Lets get right to the point: sometimes, we just need to laugh, have fun, and have a reason to act ridiculous. This might be strange advice, as I'm saying it to a community that is all about having fun and playing games, but it is serious too. Dark Souls II, is a game that demonstrates of how serious we have started to take games in terms of storyline, but also how competitive we can be with ourselves: purposely straining ourselves to play better, dare I say 'work harder' at having fun.
It isn't just the games with dark worlds: League of Legends is a perfect example of a bright style, welcoming atmosphere, and sometimes great internal jokes in the character's dialogue clips, yet the game is fiercely competitive to the point where many casual players simply have stopped trying to play. I know that for me, its part of the reason why I stopped playing card games after burning out on Magic: The Gathering. When games push towards competitive all the time, sometimes, you just don't get a chance to relax.
Why hello there, Minion. I've been waiting for you.
Minion is a game that I was introduced to the first day of PAX East, and within five minutes of seeing the booth, I was using a card labelled "reusable explosives" to blow up a whale, while he was using an overpowered laser rifle to get rid of my generic bad cop. Things got bad when he started tossing buckets of lard at me to distract me as he started to paying to win the game, to which I just decided to cheat to win, and fire a cannon full of my cards at him, finally managing to survive.
Everything I just said above references actual cards in the game we were using on each other. Was it balanced? Not exactly. Did we care? Not at all! This is a game meant to make you laugh, plain and simple: sure, you can decide to play for the win every time, but its a game designed to really just have fun.
This doesn't mean there isn't logic or rationale behind the game itself: the core mechanics of purchasing cards from your hand to play makes sense, and the mechanics are solid in how attack, defense, and disabling cards work. Its intuitive and straight forward, and only takes half a game to understand.
What sets it apart honestly is that the 'deck building' mechanic that you see in much more competitive games like Netrunner or even Ascension have been replaced with two stacks in the middle of the table that anyone can choose to draw from when its their turn. There's the safe 'face down' option, where what you get is random, then there is the promising 'face up' side, where you can see what you are going to draw, but if the next card is labelled a trap, well... we all know traps are bad. In addition, there is no 'summoning sickness' - you can play a ridiculous monster and launch it all in the same turn, every turn. The game has stripped away those restrictions meant to allow players to react smartly in order to make it just a free for all. Losing in this doesn't fill you with defeat: it makes you shake your fist and demand a chance to cause a humiliating victory on your friends in vengeance. Usually while laughing and grabbing more drinks, for sure.
Its a Kickstarter game - one that opened just as the first people walked into the show floor at PAX East. During my time writing this, it actually has managed its funding, and for good reason: its a fun game, hilariously tongue in cheek, and the mechanics are solid enough where it didn't feel just like a gimmick. I was fortunate enough to have the chance to play it with the developers, and it was great to see how much they were enjoying us play in their booth, and willingly taking our feedback as we decimated each other with animated furniture and magic spells that made no sense.
What are you waiting for? The Kickstarter levels to fund this game are very low at entry to get the full game, and I can tell you just from playing the prototype that its worth it. Take a look, and I am sure that some of you will join me in waiting, anxiously, to play this ridiculous game with your friends in a few months.-Wyatt
