F^&* Themes 3: Theme free or die hard

Alright in the original blog post of this series I listed 5 games that I thought worked very well thematically.  And then I listed 5 more that didn’t work at all.  So now I am going to prattle on a bit about how important that is.

How important is a theme?  I think it’s reasonably important to have “a” theme, but a lot less important for that theme to actually fit seamlessly into game play. 

What the hell is Darren babbling about this time?  Ok take the example of Ra, a very good game that implements a theme poorly.  Even though the Ancient Egypt setting is completely arbitrary and easily translated to another setting, it is still necessary to have some kind of theme.  The game would be awkward and not fun if you purchased “Arbitrary point gathering mechanism #1” instead of say, a Pharaoh.   Specific labels are important, it gives the player something concrete to acquire or use or whatever.

Now I can appreciate a good theme and how a game fits into it, but in the long run, a board game has to have good game play.  I remain amazed at how well Fresco works within the theme, but it’s not a game I am interested in playing too many more times.  I’d be happy to teach the game to n00bs who haven’t experienced it before, but the fatal flaw I pointed out in my review makes the game totally uninteresting for my own replay. 

  

The exception is the adventure board game.  Theme is everything in these, it’s implied right there in the genre!   I can’t really talk too much about adventure games because they really aren’t my thing (the reasons why might be another blog post.  1 post a day doesn’t seem like a lot until you start running out of things to babble about.)  But I think I can pick out which ones work and which ones don’t.   I didn’t play Android at J-Con last year, and while my friends’ reviews were mixed, thematically it was agreed that this really did feel like Blade Runner.   Contrast that to Candamir: The First Settlers .  I only demo’d this once, it’s an adventure game set in the Settlers universe.  About game #5 in Mayfair’s ongoing quest to get blood from the Settlers of Catan stone.  I actually have no idea if the theme was implemented well or not because the theme was so incredibly lame to begin with.  What the hell decision was made to base an adventure game off an economic resource gathering base?   Seriously, this incorporates the most boring parts of the Age of Empires computer game and makes it into a SLOWER paced board game.

Anyways a sum up.   My personal preference will always lean towards game play.  A good theme helps, but if the game play sucks, that game is a curiosity that will drop out of circulation.