guy. Love that.
Another little lore? Drop here.
Can you keep your humanity question mark?
Probably not. There is a list here of 10
parasites. Did any?
We're not. I'm not going to read through
all 10. Did any of them really stand out
to you as super fun? I'm going to roll for it.
I rolled A3I slug replaces the left eye with a large slug when
revealing a room. Draw two, then discard 1.
I like that little. Scry the scrying slug.
I like it. It's really neat.
I think this does. So I'm me and me and Hunter.
OK, so question and I guess I could read your games and and do
this. Me and Hunter think differently
about this and I never remember which one I am until he tells
me. And then I'm like, no, I like
the other one. Are you a rules 1st and then
character creation in a Zine or a game?
Or you a character creation 1st and then rules?
I. Question for Guild.
I think I did. I did like a little tidbit of
lore in the beginning and then just dove into character
creation because of the way I wanted to write it or some of
the other ones I've done. I I feel like I'm usually
character first because, but I usually try and.
I'm trying to remember like how I've done them in the past.
Like I feel like I've tried to like write the game with the
character creation and not like break it into sections.
I don't know if that's as a parent in Guild, as maybe I
would have wanted it to be. It's possible that it is from
someone else's perspective, but because it's kind of how it is
written, really is like this is who who you start as and you
move to the end. And then this is what you do at
the end. Like, yeah, but yeah, I think
that I what I really like is if I I, I enjoy character creation
being being near the top because like that's that's you.
And it's good to get a sense of like who you are as you read
through and everything like that.
And this is really just the first read and should read it
through it once. Like you can just go to the
sections that you want, but I I like there being like a little
bit of like a quick start at the beginning.
That at least gives you a somewhat of an understanding of
what the the rules are, so that when you build your character,
you kind of understand a little bit more of like why some things
are more important than the other.
I'm forgetting. You're right that that is what I
did in Guild actually, because I have the the poor mechanic is
before the rest. So I think I'll be on your side
with this. Yeah.
The reason I bring that up is because it says when revealing a
room, draw two then discard one. We haven't really discussed what
that means at all yet. So that's the only reason I
bring it up at all. So it's just interesting.
But it's also hard to to to to separate it all in such a
completely different way. So it's just that's more of just
second issues, the thing when writing a game than like any
kind of critique at all. It's hard to kind of get all the
things you need before you get to the other things.
And you'll often find like you write something and then it has
to be explained later just for the way because pages go this
way that's not like in the same space and time because we don't
live in the 4th dimension. What what is one of the ones.
There's some other really cool worms that I liked a lot the
the. Compass worm is cool too.
The brain worm that that vibrates based on cardinal
direction when moving to another room.
Look at the top 4 rooms and rearrange them in any order.
But also another good example of what the fuck does that even
mean? Right, Right.
Heart Spider #1 is really fun too, just because Heart spider
once per five rooms pumps the volunteer full of extra blood,
healing 2D6 figure. Love that.
Perfect love that I also there's already, and this is just a me
thing. Again, not really big critique
there. There's already red highlighted
stuff in the book. I often will look at this and
think, oh, green means good for me, red means bad for other
people. But everything that has like a
D6 is all green throughout. So whether it's damage or
anything to yourself, it's all green.
You can easily just switch like this extra D6 damage to somebody
else to like a red, you know? And that would just be a little
helpful because you could tell all right And then we get to
exploring, which since it's the very next page again, that
previous thing wasn't a critique as much as just as you write AZ
and I can only imagine it's not easy to make sure it all makes
sense in the right order. Exploring and it says black
boxes record all info. This is that little bit from
before we saw the picture. That said, black boxes are
attached to your suit. So moving When in an area, you
may move to a new area, both explored or not, at the cost of
1 fatigue per moving volunteer. You may choose to move as a
group of any number of volunteers.
If you do, you must choose a lead volunteer and any triggered
actions from moving to a new area that say you relate only to
the lead volunteer unless stated otherwise, okay real quick
because it's the core mechanic. Why would you do that, then?
Kirby looks baffled for those in.
The I'm just rereading it. I'm just rereading it to see if
I can figure that out right? So basically it says you can
move from area to area and every time you do you take one
fatigue. But you can choose to move as a
group with a leader and any targeting that what happened as
you move into a new room. Like a a creature targeting the
lead volunteer or effect taking a place on the lead volunteer
would only affect that one person who decided to be a
leader. But it's this, If you you may
move as a group and choose a leader.
If you're always going to be the first person to do that, why
would you? But if you need to have someone
who's the lead volunteer, you shouldn't say may you know.
So, like what? I'm trying to see if I if what
is happening here is. An option to not take one
fatigue per volunteer moving. See, that's what I'm curious
about, right? Like you can.
Do this and everybody just takes 1 fatigue.
Or you move as a group and have a leader and the leader takes
the brunt of whatever the hell happens in the room when you
enter. Which if that is the case for
the rules, I think that's a good a good balance, a good good
binary choice there for a play style.
But I agree and disagree just in the fact that like one of the
core things is like you have to you take fatigue damage every
time you go into another room. If and that's one of the core
like pools of resources you have is fatigue and Vigor.
If you can always pick a leader and move as a group, then the
concept of fatigue as a resource pool becomes obsolete because
you never would be spending fatigue to go from room to room
and let. Like there's other things that
like would cause you to because you have like a parasite or
something like that. But like I just think that needs
to be explained one way or the other.
Either you need to have a volunteer or because nowhere in
it does it say that you then don't reduce fatigue.
And then if you don't need to have a volunteer and everyone
loses fatigue anyway, then why would anyone be the lead knowing
that they would take on the brunt of the harm just for
themselves? Because the other thing too is
like you were a you're you're a penal colony volunteer, which
means you were a prisoner trapped up somewhere.
There's a group of other prisoners just trying to survive
in the belly of a giant alien leviathan.
I don't think that many people are going to be like, you know
what, I have it in my heart to do this kind of thing for all of
my people and be the one that, you know what I mean?
Like so. I just think there's that.
There's something there for like as far as that binary choice
goes, but I think that you're right that it doesn't.
It doesn't really lore wise make really much sense, but also
mechanically speaking it almost feels like why would yeah why
would you choose like it just it.
I think it just needs a an addendum to like you can do this
X many times or or the lead volunteer will always take two
fatigue plus this. You know, or something like
that. But then again, you'd have the
lower issue where you're like why would they even do this in
the 1st place? But that's more of a, but I mean
even mechanically, I'm not even worried about the lower even
mechanically like you're always going to take the brunt.
Why would you be the lead? So I think that needs to be
expanded on just a little bit. I think there needs to be like a
like you may choose to do this. Why would you like It needs to
be like a mechanical reason why you would choose to do that.
Like are you not getting the fatigue or do you have to do it
because that's a mechanic you want in the game?
It just I think that one way or another I think that's specific
the moving thing, since it's literally like pretty much the
core mechanic game is moving from room to room needs to be
expanded on just like a little bit more.
What's next? Each intest in between an area
is closed by a large sphincter. The sphincters act as doors to
other areas and they're sometimes locked because the
liathan is tensing. And then with the deck of cards,
the cards are used to determine the area you come across as you
map the Leviathan before play, you shuffle a 52 card deck.
It said before no jokers when moving to a previously
unexplored. When moving to A to an
unexplored area of the body, draw from the deck and check the
card value and suit with the area guide as you move into the
area. Cards are discarded after being
drawn. If there's no cards left,
reshuffle the disc. The discard pile and start
again, and sometimes something is triggered as you move into a
new area. Resolve these before doing any
actions within the area. So that is the core.
The core mechanic of the game is the exploration, so it's good to
have it near the top. And it is just like page seven.
I don't know. It feels like we're like 30
pages in, but we're only 7 pages in.
I I was just thinking though how much I would have liked to have
a. I I mean really even just that.
Like why am I had like when I first cracked this open and was
reading like what do you need to play?
And you know it's only two pages before this.
Whatever. I still was like I need a lot of
shit to play this game. Like I need like 5-6 different
dice. I need a roll of coins.
Why do I need a roll of coins? I need, you know I need a 52
card deck like that. It just felt like a lot without
any I guess any explanation. So I feel like just that like.
The cards represent the rooms in the in the in the thing, and you
blah blah blah, that's it. And then see page whatever for,
you know, that kind of thing. That's what I'm saying like just
a little bit of a primer right at the beginning.
I think they they could be one more spread in here and there's
a later spread that can be completely deleted.
So you won't even add to the page count that would have a
table of contents and then just a brief rundown that says you
will be rolling dice to make checks to open sphincters,
whatever. You'll be turning cards to to
you know, randomly their terminal rooms are going to blah
blah blah. Just like a quick, just
narrative, not mechanical rundown of like what you're
actually doing. And then when you jump into the
curation right off the bat, you have an understanding.
Okay, I know why I'm making checks.
I know why, why my vigor is important.
I don't want fatigue is important.
I just think, like, that's a really nice thing to have right
at the beginning. Like this is what you're doing
and why you're doing it. Boom, now let's get into
mechanics. Would be a nice spread to have
with the table of contents. So mapping before starting play,
take a piece of paper. Draw a large row of four fleshy
squares at the top of the page. Mark any of these squares as the
starting area. Doodle anything you might see
there, like veins and organs and stuff and that's your starting
area. I also think it would be great
because the the layout is so great on here, the art is so
great on here and there is a character sheet later.
It would also be really nice to have a exploration sheet.
If it's four fleshy squares at the top, just throw one in here
so I can print one out or whatever.
And because I yeah, because I think in liminal they just sound
like a grid but even that like they at least have that in the
in the PDF. So it's nice to have And with
their art style having like the this kind of like pixelated
fleshy chunks like your 4 squares at the top.
And then even if it's just like playing boxes the rest would be
such a good vibe to be able to print out and I would love to be
able to like have that on a sheet.
The edge of every square represents a long winding in
Tustin to a new area. Any volunteer which is to
explore past the edge, just tape another page to it.
You should make the map as detailed as possible, both
visually and with notes. Because if you're if if all of
your people die, you're not the only one sending people here.
There are multiple trillionaires sending tons of people here.
To explore this, other people can use your map.
You can use your map later. So both in the lower and out of
the lower you're the map is important to have.
It is a mapping game, so there it's that's important.
There's a little section here that has a map key.
There's a spike point, an enemy, a locked sphincter, impossible
gap, a safe area, and a flume. Talk about flume in a second.
But there are special areas. The starting area, it's where
you start, the safe area, where it's safe.
In this room all players may make a rest action at once,
starting a fire for warmth and sleep or tell stories, and you
heal the D6 plus flesh, vigor and your fatigue to full.
At the cost of increasing the Leviathan's discomfort by one
per rest, we'll get to Leviathan discomfort and then flumes.
These tubes connect areas of the Leviathan via a series of vacuum
powered fleshy chutes. Each flume connects to each
other and may be moved between at the cost of 1 fatigue as a
moving into an adjacent area. So it's like shoots and ladders.
You can just like shoot down. I will say as someone who does
work in the medical field, I love the use of like sphincters
and stomas and all the rest of this.
I will say though, there is a good word that could be used
here medically as opposed to flume and it is fistula.
I think a fistula here would be a good word.
Is like. I would love to fistula that
that sphincter for sure, but fistulas can form between two
areas they shouldn't or even between two like organs in the
body where like something will happen and it'll Burrow through.
So fistula as a as a thing between both would be fun.
Flume is fine, I just love the word fistula.
So they would also work here and have a little bit more of that
like gross body horror mixed into it.
So Leviathan discomfort. For there is no folly of the
beast of the stars, which is not infinitely outdone by the
madness of men of that great as you fail a check involving your
environment, the Leviath and around you will start to become
aware of the intruders clenching and twisting its insides.
Which check this is, is determined by the area you are
in. When prompted increase this
tracker by one point I will say well in a second I'll say it.
Each two points filled changes how areas are generated as you
discover them, the guts of the creature changing as it twists
and turns. Sometimes these next two
letters, I had no fucking clue what it said.
I had to read the whole page and then just be like, ah okay, it
just says LD locks. So sometimes LD locks opening
releases more parasites. It does not change areas already
explored. If all 10 points are filled,
switch to the angered leviathan areas.
So I did not. So again this is the font issue.
I could not tell whether that was LD or LO or like what it was
describing at all. It took me reading it and
getting context. There is no point where it says
LD is leviathan discomfort. I understand that now, but
Leviathan discomfort as a like keyword isn't really made clear.
I really think that this would be made massively more clear if
at the top paragraph they say is determined by the area you are
in. When prompted, increase this
tracker by one point, it could really just say and there's
enough room on the line. Increase Leviathan Discomfort
Tracker by one point and it could even say Leviathan
Discomfort Parentheses LD tracker by one point and they
would make it super easy. You could even like you could
even make LD red, like give a little bold throughout the thing
so that that's there, but there's no explainer of what LD
is. And you can eventually read in
context, but that was one of the parts.
That is when I was kind of bugged a little bit by the font
all the way through. When I got to that and I was
like, OK, this is kind of fucking annoying.
Like it would be a lot easier if that was a little bit more
legible, but I think straight up.
Like if you're going to have a keyword with a keyword like
abbreviation, you should have the keyword with the
abbreviation attached to it at some point at the top so it
becomes easier to read as you go through.
But basically as you fuck around the side of the Leviathan it of
it starts to feel you inside of it, and as the discomfort caused
by you increases, things will change.
Inside Leviathan, sometimes doors will open, sometimes doors
will close. But once you get the Leviathan
discomfort tracker up to 10 points, you then change how the
game is played. Only these areas will be
generated by exploring from this point on, and they're all
extremely hostile. That is the Leviathan discomfort
areas. Some sphincters might also not
be open or locked. As the insides of the Leviathan
churn in anger, intestines writhing, and the organs working
in OverDrive, the Leviathan is getting ready to descend back
into the depths. That is one thing that I thought
was really interesting is that it rises every three years, but
you messing around the side of it can cause it to descend prior
to when it would want to. After this is triggered, the
Leviathan discomfort may increase by another 10 points
should be period. However, on the final point, the
Leviathan dives beneath the surface, the pressure crushing
the ship instantly. You and the rest of the
volunteers are trapped here and your story is over.
Thankfully, your mapping systems are constantly broadcasting back
to Earth by the ship, and the next set may attempt entry from
the same point of the Viathan. Note 10 plus refers to if the LD
has hit 10 yet, even if it has gone below after.
So a couple of things here and a question I'll come back to later
if I remember and I just want to make sure I'm checking my notes
here to see if there's anything that came up before this.
We talked about index, we talked about fistula, we talked about
the LD explanation. So basically you have a
Leviathan discomfort tracker and as you fuck around inside the
Leviathan you can increase its discomfort.
Once you hit 10 the game changes to Leviathan discomfort style
gaming, which means from that point on everything is more
difficult for you. It does say here at the bottom
though. Once you increase it to another
10 points on that final tenth point, it dives down under your
ship, is crushed and you are stuck inside the Leviathan with
no way to escape. But I do.
If I remember correctly, there is a thing later that once it
hits the final point you start doing rolls too.
So there's a little bit of a, a disconnect between, I think that
and a later rule, but remind me when we get there.
So there's a whole page here that talks about it is the 10
things that happen. Oh, yeah, Here it is right here
at the bottom. OK.
So as we go through the Leviathan, the slumbering, it
doesn't matter. Once you hit the one on the
what, you hit one, it says the great bellows echo around its
guts. The beast is waking.
All right, two level 2 Ld's are unlocked.
Three, the walls squirm 4. Level 4 LD doors are unlocked on
the even, on the odd numbers cool little orbits of it getting
irritated, and on the even numbers that level of doors
unlocked. So level 6 LD locks open, level
8 LD locks open, and then at 10 it says the Leviathan has begun
to submerge. Upon entering a room, roll a
D20. If the result is above the
current LD, decrease it by one. If the LD reaches 0, the
Leviathan descends and your ship is destroyed between those two
pages first. I will also say I don't like the
use of this like D6 that goes up to D10.
It was very confusing. It's confusing because you feel
like you should roll on it, but you're not rolling on this.
This is levels. I think numbers would have been
much less confusing here. I don't see a reason why this is
like the only one that has dice attached to it, since you are
rolling D sixes. Since there are now these dice
here at my brain, Auto automatically went to oh if I
roll a D3, you're not rolling for this.
This is the discomfort you are causing.
So I I think switching that to numbers would be just a
necessary change. But so again, tell me if I'm
just dumb reading this above. It says after this is triggered,
the LD may increase another 10 points.
So after you hit the Leviathan discomfort, it can be increased
by another ten. However, on the final point, the
Leviathan dives beneath the surface.
OK, and then we hit this down here, which I assume is the
increase in points. You get to 4, you get to 5, you
get to 6, you get to 7, you get to 8, you get to 9.
Once you get to 10, the Leviathan has begun to submerge.
Upon entering a room, roll a D20.
If the result is above the current LD, decrease it by one.
If the LD reaches 0, the Leviathan descends and your ship
is destroyed. So are you counting up to 10 and
then counting back down to 0? I think so.
I'm just going back and forth here between that because.
Note 10 plus refers to if the LD has hit ten, hit 10 yet, even if
it has gone below after, right. So like this, this is a section
that I was just a little bit, a little bit unclear on.
Is like exactly what happens when we hit the LD.
What happens when you get to 10? Are you then going back down to
one like that's? That's my only issue here is
that if if the whole thing is this 10, the 10 also doesn't
really have any dots on it, right?
So is that the core for this whole thing and should that be
at the top then? I'm looking at the top here, the
top of the previous page, page nine.
I'm just like rereading it with more context to try and see if I
can figure this out. So when it happens, you.
Will or you fail a check involving the environment, the
leviathan will become discomforted and you will
increase the tracker by one point.
Every two points determines blah blah blah.
If all 10 points are filled, the angered switch to angered
leviathan areas right? So okay.
Then after that you fill it another 10 points and I think on
that at that point is when the the D20 rolls start.
That's how it was reading to me, right?
Right. But then so there's as I said
before, there's a section here that says the LD may increase
another 10, but on the final point it dives beneath the
surface. But then we get to a section and
here it goes, 123-567-8910. But on 10 now it says the
Leviathan has began to submerge. You do the D20 rolls.
If the result is above the current LD, you decrease it by
1:00 and if the LD reaches 0 the Leviathan descends.
So you're getting to 10. Then you get to another 10.
Then you had. Then you're doing D20 rolls
until you hit zero. OK.
Yeah. You know, sorry if I repeated
anything you said I I was obviously not in the room.
But the OK that does actually start to make a little bit of
sense to me because story wise, because as the Leviathan is
descending it's going to be feeling less discomfort because
it's returning to where it lives basically, right?
But but it says here at the bottom once it reaches 0 it then
descends and your ship is destroyed.
But above it says once you hit the last point then it descends
and your ship is destroyed. So there's that might just be a
writing, a writing thing, because it literally says the
leviathan begins to submerge and then at the end of it it says
the leviathan descends. So like, I feel like maybe it's
just written there's there's just a little bit of writing.
Like the words might need to be changed to to really more
clearly articulate what's happening here.
But I think that there's. This is triggering it and then
we count down to one and then the Leviathan drops.
Like I think maybe it's like at 10 it's preparing to, you can
feel the thing shifting and it's getting ready to descend, but
then at 0 is when it does. I think that's kind of what it's
saying. So what it sounds like we're
saying is you you can get to 10 and then you you switch to angry
Leviathan mode, then you get to another 10 and then it starts to
submerge because it's angry. And that then you switch to the
D20 rolls and once you hit zero it fully dives.
Is what it sounds like the mechanics of the LDR.
That's what I'm understanding and I'll be honest, it is
actually very cool, this kind of thing.
Here it's very cool, but yeah, it's definitely a little bit
confusing and trying to figure out the method and like the
order and such. Yeah, that's that's what, that's
how I'm reading it. But I do think even just like
one line or two that just like has like a bit of an explainer
at the bottom that just says like, so do you do a BC?
You know what I mean? You do this, you do this, you do
this. That's how it works, would be
extraordinarily helpful. Or even like right off the bat
you could say like, this is how it works.
And then here let me explain how it fully works because that has
a lot of parsing to get to count to 10, count to 10 again, and
then start doing D20 rolls until you get to 0, you know what I
mean? So that's that, I think could
use a little bit of explanation again, mechanic wise, all the
way through this. I think it's fucking fantastic.
But I think some of the writing needs to be a little bit more
clear, and some of that because I feel like we're not dumb
people. But I mean I am, but right, I
mean I might have. Honestly, I might have I might
have just done it to. I might have just done it to 20
and then make a make a 20 plus table for the like.
The getting ready to submerge thing, because you're using a
D20 already right to make these final rolls, so why not just
have like 10? One through zero through 10 is
like the normal LD11, through 20 is the angry angry leviathan,
and at 20 you start rolling a D20.
And at 30 you're dead like that's I would have just kept
counting up like just I I think I kind of understand because
it's kind of like the submerge the, you know I I think that's
kind of maybe where his brain was like you know the actual
process. But I think it makes sense.
But I think, I think going up to 20 and then counting down would
make sense because like with the discomfort, you tick up by a
point. But with So say that you roll,
let's say you go into a room and you roll a D20.
If the result is above the current LD, decrease it by 1.
So if your LD is at 18, you have to roll 19 or 20 to decrease it
by one, right? But then that's also when you
think about when you think about that, right.
If the result is above the current LD, no, no.
OK. So you're not at 20, The point
is like you get to 10 then you get to 10 again?
Because if you if you were at 20 and you had to roll above to
reduce it by one, it would be impossible.
You'd have to roll the 20 and think how many rolls you would
get before the 20. So it would have to be 10 and
then 10 again and then. But I wouldn't mind like if it
was 2 bought like on a on a sheet, I would have 10 right in
like black, then I would have like 10 boxes in red and then
you know what I mean? Once you hit to that, you're at
10 again, and then when you roll your D20.
So but that means you have at least minimum.
If you roll above a 10/10 rolls in a row, that's 10 more rooms
minimum that you can explore before you could possibly even
get to 0. And the odds of rolling above
every single time, so that you're probably going to get
like 15 more rooms before you just fought.
Yeah, yeah. I don't know, Maybe I'm
mechanically speaking, I feel like maybe it's maybe it, maybe
it works. Yeah.
No, I'm vying with the mechanics.
I think the explanation needs to be a little bit more.
I will say this next page I love and should be way higher.
There is a big piece of art here of ambergris.
If you don't know what ambergris is, hit the googles.
But basically, whales like Build.
Up the gunk, Yeah, they build up gunk on stuff.
I think often in whales it's like the beaks of squids and it
just like coats it in this goop and people, people pay a lot of
money for it. It's basically wheel.
It's it's it's like a it's a it's a goopy whale Pearl that I
think people eat and stuff. People are weird, so it's using
like. Humans and skin care stuff too.
Yeah, it's used for a bunch of stuff because humans are fucking
weird and love using the the gunk of other things.
These are buttholes or blueberries, all right.
You seek, You seek one thing within these twisted, beating
halls, the ambergris. Somewhere deeper than the beast.
Your sensors picked it up. If you can find it and bring it
back to the starting area, you will be welcomed back and paid
in your freedom with your freedom.
Failure to present the grease to the censors of your ship will
not activate this thrusters. A horrific and fleshy death upon
this moon awaits you, and there's a big bar that has
ambergris underneath it. I think this should be way at
the top. Like, way at the top.
This is the whole reason you're fucking doing this shit.
Yeah, and it's a great piece of art too.
I love this it it's just a it's a golden chunk of stuff.
It almost looks like a like a geyser, but it's just a it's a
chunk of goop. All right, so battles.
So what separates this a little bit from limo, I think, is there
there is no, I mean a lot of things.
But one of the main things in the kind of mapping style of
using a resource to move from room to room is you actually
fight stuff. In this one, which is, which is
fun and interesting. Even though you're weakest
fucking baseball, all you have is a wrench.
You can still fight so battles. Sometimes you come across
hostile enemies. They'll be listed within an area
generator created by the check that you do when it happens to
be the role for the enemy, or spot the enemy listed.
And as I said, you are equipped with just a simple wrench used
to repair your ship. If you enter an enemy with an
with an enemy, an area with an enemy or enemy interests an area
with you, the battle begins. All players attack 1st and each
in turn roll D6 equal to their crunch against an enemy within
the room. So your crunch skill is your
fight skill most of the time. Reduce that amount by the
resilience of the enemy. Any value over this amount
reduces the enemy's vigor. If an enemy's vigor drops to
zero, it is destroyed by the player.
One thing I think would also be really helpful in this is some
examples of play. Because if you did all the
exploration rooms and then had a page where you had people like
going through all of those questions would be answered
super easily. And then same thing with the
battle. Here I also I don't think this
is really complicated but it's always nice to have combat as an
example of play because it's just it's super helpful.
So again battle starts, players go first, you roll a D6 equal to
crunch against the enemy. That amount is reduced by the
resilience and any overage reduces enemies vigor.
When they hit zero, they dead. When you hit zero, you dead.
After all players attack, all remaining enemies attack equal
to their attack stat, so they just attack equal to attack.
So if their if their attack is 20, they just hit for 20 right
at volunteers that dictated by their target.
So Target isn't listed as a keyword here, but it's kind of a
keyword in that enemies specifically target things.
So sometimes an enemy will target and we'll get to this
later when we get to the the enemies.
Sometimes it will target the highest crunch character, or the
highest flesh character, or the highest vigor character.
So they are. There's kind of like an A I
built into the the bad guys. If there's a draw, the
volunteers decide who takes the attack.
The defending player then rolls an amount of D6 equal to their
flesh skill and reduces the attack total by that total.
And any value over is gone to the players of Vigor right And
the and the battle continues until you win or lose.
If a player wishes, they may escape to an adjacent explored
area. Enemies do not follow, but will
deal D20 vigor damage to any player that leaves per enemy
still alive. I love this mechanic because
it's brutal, but also there is something later that lessens it.
There is a parasite you can get that gives you bonus speed that
lets you escape without taking that damage.
I love when something is like really hard, but you can find
something to make it easier. I I really do.
It's kind of got like feels to me like a kind of a Metroid
Bania thing where it's just like this really sucks for you, but
get the ability and it sucks less for you.
So to wrap up what combat does right, you enter combat, players
get first roll a D6 equal to crunch.
So what's your crunch score? You got a shit load of crunch,
right? Yeah, yeah, it's 10.
So you're rolling 10D6 to fight bad guys.
You got it. That's a big old wrench you got.
You got one of those like the the fucking like the little
guys. You got the giant pipe wrench,
so you you got you got that fatty.
So that amount is reduced by the enemies vigor and then they die
when they hit zero. But when you're being attacked
the attack stat is used to attack you and you're rolling a
D6 equal to your flesh to defend.
So what's your flesh? 8 So you're rolling 8D6 to
defend against attacks. So you're you're you're combat
heavy. Your spike sucks, but you're
combat heavy, so that's great. So these next two pages
completely unnecessary in my opinion.
I don't know why they're here. They are a list of 10 known
enemies, and it gives you the stats, and then it gives you the
drops. The stats are in white, the
drops are in red, and they're listed in an interesting way.
They use tarot card like major Arkana cards like Chariot,
Hermit Lovers, the Hanged Man Star, and I love the
explanations for each of those because they obviously use him
as a inspiration for it. I I It's interesting though that
you're using a deck of cards but then using a different style of
a deck of cards to name the enemies.
It doesn't bother me, it's just interesting.
But right after that one thing at the bottom of the second page
has that little bit of lore thing and says the parasites, as
the previous explorers call them, are not in fact feeding
off the beast itself more each other.
They create a perfect ecosystem within the whale as we do with
our own Leviathan. Mother Earth.
I mean, we don't. I mean, I get that.
I get that we're we're not doing that to ours.
We're fucking our ecosystem up. But I I get the the vibe.
But immediately after though that spread, that explains the
the bad guy, all their stats and their drops.
There are pages for every one of those with a picture and the
pictures are dope. That then also gives the exact
same information, the care the enemy's name, all of their stats
and the drops. So I don't see any reason
whatsoever that the page is above the whole spread
explaining all 10 bad guys and all the information you need
when for the very next like 10 pages you get all of the same
information but with a picture. Yeah, I totally agree.
I kind of wish that. He I mean, I don't want to say
that like we shouldn't. You shouldn't have included the
art because the art is really good.
I feel like you could have doubled this up.
Put two on each page, so four per spread, and then just cut
those two pages out completely and you would have cut down on
the page count too because of how little.
Not that that matters, but because of how little text is on
each page, I feel like you could have fit a lot more information
on. And and as far as the tarot
thing, I don't have a problem with it, but I don't.
And I I understand the inspirational kind of aspect to
the to the titles and then the descriptions, but I would have I
would have just tried to come up with names for them myself
because I was confused at first. When I first flipped through
this book like I didn't, I wasn't reading it.
I was just kind of like skimming it and I was like trying to get
the vibe for the book before I went and read it.
I was like, wait, am I using tarot cards for this now?
Like what's because I saw the major Archana and then at right
after that we get into the suits and I'm like, what?
I'm so confused what And then I saw had to scroll to the top to
see if I missed something about the suits or the the deck of
cards. So that's that would be my only
critique, but that's more of just a.
First glance running through this, figuring out what you
know. But yeah, I don't disagree.
I don't disagree with you. I do think there is a smidge of
a disconnect. First, I do not mind at all that
there is a piece of art and only a little bit of information on
each one. I I think it's fantastic because
I think the the art really stands out for the vibes of the
Zine in this since he does one for every single page and
they're all fucking dope as shit.
I just think if you're already going to do that which you
already did a shit load of work for the art, it's fully
unnecessary because it's not a roll table.
It's just a list of enemies so you don't need the quick
reference list at the top when you have the ones underneath
that also explain it all. I guess if it's used as like an
enemy reference page for later you could do that.
But again it just feels unnecessary to use a whole
spread for information you're literally also giving in the
next page like you're not you don't often read a beastiere
that has explanation of all the beasts 1st and then gives you
explanation again of all the beasts with with pictures like
if it was just a list of like chariot hermit lovers da da da
da fine, you don't need to page a spread for that.
I do as you say that though about so real quick let me let
me talk through like Chariot for example or or even like lovers
is a really good one. So Lovers Vigor 30.
Resilience 15 attacked 20 so it's got to you got to get 30
over the resilience which is 15 and then it attacks for 20 each
time it targets the highest flesh volunteer right.
So that is the stats and the target.
And then it says what were previously 2 separate volunteers
are now fused by a massive parasites, linking them together
in an internal embrace as the crazed couple stagger and slash.
So clear like lovers had a clear inspiration for the for the bad
guy. Same thing with the hangman.
This is one of my favorite ones. It is a volunteer bottom the
bottom half lost to the beast. It crawls along the roof of the
Leviathan's guts via long tendrils kept alive by the
parasites growing from its back. So it literally like creeps
along the ceiling held on by like tendrils and parasites, so
it's literally hanging down. The art is fantastic, so I get
the hangs man aspect of it. I don't disagree with you though
in that having dice and then having decks of cards and using
the card for generators and since the deck of cards is like
eventually is based on tarot, that's how we get to the suits
and stuff we have now through their delineations and stuff.
Using the tarot is a weird kind of choice to use because like
you said, wait, am I using? Because one of the first things
I honestly did when I read this, I was like, wait a second,
Chariot is not Major Archana #1, you know?
And then I was like and then I was like I know Death is like
#13. Why do I know that?
Tokyo Ghoul. So like and also I mean the Moon
Tarot decks I have. But like it is, it is weird kind
of to choose major iconic names to assign them different numbers
than what the major iconic is. But also, I do think it more
than anything, I think it takes away from the lower a little
bit. I think it's okay.
To be completely because you go from this kind of like gross 90s
like vibe like space body horror into this kind of a cult aspect
which like you said, I think it does have cause a little bit of
disconnect. I think it being called some
other weird gross flesh name or something would would keep it
more into the vibes. So I agree.
I agree. I think that I would get rid of
this spread entirely on pages 13 and 14.
I would replace that with that earlier spread of the table of
contents and brief explanation of the game.
I would keep all of the art, and I'd probably rename the
creatures to things that are more lower.
Kind of specific, because I can't imagine that like the
Pinot volunteers of the future sent here by Trillionaires with
nothing but wrenches and hopes and dreams, are naming the bad
guys they find after like Tarot Major Arkana.
Especially if everything is like essentially live streamed, You
know, like, not really, but to some degree I feel like people.
Would have had names for these things at some point.
Yeah. And they would.
I mean, and people, people overall, they're going to like
people name things like, oh, this guy slashes stuff.
He's a slasher, you know what I mean?
Like that is and and where is he at?
Oh, all right. He's the Bay Area slasher.
Like people are going to be like, oh, that's like the bile
duct you know, puncher. You know, like.
Ceiling crawling path body. Yeah.
You know that's that's yeah. I think that would help with the
vibes a little bit. I like it.
I think it's I think it's I almost think it's a little bit
too elevated you know what I mean?
Like I feel like there's almost a little bit too smart I think
in this part because I I, I do enjoy it but it does do think it
takes out so each bad guy also comes with a drop so this is
they list 10 parasites earlier and then you get another 10
parasites here one drop for each bad guy.
So fun ones, the the hamstring worm is comes from the chariot,
which makes sense. Each one makes sense right?
So the chariot is it's got stats, it targets the lowest
flesh. It's a humanoid future from
another solar system fused at the base by a parasitic beast,
creating a strange Centaur like creature.
So you and it's a chariot so it's fast, there's movement,
blah blah blah. So then the drop enhancement is
a hamstring worm that allows you to leave an area without taking
damage or engaging as you exceed natural speeds.
I love that it all is built into itself.
I love chariot. I love the stats, I love it all.
I love that the jobs are built in.
It's just like as you said the name.
So same thing with Hermit and some other some other ones.
Were there any of the enhancements on these?
The Brain Slug was was a neat one.
The the enhancement on judgment, I really.
Just made me want to be Wolverine.
Oh yeah, that's a first thing out.
The retractable claws. Yeah, that one's dope.
The tower is a cool enemy. It's a giant beast that just
like bouncing around inside coming for you.
Death is a really. This is one of my favorite
pictures in the entire book. Like, I really enjoy this.
It's it's this black cloaked creature with this like fucked
up face in this very like, fleshy looking background.
It's fantastic Vigor 45 Resilience 18 Attack 33.
It's a Beastie. It targets the lowest Vigor bat
volunteer, which sucks because you're already the lowest
volunteer. It says This is, and I I love
that a lot of these are volunteers.
Become Indians. Yeah, a volunteer with a long
black cloak, squirming worms extending from beneath the hood,
long skeletal fingers extending from beneath the cloak as it
tries to push them into the orifices of its victims,
liquidizing and consuming their internal organs.
I love that one. And the enhancement is a vampray
cyst. When you get a one during any
Nerve check, you heal one Vigor per one that you roll.
See, this could have just been called Vampray.
Oh, the bat. Yeah, yeah, instead of death, it
could be a vampire and then it would be a vampire.
Cyst is what you get. Yeah, I agree with you
completely. So now we're getting in, right?
So now we're getting into checks, right?
So this is another thing where this could have been right
underneath the stats at the top. And we're on page 25.
Before you get to the checks that you're making, like, I feel
like there needs to be a little bit of a reorganization here
where like you need to put all the character generation stuff
at the top or. But are all the rules together
or stuff? The fact that there's like,
there's character creation stuff and then exploration stuff and
then bad guy stuff and then checks and then like there.
I think there's a little bit of a reshuffling needs to happen
here because you shouldn't be almost at the end of the rules
before you even know. Like why you why nerve matters,
you know. But anyway, so there are checks.
An area may ask you to make a check involving one of your
skills. You roll amount of D6 equal to
your skill and check the result. That's that's a core mechanic
for a lot of your roles is you have a skill, you roll that many
D6, there is a decayed check, which are exactly the same as a
regular check. However, once they are rolled,
they cannot be performed by another volunteer.
So basically you can't just have a bunch of people trying to do
the same check over and over and over again.
Once someone does the check, check's done.
There's a nerve. So nerve checks are different
than normal checks because you flip, you use a D2, or you flip
coins and that you that represents the nerves within the
leviathan, right? So tails.
The the sphincter or whatever the door is locked, it's closed.
Or if you roll A0, or if you get a zero, it's listed multiple
times for however you want to make a binary choice happen.
Flipping dice, rolling a D2, whatever.
Tails is closed, heads is open, 0 is closed, one is open.
So when you come across a locked sphincter or something else that
uses nerve, mark it on your map with a zero coin.
This is a nerve lock. The area will determine a
direction up, down, left, or right that is locked.
When you make a nerve check, you must first be at a place to
spike an exposed nerve or raw flesh labeled as a spike point.
Your volunteer uses a series of small needles to press certain
nerves within the flesh of the Leviathan, attempting to open
internal valves or twitch organs for the group's advantage.
To make a Nerve check, flip an amount of coins equal to your
Spike skill for each one. You may open or unlock any
amount of Nerve locks within the Leviathan that you have come
across equal to that amount. Some locks require more than one
nerve to unlock for each two zeros increase the Leviathan
discomfort by one. All of that, I think, makes
pretty good sense. It's a so you use your spike to
make nerve checks. I feel like it all works.
Yeah, it works, and I think it's well explained on this one.
I think this is the one of the ones that's really well
explained. You get as soon as you find a
spike point, you can roll a number of D2 equal to your
spike, and then you can open any number of doors anywhere in the
Leviathan equal to the number of ones you roll.
So it doesn't even have to be in the same room.
If you roll 5 ones, you might open the door in front of you
and there are four other ones you can open because you're
hitting a nerve and the nerves go through the entire body.
I really like that you can unlock other areas than where
you are, right? But for every zero you roll you,
every two zeros you increase the LD that will have been
discomfort by 1. So you're like because you're
hitting a nerve like that. Makes sense.
I really love this mechanic. It does say though, if you get
all zeros, you attract one of the nemocytes and must survive
the encounter inside its stomach.
You roll the D4 to determine which nemocyte you attract.
OK, so basically on nerve checks you could have to fight a big
bat that's going to come for you.
So the next page is the nemocyte.
It almost looks like a like a Kiwi coming at you.
The picture does like in the water, you know what I'm saying?
Do you see? I was thinking a duck, but yeah,
Kiwi, I guess, because it's got a longer bill, right?
Yeah. Great piece of art here though.
There's a It's a red as I just described it.
It says Nemocite, one of 1. Nemocites are extremely
dangerous, ancient parasites, older than anything else.
They have hide stronger than any weapon and once they appear they
pull the prey into their hunting grounds within the the walls of
the Leviathans guts, isolating them that is one thing that like
there's a a disconnect in the lower there doesn't really
matter mechanically. Above it says the nemocytes must
survive. You must survive inside its
stomach, right? You attract on the nemocytes, it
must survive the encounter inside its stomach.
My assumption there is you're pulled into the nemocytes
stomach, but then when you get to the section next part it says
it pulls the prey into their hunting grounds within the the
walls of the Leviathan's guts. So are you in the leviathan's
stomach or you in the nemocyte stomach?
I don't know. I think, I think that it's,
yeah, I think the hunting grounds is the Leviathan's
stomach because. And it's the nemocytes that's
the Nemocytes hunting ground. I'm looking this up real quick
because I want to see. What the fuck?
I was gonna look up NEMA site real quick cuz I wanna.
I was curious. That's not a thing really.
I could have sworn it was, well, there's a NEMA toad.
Right. Yeah.
Well, as you look that up, it says when you roll all zeros on
our nerve check, you fight a NEMA site that suddenly emerges
from the flesh of the convulsing Leviathan drawn by the moon to
the walls fighting from inside. So again, fighting from inside
the nemocytes stomach alone roll the D4 to determine which right,
so it says Leviathan Scotch. But then it says.
But I also think Leviathan's guts might just be like the
whole Leviathan. So are is the nemocytes pulls
you into its stomach. So then you're fighting it from
inside, right? Instead of fleshed ice, you roll
a spiked ice for all attacks against anemocyte.
The same goes for defending. Damage taken from the nemocytes
is dealt in fatigue instead of vigor.
If you defeat the nemocyte, it spares you fleeing and you are
free to return the Leviathan where you last left it.
If you fail, the nemocyte infuses you with a horrible
parasite that affects you in a way specific to that nemocyte.
It then sticks you up and retreats into the Leviathan,
stalking for the prey, so it definitely pulls you into the
stomach. There's a whole different
mechanic to fight your way out of the stomach where you're
using Spike to attack and defense and damage you take goes
directly to fatigue instead of Vigor, so that's what happens.
So it's a whole different mechanic.
And then there are the nemocytes record here, but again, this is
the part that I was not a huge fan of.
It's got suit names for the nemocytes, so that you fight the
gesture, the ace, the queen of the king I.
Also to get why the ace isn't either the first one or the last
one. It's where that it's #2 instead
of like #4. Not that that matters that much,
but. In the gesture again, we have
instead of a Jack. Yeah, instead of a Jack, right?
Said no Jokers in the beginning of the game And I was like,
wait, what the fuck is a Jester doing here?
Because I thought they were the same thing.
You shouldn't really use a deck of cards and then call something
a king and a queen like within the thing.
It does start to confusing. There's too many different
variants of like how things are called.
And now the Nemo sites use like kind of the names from like a
card deck but then the known enemies using names from a tarot
deck. But you are using cards.
Yeah, it would be better if these are just names.
So. But again we get a spread of
what I assume is maybe like a quick reference of like all the
information you need, but then you get 4 pages with art that
already have all the information you need.
The Queen looks very similar to the Death one.
I think it's almost the same background might be just a
little different but just picking 1 real quick.
Let's go to King. I love this piece of art here,
but King it says Vigor 1. Hearted and 1.
Resilience 13. Attack 50.
So they're beefy boys. The targets don't matter because
you're inside its guts. A small, angry rotundima site
with a large crown like growth on its purple body.
Its hunger. It does not match its tiny size.
Creatures swallowed by it fill out its tiny rubbery body as it
stretches over them like a big purple sack.
If this defeats a player, they reduce their Max figure by three
D6. But having zero Max kills you,
so there's no jobs for this. It's just a survival thing that
happens. But if you win, you get spit up
and it runs away. If you lose, you get spit up,
but it infects you with a terrible Parasite, so you don't,
and it only attacks your fatigue.
So nemocytes really can't kill you unless it's like Parasite
kills you, but it definitely fucks you up for the rest of the
time that you're going to be in here.
So those are nemocytes and then returnal, which is also the name
of the game, is it not? There is, it's it's another
header. Here eternal the emigres hall
you obtained was worth more than swayed in gold, but the people
who hired you could always do with more money.
You may replay builds with the same map and new old volunteers,
a new map with new old volunteers and it playing with
the same map. The Leviathan discomfort is
reset to zero and any previously looted deep intestine is now
empty. More amigres must be found
somewhere else, and you will be compensated with a reduced
sentence. So that is, at 32 pages, pretty
much the game. Yeah, right, and everything else
after. This is the area guide, so we'll
just do a quick explainer of what that means when rolling.
Maybe, I don't know, pick a random thing and and say what
comes in the room. But basically what you're going
to get now is diamonds. And then it says 234-5678, all
that stuff. But as we go through, there are
great pieces of art. There's great layout on here
too, which I really enjoy. There's multiple colors here
where like there's a light green, there's more of like a
bright green. There's red.
There's things where it says like in this one for example
there's one that says 4 plus LD It's in red.
If you're already going to Mark Eldian right in the area guide
Mark Eldian right in the explainer of the rules and makes
it a little bit easier. And it says here I love this
one. They used to send children
that's what that's what they would do.
Yeah. But the the art throughout the
rest of this whole section and it says do not volunteer.
There's a lot of little like lower chunks throughout that are
really, really fantastic. But again, also here there's all
page for Diamonds, Jack, Queen, King and Ace.
So to calling the Nemo sites, those same things are confusing.
And also calling it Jester and not Jack when you just called
Jack that. It's just so confusing to me.
But I do want to say the yellow highlighted on crunch check of
16. God, I wish that was throughout
the entire game because it's the it's perfect for like
highlighting like even even when we were talking about attack
versus. Attack you attacking versus an
enemy attacking red versus green on the dice roll?
I'm fine with all the dice rolls being green and all of the
Leviathan Discomfort stuff being red and all of the checks being
yellow. I think that would be just
perfect. It would be perfect, yeah.
I think the layout stuff throughout the whole thing here
at the in the area guide is easier to understand than a lot
of because you also get as I said here this like this kind of
like a like a almost like a teal green as a color.
That's dropped in here too. There's areas where it talks
about lose 1 fatigue and one fatigue is red.
There's there's no reason not to expand this all the way
throughout because if you're going to use the same font I
think, I think the dice I think this is a bigger.
I think this is the. The dice ones are using a larger
font size, yes. Christian just said in the chat
that the font does not read. Well, it does not.
We discussed that earlier, but it's.
Font for the dice is actually a different font, that's why you
think so. Or do you think it's just
different size or like a bolded version of it?
No, it's a different font, the font for the dice, because the
oh. Yeah, the font for the dice is a
totally different font than the font in the rest of the Yeah,
you can tell by the zero. Especially because it actually
looks kind of 0, not like a square because the corners are
chopped off. You're right, 100% do not
volunteer. So basically it goes through
each the entire deck of cards. So diamonds, hearts, spades,
clubs, and then two through ace. They're all listed as different
rooms. Did you when you got up, did you
grab a oh, I also love this piece of art real quick.
This is a it's less pixelated than all the rest of it, and
it's a very kind of like, tenderly spiny, veiny, nervy
chunk. I really enjoy this.
This is on page 40. You got up and grabbed the deck
of cards. Oh, of course I did.
Let me pull. What did you pull?
I'm sorry. There's even like, a pinkish
purple, that is. Used in some of that stuff.
I was like, what the fuck? Oh my gosh, use this.
Use this throughout. Oh, and there's another font
here too. Hello.
Can you give me something sticky?
Tasty. And that's a whole different,
much more legible font. I don't know.
So on my Texas Chainsaw Massacre deck of cards that I have here
with leather face running out of the room after killing the first
victim of the movie. 8 of Hearts of hearts, 8 of hearts.
So if there was some hyperlinking or bookmarks for
this, we could just jump straight to hearts.
This is diamonds. Oh, that's right at the
beginning after diamonds we get hearts and so we'll Scroll down
to 8. So this is generating a room.
This is back to that like piece of art that I was talking about.
Just like going to go with the nervy, nervy bit.
So it says an abandoned camp has been set up in this small,
narrow area, tents hammered into the fleshy ground.
There's seemingly no sign of the struggle, and a contained fire,
still smoldering, but no sign of life, can be seen anywhere in
the camp. You found a safe area.
That's great. So you can rest up.
Yep, so. And everyone can roll to replace
their vigor and fatigue. You guys can chat, hang out, do
what you got to do. So you pulled the rest area.
I'm just going to scroll randomly down.
Let's pick one that's got like a so we're we're we're doing a
king here, it says a gigantic room filled with orbs suspended
from the ceiling by a fleshy tubes.
They do nothing but pulsate with the beating of the Leviathan's
heart. However, moving into this room
causes the flesh to pulsate, increasing the Leviathan
discomfort by one each time. If the Leviathan discomfort is
10 plus, the orbs split, revealing 5D20 enemies like
that. So they're different variations
on the rooms based on Leviathan, discomfort and and all of that.
Man, there's a whole page here of Laura I'm not going to read
at the bottom, but it is. I think it's a it's a letter
from a volunteer back. I'm hungry, lost, alone.
The screams of the other volunteers echo down.
I read read that go get this on neon rats thing.
Then there's a Leviath, the angered Leviathan areas.
This is another section. Once the LD hits 10, only track
rooms from this table, regardless of the cards suit.
They're often extremely dangerous.
So from now on after you hit LD of 10 you when you pull a card
you only pull. You only look at this table
regardless of the suit. So flip one for me.
I yeah, say I got a five of diamonds.
So diamonds doesn't matter. We just got 5 A pulsating
billowing area. Yeah, a pulsating billowing
area. Almost like the inside of a huge
fleshy sack. Parasites tumble around as
strong as winds blown in and out from a void space above.
Passing through this area increases leviathan discomfort
by one and infects anyone moving through it with 2D10 parasites.
A lot of parasites. Yeah, yeah, your parasitic
purity. This section would have needed a
clarifier earlier in the game as well that this exists.
When in the does it when we when we talk about leviathan
discomfort, it talks about only rolling on the anger leviathan
tables or your. Chart or whatever that's Yeah,
you're right. My bad.
I totally forgot. Forgot that that was there.
The very last page I really love.
It's pretty much the Leviathan's heart.
It is the ace when you roll on the angle Leviathan table refers
to the heart's ace. Then spawn 1 * 10 death.
So 10 deathy known enemy deaths come for you at the Leviathan's
heart. Love this page.
The art is fucking fantastic. Then we get to a character sheet
here. I'm actually I can.
I think I can flip this in Oh, I can't.
I can rotate this to the right. There you go.
Volunteer. Record name.
Flesh. Spike, crunch.
Vigor, fatigue, parasitic purity, leviathan, discomfort is
just listed as a box and your parasite's infected.
You just fill in the chart to the right.
Pretty simple, straightforward character sheet.
I love it. I think it looks great.
It's it's got the suit of the volunteer on it.
And yeah, so that is. Let me rotate this back the way
it was And then the final page in the book it says Created by
Neon Rot slash Willow J Art by Neon Rot.
Some assets used from Shuttersock and our license.
The font used are listed here. And it says thank you for buying
my flesh, Neon Rot. It's got that great logo here.
That is it. Choc Ellipse, Kayak Ellipse.
I think it's Kat Phillips. I think his name is Yeah, if I
remember it. Yeah, Fanta, awesome, awesome
person, great artist. Been doing a lot of really
amazing stuff on Twitter. Definitely go check them out as
well. But they did this graphic here
in the Enrat, snagged it from them.
It's great logo that looks great and then that is it.
There is a Backpage here. Do not volunteer.
And there's another little breakdown of kind of like the
the story for the Backpage. And that is it.
That is the whole thing. And it runs right at 60 full
pages. So che Aucalypse, says
Christian, I think awesome artist.
Yeah, fantastic. A lot of, a lot of, a lot of
really, really cool stuff. They'll just be like, hey, I
played this game and then did this dope piece of fucking art.
They also are doing. We just talked to the guys from
Ikomofos and they're doing or he is doing the solo rules and did
a beautiful cover for that. So if you back that project, go
check a recent update and you'll see, you'll see their work on
the cover of that looks really fucking dope.
We're going to kick over to the review though here and talk
about this. So as we said with 60 pages,
even though a lot of it is like the area guide, there's still a
ton of art, layout and all that throughout that entire section
too. And actually as we both said
here, I think the layout through the area guide is better than
the area through the rest of the game.
And I wish that they would, you know, put that up through the
rest of it. So as we said at the top, the
metrics we use, we tweaked a tiny bit here.
Not the spirit of it, that's what we've always done, but I
think we tweaked the rules a little bit to make it a little
more easy for us and for you guys.
So for those that don't know, we we do rate the games on five
metrics to try to quantify something and they all go to 10
points for Max of 51st. It's art and layout.
So that's the visuals of the book.
It is the art, how it's used, quality, quantity and the layout
as in how the layout looks and then we get to usability.
Usability is for things as we talked about, like is the font
readable? Does it have digital navigation
tools? Does it have a if it's physical,
Does it have a bookmark, like if it's got maps or the map's
readable? Is the character sheet work?
Like all of those things. It's just how how usable the the
book you have in your hands is. And the rules are easy to read.
There is rule set, which is if it's an adapted rule set, how
well is it's adapted If it is a new rule set?
Do we like it? Is it good?
Does it mechanically make sense? Originality.
Is kind of a broad spectrum of kind of all of those things
combined mixed with lore and everything as well.
It's kind of the, I don't say the dump stat in a bad way, but
it's kind of like where the rest of everything kind of falls into
and then value is bang for your buck.
What are you getting for that? And like digital tools, are
there generators? Is there third party licensing
all that crap? So that is our metrics, art and
layout. So visually layout and the art.
What are your what are your overall?
Just thoughts. Not numbers, just thoughts.
It's great. I don't think.
I don't think I love it, but I like it a lot.
I think that some of the color. Well, I mean I shouldn't say
colored choices because it's really just mostly red, which is
cool. But I do think that some of it
can gets a little washed out or kind of blended in for someone
that has really bad ADHD. In the struggles with reading
it, some of that stuff became. Difficult.
However, I feel like a lot of that washed out stuff is more of
the flavor than anything. So that's kind of like also like
a little bit of a pass. It's like I don't have to read
that if I don't want to. It's not really that important.
But the the art for this is fucking incredible.
I love all the pixel. The pixel work is amazing.
The the style overall like is just.
It's really good. I like it a lot.
Like I I really do. Yeah.
I I think, you know, if if if we were doing a Z interview like we
did with BSM, like the vibes on this are fucking phenomenal.
You know, I I love the pixel arts.
I love the the whole overall, I don't know, Ness of the game.
Like it just all the whole way through.
It really gives you a sense of like what they're trying to do.
All of the enemy pictures are fantastic.
And just, yeah, I mean it screams, you know, 90s video
game, you know, And I I really love that.
And there there's a solid amount of art through the entire thing.
I mean, as we said, there's like just for enemies, there are
what, ten of the known enemies plus the Nemo sites and there's
art every couple of pages On top of that, I mean, I I really love
it and and I I do like the layout visually.
Black, white, red are like my favorite layout styles.
I think I think for readability as far as just like the fact
that usually when there's text there's not stuff behind it
because sometimes you'll see people put stuff on or like the
colors aren't whatever. I think that layout like
visually layout that works great.
Usability wise more colors would have been better but we're
getting to that in a second. I don't know I I really like
this a lot I think that is one of neon Roth's like you know
definitely stand out stuff in the work is that the this pixel
style art is fucking awesome and phenomenal.
So what are your? What are your thoughts on the
the art in the layout numbers wise?
Numbers wise I would say I'm like so.
Thinking like probably a high seven.
It's kind of where I'm at. I feel like, Like I said, I
don't love it. I like it a lot.
It it is a little difficult for me to parse, but it's very cool
looking. So I guess that may be leaning
more into usability than anything, but.
But I there is we are missing like I don't yeah we're going to
get into usability. I'm I'm getting confused here
because we changed the scores up the scoring system up a little
bit. Fuck it.
We'll just say I'm going to I'm going to go with like I'm going
to say like a 7.5 and if depending on what you say is
what I'll I'll adjust accordingly.
No, I I I like that. I think that's about where where
we are for art and layout. I think it's right around the
seven. I I really enjoy it and you just
visually not talking about usability at all.
I really enjoy the style I think it's it's it's unique to I mean
this kind of thing exists someone in chat just said the
art style feels like HR Geiger made an NES game.
I was a great description. I think I would fucking use that
as a quote in the book, but I really like that.
I think 7 is a solid number for that.
I mean you know there's a lot of stuff we've given like Mouse
Rider got a 7 and we love the art in that but and and Varne
got a 7 as well. Seven is a good one.
Anything above that really starts to stand out like in a in
a crazy way and also might tweak a little bit now that we've made
layout more like the visual layout of it.
More of a an emphasis in this section too, but we'll see.
So the game score numbers score one that is 7.
So 7. Usability.
I think this is where it's going to take one of the biggest
knocks. I think we've said this numerous
times that the body text is is hard to parse.
I was also someone with a DHD. I'm a huge fan when people bold
keywords and if you're going to bold a lot of that stuff and by
bold in this, it's really just use different colors and there's
like 6 different colors used in the area guide area, but not
nearly as many used in the the actual bulk of like the 1st 30
pages which is the core rules. I don't know why.
Because there's things that you don't even realize are keywords
until you keep reading, like Levi, then discomfort as LD or
target or things like that, that could very easily just like use
that same format that's used in the in like half the Zine for
the top half of it. I mean, there's also some.
Yeah. There's also, there's no, yeah,
there's no table of contents. The there's no, like, actual
bookmarks. The bookmarks are just page
numbers. There's no hyperlinks.
There's no, there's no digital tools whatsoever for that.
I think a, a this is this is not something that would deduct, but
I think what something that would be great would be a map
page that has those four boxes at the top listed and things
like that. But as far as I think usability
takes the biggest hit here just as being.
I think the vibes are being put before the readability of the
Zine. And that's a choice.
Yeah, that's a choice I would make.
I would pick a similar font that is a little more readable, maybe
not so squared off, maybe a little bit more delineation, a
little bit more errors for bold, some more colors.
Thoughts. Yeah, no, I mean, I I I agree
100% with you. Like, I just I I had a I had a
difficult time reading this. Not because it was not
interesting or fun, but because it was just hard to fucking
read. I and once you get to the area
rooms, like I'm on page 44 right now and I think that's a great
example of of what the whole book could look like.
Now that might be a little too much for the entire rule set.
But like there's even a fun like a fun font on there that isn't
using the rest of the book for like the a voice you hear.
And I just think that that's that's super that's such a it's
a cool page. That page right there, I'm like,
that's good. The body text font though I I
mentioned this before we went live.
I just think using something like Roboto or or Helvetica or
something that's square and sans serif would have worked so much
better because it would have still matched the the feel of
what you're what what you were going for here.
But it would have just been so much more clear on the page and
I guess to. Pull in from my comment on the
art and layout style about the washed out things.
I think that some of the colors of like the the little sideways
lower bits and stuff at the bottom, see, I don't mind that
that's washed out. I think that's kind of the
point. I think it's supposed to be like
a little little Easter egg, Easter egg.
For that but. It is also at the same like it's
not necessary for play, but at the same time I do want to read
it and if it's already in a difficult font to read and then
it's like partially faded away like it's a, it's a it's a style
choice, which is fine. I'm not going to say that you
made a person made a bad decision here.
Yeah I but. And not having the table of
contents the the the choices I had some issues with like the
choices of where rules were placed.
And explained. I feel like there there needed
to be a core mechanics page that just explained how the the the
most basic, how you play the game on one spread.
That way you kind of understand like what is happening here, The
usability, the understanding being between like the the tarot
suits and all that stuff was just really difficult too.
So yeah, I think, I think the last thing I had on my list of
critiques that I had written before was a quick rules page.
Like a lot of pages will have it as like the last spread in the
game will just be like, here's here's every stat, here's every
check, here's here's exploration, here's everything
just broken out without like all the explainers, but just like a
quick reference for it, I think. Yeah, really.
Not having the table of contents in the beginning for something
this big and for and not having like you just said, like the
quick rules page at the bottom for like a quick explainer, but
also a lack of examples of play. I think for some of the stuff
that's a little bit harder to parse.
I think it either needs to be explained more or needs to have
examples of play. I would personally like both.
You know that that is where you start to get to a little bit
more usability with your book and a little bit less vibes.
I don't know if that's taking away from the vibes a little bit
when you like go into like a narrative thing or whatever, but
I I personally find it really necessary.
Yeah, especially because it's a it's a Gmless mapping game, so
some people might not have played similar games to this, so
it would be easier to to have that kind of stuff in there.
So I mean, honestly, it would not change much to the Zine, but
would increase the usability a lot to make a couple of of
changes. But overall, yeah, this is one
of the more difficult ones I've read in the sense that like the
copy also needs, as we said before, like a line editor.
There's run on tense changes. So not to beat this up a little
bit, but I definitely think generally all of this would be
fixed with just two passes from a good line editor like
Christiansville or something like that.
You know what I mean? I mean, to be fair, I do want
to, I should I should clarify this as somebody who hires
editors? They're not cheap.
So this can also be this could be a financial situation where
somebody just doesn't have money for an editor and honestly
that's fucking fine. Like that's acceptable really
like, But yeah, like it's if you if you want to hit certain
points in like get your get your text up to a certain level, it's
kind of you have to do a work grade or something like that.
You know that's just kind of how to get.
I know that they are and we'll link to that They are
kickstarting this for a print version.
I do think part of those kick charter funds should be used for
an editor. I think it would just elevate
this to fucking phenomenal versus.
I mean I really enjoy and I know we're beating it up a little bit
here on usability. I fucking love this game like I
can't. No.
I do play. I actually.
I'm excited to play Fantastic. This is more of like, it's so
good. I just wish versus like trying
to beat it up it it's fantastic. But anyway, so usability.
I mean, I'm honestly at like maybe A5 realistically.
I mean it's it's it's rough. I know that five is like the
starting point here, but I was going to say 4 for the usability
aspect because I just I honestly would not be able to play this
as as is like without really like going through it.
And not playing it while playing it to figure out how it works so
that I can kind of parse it and like make notes and bookmarks
and the pages and stuff, you know, that's that's how it it
would be very difficult for me to play it as as currently
stands. But yeah, I know.
I mean, I don't, no, I'm okay. It's a little harsh, but I think
I think I'm good with the four too because realistically like
we we said that we would go from five points for each metric to
10 points. So there's a little bit more of
a spread and we've only given like one thing below A5 because
five is considered pretty much like the most bang average.
You know what I mean? And I I do think readability and
this is below average like I do think it's difficult.
It is difficult. So I think forward for this is
is good. OK on to stat that will
definitely be higher rule set. What are your just general
thoughts on the rule set? I really fucking like the rules
I at at first glance I was a bit overwhelmed with thinking about
how the things like when you very first, when you first start
reading the book and you see like all the things you need.
Like I mentioned before, deck, deck cards, roll of coins, like
all these different dice. Like I'm like shit and how much
what is going to happen here and reading through it it kind of.
As things are added, it, it feels initially like, oh shit,
another thing. But then it's like, oh wait,
this isn't actually that complicated.
And it kind of makes sense. Like I kind of understand what's
happening here and then like, but like, I also feel like all
the rules, like, really just complement each other really
well. I feel like he spent a really
good amount of time thinking about how all these different
things work together. Which I think is something
that's really difficult to do with a game that is 1A solo game
or a GM list, but also solo game and also two one that has so
many different moving parts that can all interact at one time.
So I think that he did a fantastic job with the rules, to
be honest. Yeah, I I mean, I definitely
think that and that's what that's what I'm talking about,
where we're like I said, we kind of beat it up on usability, but
it's because the game is so, so good.
I really enjoy this so much that I really like wish some of the
usability stuff was was better so that we could be elevated
into fucking fantastic. Because I do.
I love the rules. I think it's interesting to play
a GM list game already. We did get a chance to play
Liminal which has a similar a similar core ish which Neon Rot
Co wrote with Alexi Vela, which is another fantastic game that
everyone should go check out. They are also kick starting an
expansion to that called Backrooms like Savela is.
So you want to go check that out over on Kickstarter as well.
But yeah, I really enjoy the rules a lot.
I would love to play this. I would play this solo.
I would play this with a group of people.
I would love to as we did with Liminal.
I think this would be a fun, quick, easy one to do on on the
adventure archive on a stream, or we could all just get
together and and do this kind of fun.
With that. I think Jason could do a really
fantastic job with like pixel art to make it really gross and
fun. But yeah, I I really enjoyed the
rules a lot. I think I'm a solid 8 for this
easy, you know? I think.
Yeah, yeah, I was even going to. I was even going to 8.5 and see
where you landed. But I think 88IS. 8 is good,
yeah. Yeah.
I think. I think 8.
Because only because we do it subjectively compared to
everything else. The ones that we have for Nines
I think are just, you know, we've never given a 10, so a
nine is basically a 10. So an 8 is basically a nine.
And that's how much we enjoy this game.
So like, I I think this definitely deserves an 8 and
it's it The rules are fucking fantastic And it it's.
Yeah, they're great. Really, really, really enjoy
them a lot. And as you said, one of the
things I like a lot is how very clear they've been all thought
about in a way to feed into the system and nothing in it do I
go? You don't really need that as
far as, like the rules go. So yeah, originality, you know,
I haven't played a ton of Gmless mapping games.
I have a couple. Again, Liminal is very similar
to this, but I think the lore is really fun and interesting.
I think it some of this the the bits and pieces kind of exist
out there in the world, but kind of not in this specific way,
which I really really enjoy. I love like the gross 90s body
horror, scifi, horror aspect, all of it.
Haven't really played a ton like that, like in tiny bits.
It reminds me a little bit of Slip Gate, but that was more of
like a Quake. Yeah, that was more of a Quake
vibe, more of like a demonic, less body horror kind of vibe
than this one is. I would love to see this as a
game like one of those old 90s games where it's like a little
window and you have all yourself on the side or even as a movie
would be amazing that I think that I the lore is not a lot,
it's like 2 little pages, but it's there's so much depth to
it. I think it's really fantastic.
So originality wise, I love that.
I think the rules have a lot of really solid originality into it
and the art style I think is super fantastic.
You don't see enough gorgeous pixel art.
So All in all, originality for me is is going to be pretty high
because there's a lot of parts in here.
You see tiny bits elsewhere, but not in this way, in this well
done. Yeah, no, I totally agree.
I think that the concept is a bit is not super original.
I shouldn't say the concept the. The very basic underlying
premise, I guess, of the dystopian future 30th century
Starship Troopers kind of thing, where we're sending all our
people out in the out in space, whatever.
But from there it gets pretty pretty individual.
And I like, I like the, I like where he took it and it has a
lot of very interesting and unique aspects that.
Are very referential to interest to things that I I love and
things that I know but none of them feel like, other than The
only thing that I can think of that really just directly makes
me makes me think of this is Jabu Jabu's belly from Ocarina
of Time. But that is really the only
thing that I can think of that is so quite so similar to this
SO. Yeah, I mean I think originality
is is high up there for me. I would, yeah.
Yeah. See, I'm not a Zelda person, so
I don't know. I don't know.
Zelda really is a dungeon in Ocarina of the Time, and it is
literally the inside of a whale. Yeah.
Oh, well, I mean, yeah, you know, I mean, we also got, I
mean, we also have, you know, the Bible, you know, with who?
Jonah. Jonah.
Yeah. But if it was in the future, on
a moon of Neptune and, you know, sent there by a trillionaire as
a prison volunteer, but. Yeah, I I'm pretty, I'm a like a
solid 8 for this. Like, I really enjoy the way
that all the all the parts got put together on this and it's
really, really enjoyable. Yeah, I think.
I think it's good for me too. Value.
So The thing is right now, this is, this is the score where I
was a little bit. Are we going to do the Zine?
Are we going to do a full review?
Because the book is, as we said, I'm getting kick started to do a
print run of it. So and a lot of times we do four
reviews. It's because we have the
physical book because that that factors into the the value that
you have for it. Because you don't know, like you
could have an amazing game and it has like crappy print and
it's like like, you know, or you could have a game like Death in
Space where it's like 35 bucks and it feels like a fucking.
Special edition copy with foiling and like 3 fucking
bookmarks and shit so but I assume it's just going to be
Zine I assume based on the quality of the previous prints
that they have done before for their games it's going to be
similar to that. So right now for value what we
have is it is $11.00 on itch. I have linked the itch page here
in Twitch chat, but for those in podcast land the page is neon
dash rot dot itch dot io. Slash bilge.
But you can just find bilge or you can literally just Google
bilge. Neon rot and it is the first
thing that pops up because that's what I did every single
time. But it is $11.00 for this.
I think that is easily a solid price for this.
I mean we're also it's hard because it's like value.
Obviously as a consumer it's nice for things to be cheaper,
but as a member of the community and stuff like that, people need
to charge more for their games. They're good and they deserve to
be, I think 11. Solid on value.
There's not really anything more to it right now.
This is a score that once a Kickstarter drops, I would be
happy to go back and raise. I'm like, I'm there's not a lot
to rule here for value. So probably at like a six, you
know, I think that would increase a little bit maybe if
there was like I said like a mapping page.
Or, or things like that. But I'm probably a six.
I mean, it's slightly above our average.
It's a decent price for 60 pages of a a really fucking fun game.
So I'm really solid on the six for that.
Yeah, that's what I meant too. I think that adding adding value
to this would be adding like a downloadable black and white
grid for your map drawing and like things things like that
that you can add just tack on for free, you know?
You know what I mean? Yeah, no, I hear what you're
saying. I don't know you look that used
so I got worried that. No, the the, the, the formatting
of this thing got weird. I must have dragged it
accidentally. So that's just now for those in
podcast line I had to confuse like on my face because the six
was way too far to the left. So yeah, I think I think 6 is
good for that. And like you said like any any
addition will this will raise this.
Like you know, I also think that.
I don't know if you just said this because I completely
fucking bringed out on that with my ADHD this.
God, I want to see this as a video game, but this could
easily be pumped into a generator that would make it
super fun and easy. Like the whole deck of cards
thing could easily be checked in and you can help with a room.
You can have a character generator or a room generator
click of a button to do stuff. God that would be amazing and
that would shoot the value through the roof.
Adding a map tool would go through there.
Any any type of tools like that? And my assumption it's not
listed here either is there's got to be, I assume there
hopefully would be some type of thirdparty licensing.
I don't think there's any mention of licensing in this at
all, like a CCB, Y4 or something like that or anything.
So I think being able to make content for this would be really
fun. I you can think of 1,000,000
parasites for this. You can think of 1,000,000 bad
guys for this like more fun rooms.
I could definitely see making a little expansion for this that
would be really cool. So that would all increase the
value. But for right now kind of like
slightly better than than bang average for that be a six.
So the overall score here, so we're looking at a 33.
And I I think that that feels low for how much I love this
game and it's just because it takes such a big knock and
usability, you know, I mean if if it fixed all the things that
we talked about and it was more like a seven or eight, you're
talking about a game that's more like a 3738 points, which is
kind of where we hit with a lot of games.
And then if you add the generator tools and things like
that, bump that value up to like an 8, you're talking like a 39,
which puts you in the top, like third of all games that we've
reviewed here on the show, as if were some type of fucking like.
Anyone that matters in this, as if the score matters to anybody
out there, the only show that matters to me, Ryan.
Well, I appreciate that, but just whoever knows, we're just a
bunch of fucking schmucks with probably terrible opinion, so
don't take this to heart. And we say this a bunch of
times. The total score is is an
aggregate, but. When you're looking at games,
when you're looking at Deans and stuff like that, if the score
doesn't matter to you, if, if the art and layout doesn't
matter to you and the rules, that's more important.
Look at the games that have naives and nines you know for
the rule set. If the value is what you know
sticks out to you, look at the games have that.
You don't have to look at the entire thing overall.
To really get a Zine that you love like I some of my favorite
games you've ever reviewed are not in the top like 5 or 6 as
far as the scores go, because objectively looking at it is
different than subjectively looking at it.
So it's a 33, but I think the game is better than that.
I think it just comes down to the usability and formatting
that could be really picked up. Overall, at the end of the day,
fantastic fucking game. Super glad I bought it.
Can't wait to back the Kickstarter.
Hope there's a bunch of other stuff with it but instantly back
anything from Neonra. I think they're a fantastic
creator. I think this is a fantastic
game. I think that hopefully as part
of the Kickstarter they can put a a line editor or copy editor
on this project, fix some of the the the low riding, fix some of
the issues with readability and this is a fucking phenomenal,
fantastic game and I can't wait to back.
Absolutely, yeah. So.
I think that's it. That's what we got going on.
So wrap up for disaster tourism real quick.
What do we got coming sooner than later for that?
Besides, you know, like the first copies of of Guild Out in
the Wild. Hey, what's that?
I don't know what that is. Yeah, so we got Guild getting
ready to fuck. I'm hoping this is the final
one. Print print proof coming in for
the third time because I keep having issues with mix them and
the fonts that we chose. But I'm I believe that all of
the issues have been have been fixed and I'm expecting my print
proofs to come in on tomorrow or Tuesday and if they're good, I'm
putting the order in for the books for the Kickstarter and
then after that you can expect to find them on the Internet to
purchase. You can buy the game digitally
currently and if you do from my web store you can get a coupon
code kind of thing for when the print is in in stock and then
we've also got dead horse print proof is on its way in as well
and as soon as as soon as I get that I'm going to put the orders
in for those, you can not preorder it anymore but it's not
in stock yet, order it on my web store the preorder was a
three-week only thing where you get the PDF free.
So now you can still technically preorder it, but you're not
going to get a preorder bonus kind of Delio on the web store.
And then I I want to, I want to talk about it, Christian, but I
don't want to say it yet. We have a new skirmish game
coming out, and I'm not going to say what it is, but it's super
fucking cool. So yes, and then also a drift
off the islets of longer Hans is in stock at Space Penguin dot
Inc That is a mothership adventure, the first in a series
of adventures that I'm writing for Jarrett over at Space
Penguin Inc. It's super cool adventure to
explore the depths of stress and panic that you can push your
push your your little crew characters at the table for and
what else do I have going on? I've got some.
Shit, I got two. I got 2 here because I already
got my print from space. Penguin.
That's right, I ordered. It the second it drops but I
also get can I show this one off?
Can I? Yeah.
Oh because I got a signed copy from our our our tertiary cohost
here. It says promo number one for the
weekly scroll. So we got the number one.
Oh I yeah, you send me one of those the the the yeah so so
yeah that's what's going on with desapsitorism.
Definitely want to check out all that stuff.
Desapsitorism. Dot Games, deadhorse dot pub,
Fantastic stuff from from. Our hosts here Kirby here on the
show tomorrow we are going to be doing an actual play of Farewell
to Arms Redux with the the guys over at Rivet Head Games.
It is kind of like that World War Merck Borg game looks
absolutely fantastic. Can we to do that after Listen
Tyler, You can find a previous interview with them talking
about it here on the show and on Friday I will be sitting down
with the writer. Of of a very fun adventure.
I will promote that a little bit more as the week goes on, but
there is a fun, interesting bit that's going to come from that
and I'll talk about that a little bit more tomorrow at the
end of the show. So if you're listening and
you're not live, you probably missed it.
But watch the next episode and see the actual play with with
the boys ever at Riverhead Games for Farewell to Arms Redux.
So we got here on the show, we've updated our link tree.
You can find linktr dot EE slash the weekly scroll.
It's got all of the links at the bottom.
I never remember to say as well as if you're listening, that we
are adding a submission form for people that would like to for us
to check out their games or you have a project that you'd like
to to kick start, no 5E and and that's it.
So check that out. By this game, I think it's
fantastic. Definitely back to Kickstarter
and we'll see you all later. Have a wonderful evening.
Bye.