Week 12

The board game I have chosen from Watch It Played, is Final Girl. It's a game that is still not available for retail yet, and so many people don't have access to playing it yet. It's a single player board game, which is something I would definitely enjoy, and it follows that whole "horror movie; final girl at the end" template. Right off the bat, I learned that this game contains a lot of components (different types of cards, character pieces, health tokens, etc.) and it requires a lot of other game boxes to get the whole game experience. Without question, there is a lot of variety. "Transparent, consistent rules run in the player's head, creating engagement," is the first major statement that Soren Johnson lectures in the video. I really like when he says this because it's 100 percent true and I think designers think about the rules from the start. After watching the video on the game, the rules and very clear and understandable. The rules that are given are very consistent, through out all five phases of the game. Even without a video of showing us gameplay, anyone could pick up this game and just read the instructions and play. "Transparent abstraction focuses on players on the inner game," is also something Johnson brings up. With Final Girl, there is so much going for it that it really does map well to Soren's notion. The main goal is to slay the killer, but there is still other objectives and many paths to get to the goal. There is not deck building in this game, but the cards can create some crazy situations and ideas. What I find really cool is if you're a beginner, you can manage to get get a win but if you're an expert, you can easily strategize to save victims and do so much more. The next statement that I learned from Johnson is, "transparent, visible mechanics increase player comfort." I feel like Final Girl does not lend itself well to this idea. The setup for the game takes a lot of work and is a pretty difficult task. I think the mechanics are very cool and does play like an actual horror movie, but they don't generate comfort. I feel like there is a lot of material to look at and interact with, and it can be a bit overwhelming. The last thing that Soren says about board games is "pre-luck is a transparent way to present interesting decisions." This notion is present in most board games, at least the better and more engaging ones. From what I gathered, Final Girl has a lot of pre-luck instead of post-luck. A card you select can impact your decision or items that you have on you could call for tough decisions. A lot of pre-luck is involved and I think it makes the gameplay so engaging and captivating. Many different things can happen during the action phase and you have change your decisions, during the planning phase. This game has a lot of replay value and does contain most of the concepts that all board games should have, but it's not perfect and does have some flaws.