i hate "deck building" 1 i dont think deck building is how i would describe even slay the spire because I play deck building games ie pokemon MTG etc those are deck building games so the gulf is to wide for me to even consider the mechanics of slay the spire'esque games as deck building. This is a long standing gripe of mine and adding it to a game that doesnt want it inharnetly seems silly to me.
Generally, I feel like you do your research, but this time I think you either didn't bother to play the game, or your confirmation bias is showing pretty hard.
Deck thinning is part of many of the objective rewards.
My son and I NEVER bothered to get the Merchant cards and NEVER needed to buy them to remove cards.
The Goblin tinkerer is fairly easily achieved by mid game.
You wrote an entire segment about deck thinning that is…just plain wrong.
Thank you for this review! While I don't always agree with your view on a given game (Sleeping Gods would be one such example), I like your approach and the arguments you are making. So I return again and again to check what's new. Thank you for your work and best of luck! PS: 7 hours is nothing for a Terraria player. My personal total playtime is 377 hours on steam alone. 🙂
It's so funny to me that so much of the criticism makes me think of how like the playing the video game it is. The bad is intentional as it's how the video game is!
Here is something I wonder @nopunintended : You have a lot of expertise about games. Deep design understanding. Here at this moment you have identified a couple issues with length and deckbuilding. I wonder if the box has everything you need EXECEPT the optimized rules that would make this game fun. I challenge you to create a pdf, page or three document that directly mods the game to make it <3 hours and more interesting in deck building. Is that something you would be willing to explore? I think you are ready.
This feels like an Ion Games designs but instead of being ruthlessly simulationist about evolutionary biology or science fiction tropes it’s directly trying to simulate a board game
tl;dr: I disagree with several of the points in this video, but think the general thesis is reasonably accurate.
I'll start off with a point of agreement. As someone who describes the videogame as "2D Minecraft", I usually qualify that with "which is an excellent description so long as you don't know Minecraft very well".
When it comes to the Goblin Tinkerer's effect, across my three games played, I think his free deck-thinning effect has triggered a grand total of zero times. I don't think anyone across three four-player games ever bought his paid for effect either. On the other hand, in two of the three games, the free deck-thinning from other sources got all of us to the point where we were wondering whether to pass on the effect.
Whenever you gain loot action cards, you draw two and pick one – and can decline that one if you wish – so you're never forced to take a random card into your deck.
I'm not going to argue that an experienced deck builder is going to find the deck-building in Terraria interesting, let alone rich and satisfying, but it's not as bad as the review painted it (though the rules are not as clear as they could be).
While it's true that you will need to deal with the starting slimes (if only by running away), if you don't leave the starting tile, you'll only face 4 slimes and 3-4 non-slime spawns before King Slime spawns in anyway – you have the initial spawns and mid-day spawns, then two sets of night-time spawns. If you leave the starting tile and get a little lucky with the biome tile that spawns, you can face just 1 slime, leaving the other outside the game's loaded area of the five tile + shape around each player and standing on the spawn point of the one that's loaded in. If all players mine down on the first turn, then the starting slimes will be left on unloaded tiles and can probably be ignored entirely. Of course, the new tiles you discover that way may throw a worse enemy at you…
All that said, it's entirely too true that defeating King Slime effectively wins the game – the rewards for defeating him include some decent gear, and there's no compelling case for going out of your way to summon any of the other four bosses except to prove you can beat them.
And by not playing the game to its conclusion, Efka missed the damp squib of an ending – having progressed down two or three objective chains to get the rewards for objectives, you claim the reward for yet another objective, toss it into the heap of completed objectives, and go to read the newly revealed (and possibly already completed) objective only to discover that that's it. You've won. The game's over. Congratulations?
As a final note: not counting the initial punching out and organising of components, my three four-player games took maybe 15 hours in total – 5-6 hours for each of two victories, and 3-4 hours to lose to King Slime. And that includes teaching the game to new players each time – we had a total of 9 different players across the 3 games. 8 hours for an incomplete 2-player game (which should be shorter than 4-player) suggests something went wrong somewhere…
All that said, at 5-6 hours, with the game's peak being a couple of hours before the actual end, and a ruleset that, while it's mostly great at capturing the video-game, is also confusing enough that I've discovered rules we got wrong after each of the three plays, it's a game that runs just a little too long, and is a little too over-filled to recommend to anyone but the curious and fans of the video-game. In its favour, it does do a good job at capturing a lot of aspects of the videogame, but with a couple of misses – a minor one is that the grappling hooks, bafflingly, fail to stay grappled, so, unless you're in very specific circumstances, they're going to move you one square sideways and make you roll against fall damage, rather than allowing you to grapple somewhere and put down a rope or platform to keep you there, or burrow into the wall; the major one is that, while it captures the video-game's cycle of being in danger then gearing up to the point where you can ignore just about everything only to face new challenges, it ends at the wrong point in the cycle.
From the comments it looks like I'm preaching to the choir a bit; but I do appreciate a genuine negative review. I will admit dogpiling trends isn't fun or productive, and neither are the channels that just complain for the clicks. But actual constructive criticism or talking about failures for the sake of learning are both good. Having a mix of positive and negative reviews also (I think) helps with the feeling of "reliability" of a channel, because sometimes things just suck; and talking about those feels like there is an intent to make actual reviews, over just keeping good relations with publishers by doing nothing other than praising them. As a consumer of board games, and not a publisher or reviewer (ie: the one that would get burned by a falsely positive review of a mediocre game), I really appreciate that.
As a big Terraria fan back in the day, I also have to say while I loved the game, at literally no point did I think it would make a fun board game. Also after hearing the playtime, I had to go look up what the box says for playtime. 2-3 hours. Hilarious. I mean we all know those tend to be lower than reality, but that's just funny.
I absolutely love Terraria (the computer game). However, after disappointment with Frostpunk (the board game) I learned to not buy/support board games which are trying to reimplement computer games as close as possible (one exception being Slay the Spire). I just doesn't work. In computer games, you can have whole set of complicated mechanics being done in the background by computer (duh…) so you can just focus on interaction and fun resulting from that interaction. Having to manage all those things yourself, just makes board game a boring.
Terraria is my most played game on steam, with only WoW or EQ beating it for total hours spent playing. I'm also an avid board gamer who doesn't shy away from games that can take all day with a whole lot going on (like Everdell with all expansions at once, On Mars, or even Twilight Imperium). With that said, as soon as they announced the kickstarter I was already skeptical, and as soon as it launched I knew this was not a game for me. With each announcement with more details it just kept confirming that this was a game I couldn't see myself enjoying. Between the drastically different art style (which the 16-bit graphics is part of Terraria's charm), and gameplay and amount of components that seemed more tedious than anything else, I was really said to pass on the kickstarter. Post-release I still haven't seen anything that makes me interested in the game. At least the PC game is still getting awesome new content.
And it is advertised as 2-3 hours. I mean, there is the normal margin of error in that kind of measure, but 4 to 6 h of margin is a bit too much error.
I love the video game, it's so good and so much to do. I did not back this as I couldn't imagine it being very representative of the video game, the same reason I didn't back the Don't Starve board game. As others have said, I wish the disclaimer wasn't needed, but I can see why you did it. You do a mix of videos, and I love your negative reviews, but I would never accuse you of being only negative or bashing people. Dislike the game, not the designers, is an important distinction.
26 Comments
i hate "deck building" 1 i dont think deck building is how i would describe even slay the spire because I play deck building games ie pokemon MTG etc those are deck building games so the gulf is to wide for me to even consider the mechanics of slay the spire'esque games as deck building. This is a long standing gripe of mine and adding it to a game that doesnt want it inharnetly seems silly to me.
Generally, I feel like you do your research, but this time I think you either didn't bother to play the game, or your confirmation bias is showing pretty hard.
Deck thinning is part of many of the objective rewards.
My son and I NEVER bothered to get the Merchant cards and NEVER needed to buy them to remove cards.
The Goblin tinkerer is fairly easily achieved by mid game.
You wrote an entire segment about deck thinning that is…just plain wrong.
Thank you for this review!
While I don't always agree with your view on a given game (Sleeping Gods would be one such example), I like your approach and the arguments you are making. So I return again and again to check what's new. Thank you for your work and best of luck!
PS: 7 hours is nothing for a Terraria player. My personal total playtime is 377 hours on steam alone. 🙂
This is foreshadowing a similar mess that Don't Starve board game is bound to become.
It's so funny to me that so much of the criticism makes me think of how like the playing the video game it is. The bad is intentional as it's how the video game is!
Your dog was thinking about thinning his deck
Ooooh you're such a crunchy boy. Love it.
29:21 no pun included 6 7 moment
Puppies!!!!!
More dogs for my mental health!
Here is something I wonder @nopunintended : You have a lot of expertise about games. Deep design understanding. Here at this moment you have identified a couple issues with length and deckbuilding. I wonder if the box has everything you need EXECEPT the optimized rules that would make this game fun. I challenge you to create a pdf, page or three document that directly mods the game to make it <3 hours and more interesting in deck building. Is that something you would be willing to explore? I think you are ready.
Terriera? A puppy sandbox game?
This feels like an Ion Games designs but instead of being ruthlessly simulationist about evolutionary biology or science fiction tropes it’s directly trying to simulate a board game
Some clarification on the Minecraft-terraria comparison
Pre hardmode phase is 2D Minecraft
Post hardmode phase is Godslayer simulator with blocks
I don’t think any elaboration is needed beyond that
Thankfully I played a demo copy and realised what it was like so saved my money.
tl;dr: I disagree with several of the points in this video, but think the general thesis is reasonably accurate.
I'll start off with a point of agreement. As someone who describes the videogame as "2D Minecraft", I usually qualify that with "which is an excellent description so long as you don't know Minecraft very well".
When it comes to the Goblin Tinkerer's effect, across my three games played, I think his free deck-thinning effect has triggered a grand total of zero times. I don't think anyone across three four-player games ever bought his paid for effect either. On the other hand, in two of the three games, the free deck-thinning from other sources got all of us to the point where we were wondering whether to pass on the effect.
Whenever you gain loot action cards, you draw two and pick one – and can decline that one if you wish – so you're never forced to take a random card into your deck.
I'm not going to argue that an experienced deck builder is going to find the deck-building in Terraria interesting, let alone rich and satisfying, but it's not as bad as the review painted it (though the rules are not as clear as they could be).
While it's true that you will need to deal with the starting slimes (if only by running away), if you don't leave the starting tile, you'll only face 4 slimes and 3-4 non-slime spawns before King Slime spawns in anyway – you have the initial spawns and mid-day spawns, then two sets of night-time spawns. If you leave the starting tile and get a little lucky with the biome tile that spawns, you can face just 1 slime, leaving the other outside the game's loaded area of the five tile + shape around each player and standing on the spawn point of the one that's loaded in. If all players mine down on the first turn, then the starting slimes will be left on unloaded tiles and can probably be ignored entirely. Of course, the new tiles you discover that way may throw a worse enemy at you…
All that said, it's entirely too true that defeating King Slime effectively wins the game – the rewards for defeating him include some decent gear, and there's no compelling case for going out of your way to summon any of the other four bosses except to prove you can beat them.
And by not playing the game to its conclusion, Efka missed the damp squib of an ending – having progressed down two or three objective chains to get the rewards for objectives, you claim the reward for yet another objective, toss it into the heap of completed objectives, and go to read the newly revealed (and possibly already completed) objective only to discover that that's it. You've won. The game's over. Congratulations?
As a final note: not counting the initial punching out and organising of components, my three four-player games took maybe 15 hours in total – 5-6 hours for each of two victories, and 3-4 hours to lose to King Slime. And that includes teaching the game to new players each time – we had a total of 9 different players across the 3 games. 8 hours for an incomplete 2-player game (which should be shorter than 4-player) suggests something went wrong somewhere…
All that said, at 5-6 hours, with the game's peak being a couple of hours before the actual end, and a ruleset that, while it's mostly great at capturing the video-game, is also confusing enough that I've discovered rules we got wrong after each of the three plays, it's a game that runs just a little too long, and is a little too over-filled to recommend to anyone but the curious and fans of the video-game. In its favour, it does do a good job at capturing a lot of aspects of the videogame, but with a couple of misses – a minor one is that the grappling hooks, bafflingly, fail to stay grappled, so, unless you're in very specific circumstances, they're going to move you one square sideways and make you roll against fall damage, rather than allowing you to grapple somewhere and put down a rope or platform to keep you there, or burrow into the wall; the major one is that, while it captures the video-game's cycle of being in danger then gearing up to the point where you can ignore just about everything only to face new challenges, it ends at the wrong point in the cycle.
From the comments it looks like I'm preaching to the choir a bit; but I do appreciate a genuine negative review. I will admit dogpiling trends isn't fun or productive, and neither are the channels that just complain for the clicks. But actual constructive criticism or talking about failures for the sake of learning are both good.
Having a mix of positive and negative reviews also (I think) helps with the feeling of "reliability" of a channel, because sometimes things just suck; and talking about those feels like there is an intent to make actual reviews, over just keeping good relations with publishers by doing nothing other than praising them. As a consumer of board games, and not a publisher or reviewer (ie: the one that would get burned by a falsely positive review of a mediocre game), I really appreciate that.
As a big Terraria fan back in the day, I also have to say while I loved the game, at literally no point did I think it would make a fun board game.
Also after hearing the playtime, I had to go look up what the box says for playtime.
2-3 hours. Hilarious. I mean we all know those tend to be lower than reality, but that's just funny.
May not be the best but my son has a had a lot of fun with it- so that's good enough for me.
I think all future reviews need to contain 200% more dog.
I absolutely love Terraria (the computer game). However, after disappointment with Frostpunk (the board game) I learned to not buy/support board games which are trying to reimplement computer games as close as possible (one exception being Slay the Spire). I just doesn't work. In computer games, you can have whole set of complicated mechanics being done in the background by computer (duh…) so you can just focus on interaction and fun resulting from that interaction. Having to manage all those things yourself, just makes board game a boring.
Terraria is my most played game on steam, with only WoW or EQ beating it for total hours spent playing. I'm also an avid board gamer who doesn't shy away from games that can take all day with a whole lot going on (like Everdell with all expansions at once, On Mars, or even Twilight Imperium). With that said, as soon as they announced the kickstarter I was already skeptical, and as soon as it launched I knew this was not a game for me. With each announcement with more details it just kept confirming that this was a game I couldn't see myself enjoying. Between the drastically different art style (which the 16-bit graphics is part of Terraria's charm), and gameplay and amount of components that seemed more tedious than anything else, I was really said to pass on the kickstarter. Post-release I still haven't seen anything that makes me interested in the game. At least the PC game is still getting awesome new content.
Wait… do people *not* use the word powned in regular parlance? When did that stop, and why did you ever leave such a glorious bubble? 😅
And it is advertised as 2-3 hours. I mean, there is the normal margin of error in that kind of measure, but 4 to 6 h of margin is a bit too much error.
I love the video game, it's so good and so much to do. I did not back this as I couldn't imagine it being very representative of the video game, the same reason I didn't back the Don't Starve board game. As others have said, I wish the disclaimer wasn't needed, but I can see why you did it. You do a mix of videos, and I love your negative reviews, but I would never accuse you of being only negative or bashing people. Dislike the game, not the designers, is an important distinction.
A shame really I love Terraria
Feels like a case of "the people who made the game were too good at it and expected everyone to be as good as them"