I bought this game that I was pretty excited about - First Martians
It re-implements the mechanics in Robinson Crusoe (2012) , but this time with astronauts that have recently arrived on Mars. Robinson Crusoe is a cooperative game where you are stranded on a remote island and have to build up from nothing to accomplish some task before time runs out (like build a signal fire, or elude the cannibals). It had a little tech tree, and a fantastic mechanic where you had to deal with events that happened or it might have future consequences (like you see signs of a tiger - do you either spend the time to hunt it down and kill it now? or risk that it MAY show up later...hunting you). That game was a little clunky in several ways, but thematically it was fantastic. Very tough though. You can play it with as many as four people, but honestly it works best solo or two player. Additional players don't add anything but another mind to puzzle out the best move. You each technically play a character, but not really. You assign the resources and actions in the most optimal way possible. So if you're playing with a group, cooperation has to be at 100%, or you lose. There's no "you do this, I'll do that, and we'll see who was right." I usually play by myself, and sometimes with my son, Paul. He made his own scenario once which we played, and it was actually great.
I love Robinson Crusoe. More of that is really appealing to me. My kid likes Robinson Crusoe. My kid LOVES the ides of colonizing Mars. As I said, when I heard about First Martians, I was pretty excited. I'm the bull's eye of the target audience for this one.
I was warned this was a drudge to learn, and they were not kidding. The second iteration of these rules should be better, more elegant - they even switched to an app instead of a deck so they could give you just the events they wanted, in a logical orders, and manage the "future consequences" seamlessly behind the scenes. That improves the story telling, but the game is not better. It's more clunky. It's more fiddly. More contrived. I watched a 50 minute video designed to teach you to play. I watched it again. I read the rules. Then I tried to play the game with Paul (with some success, we won!). Then I watched the video a third time. Then I read the FAQ. I've now spent more than four hours learning the game, I've played it three times, and I'm only marginally confidently that I've got it down.
And that's not even the biggest problem with the game - in Robinson Crusoe, you are building something. You're fighting back the island and all its challenges, but each turn you have more than you did that turn before. You're improving your situation. Maybe you have a pit trap dug to help with food. Maybe you mapped out part of the island to help with your effort to explore. The challenge of the game is to accomplish your task in the limited time frame. In First Martians it's the opposite. Everything's peachy when you start, but as you try to accomplish your goal, everything is crumbling around you. And it seems counter to the theme. For example in the first scenario you're supposed to be making the HUB more like a home, but by the end you're lucky to fall across the finish line amid the cascading malfunctions. You're just holding things together against all these clocks long enough meet the scenario criteria. It's dispiriting. Depressing even. And hard. Really hard. Harder than Robinson Crusoe, which is a game that has a reputation for being on the brutal side.
In short, too much complexity without enough payoff for a difficult game that's theme can be kind of a downer. Still, I'm too invested to give it up. I'm gonna try again tonight. I'm 1 for 3 on the intro scenario, and that's on the "easy" setting. There are several more one off scenarios and a couple campaigns that I want to try. I'll keep you posted.
