I have played chess – poorly in reality – longer than most
any other game.
Dungeon crawling of any kind scratches the itch of a long
time D&D RPGer.
Oh yes, this one also has a deck-builder aspect – well as a
game option at least. Deck-building is another highly favoured game mechanic,
so my interest grew a bit more.
The game is Rook & Ruin from designer Florian Fiedler,
who gets some immediate kudos for drawing together rather diverse game
mechanics in this one.
Fiedler explained via email the initial design thought was
around the idea of chess.
“Initially I wanted to create a game that uses chess
moves-like movement,” he said.
“I also wanted to create something with a spacious and
simple design.
“At first I was set on making a square-grid dungeon, that
you have to navigate with chess pieces. I thought that'd you would simply
collect material, bonuses, etc and use that material to buy movement to use as
you buy it.
“I mapped it out, and it was boring -- some spice was
missing -- and I didn't have a solution at hand at that point.”
Then came the idea for using cards.
“At some point though I wanted to get back at it and find a
way to make this interesting - that's when I came up with the deck-building,”
said Fiedler. “As a fan of asymmetric designs, imagining how to break the core
rule construct in all ways possible is one of the first things I do.
“That's when the idea of the different starting decks and
grandmaster brilliancies came together.”
The different ‘roles’ you can play add a nice element of
replayability to Rook & Ruin.
Fiedler describes his game as “a super crunchy -- stupid
buzzword, but people use it -- thinky and somewhat difficult puzzle, that uses
deck-building as it's core mechanic and chess moves and thematic abilities to
make it a sound game.
“The game should beat you around 50 per cent of the time, so
it's not for the faint of heart. If you like your Sunday's chess puzzle in
the newspaper and/or Sudoku, then this is for you.”
Now instead of cutting and sleeving the 55 cards for the
deck-building aspect, Fielder offers an option, The Flowing Arsenal system.
Fiedler explains, “the Flowing Arsenal is a mathematically
correct representation of playing with a deck of cards. It is simple and only
works so well, because most people are used to chess annotations -- N for
knight, B for bishop, K for king... They are so easy to remember, that when you
read a ‘N’ in a table to how a knight would move in the dungeon in front of
you. This means that while this is a deck-builder, you don't have to cut a
single card. I love this, that's why this is by far my favourite part of the
game.”
I have to admit since I like deck-building, and I find
cutting and sleeving a few cards relaxing, I had zero interest in the ‘flow’. I
did see a video where it was used, and it seemed a bit messy and easy to forget
to mark the list, all that I felt would detract from the game.
As for the game itself, this one is a lot of fun – albeit
you will need to do some thinking. You only have three cards in-hand at any one
time and you need to think ahead – as in chess – which move is optimum at what
time.
The ability to collect ‘things’ that help you with upgrading
card effects – rooks and bishops for example can move farther with upgrades –
is great part of game.
Having actual chess pieces on the grid, their field of
capture no go areas, that if captured give you benefits too. Just an excellent
element of the game.
There are lots of options to grow game too. I was sent only
two ‘dungeons’ to traverse, so lots of room to expand there.
In Rook & Ruin the basic six pieces from chess are
represented, but you could add an elephant, or camel, or a number of other
alternative pieces to change things up.
Overall, this one climbs up the favourite solo games list to sit beside ones such as For Northwood, Regicide or A Nice Cuppa.
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