Tom Vasel Video Review of Yomi

Tom Vasel did a video review of Yomi. As I said before, he's one of the most respected board game reviewers out there, so it's a real honor to see his glowing review.

Tom Vasel Reviews Yomi

Tom Vasel reviewd Yomi on his podcast episode 192 (starting at 31:25).
I don't see the review on Tom's main site yet, The Dice Tower, but I found it here, for reference.  

Some highlights from Tom:

"I love this game! I haven't loved a game this much in a long time."

"It's in my top 100 games of all time...maybe even the top 10."

"I'm currently ranking it 10 out of 10."

This is really a high honor because Tom Vasel is one of the most respected board game reviewers around. I encourage you to check out his reviews in general on boardgamegeek.com and on his own site, The Dice Tower. I've followed them for years, and he's always been helpful in explaining how games works, what is good or bad about them, and how they relate to other games.

I'm glad you liked it Tom!

Yomi and the second printing of Puzzle Strike are en route as we speak, on a freight train somewhere. They'll ship in January and you can get your order in here (Yomi) and here (Puzzle Strike).

Infinity Blade: Game Design Review

Infinity Blade was the #1 paid app in the App Store a few days, and deservedly so. As a player, I have to give it a grade of A because it's entertained me more than most games do these days, including games costing literally ten times as much. I'd rather give you opinion as a game designer than a player though, and from that standpoint, I rate it even higher. What's most notable is how much the designers did with so little. A simple combat mechanic and a small map go a long way.

Infinity Blade is "Punch-Out with swords, combined with stat optimization and a hidden object game." Skip the next couple sections if you already know how it works.

Description of Combat

The basic mechanic of slashing with your sword has a good visceral feel on the iPad's touch screen. The combat itself is kind of like Punch-Out. You can dodge the enemy's attacks and after you dodge a big one, you have a chance to hit back. You can also sneak in other hits before dodging the big one, but they do less damage. You can block so that no timing of dodge is needed, but the number of blocks is limited by how strong your shield is. You get an XP bonus if you don't break your shield, so it seems best not to use it. Parrying is more fun than dodging or blocking, and it caries higher risk and a bit higher reward. To parry, you must slash at the right time and angle to match the enemy's attack. Very cool.

You also have two meters, kind of like super meters in a fighting game (simply touch them to activate when they are full). The one in the upper left always stuns the enemy, letting you hit them a few times for free. The one in the upper right lets you do a magic attack (based on which ring you have equipped) that requires you to do a gesture to cast.

Description of Stat-Game

As usual, you defeat enemies to get money and items, which make you stronger, which let you beat more enemies. The not-usual part is that the items themselves are what level up, and your character's XP only goes up as the items gain XP. Once an item has its max XP, it no longer contributes to your character's XP when you defeat enemies. The dynamic that results from that mechanic is that you want to constantly swap your items around, making sure you have decent stats, and also a decent XP gain rate. This might sound annoying on paper, but giving you something to manage between fights is, I think, a big reason why the game doesn't get monotonous nearly as quickly as you'd expect. You get to go back and forth between combat and stat-optimization often, and each gives you a break from the other.

Movement

This is really one of the main ponts I want to make. You cannot walk around freely in Infinity Blade, you can only click on the note you want to go next, and a canned animation takes you there. On paper, this sounds bad. Really though, I think it was a very smart decision. Part of the reason they did this,

Click to read more ...

Yomi 2-packs Available

Grave & Jaina 2-packThe five different 2-packs of Yomi decks are now available for pre-order. Each pair of decks is $25, and they ship in January along with the complete first edition, and the second printing of Puzzle Strike. I stress that the complete set is a better deal, so let's talk about price, starting at the beginning.

The usual way of making a card game like Yomi is to make it collectable. Yes, the dirty word. If it were collectable, I'd be selling packs of random cards, including rare cards, and causing you to spend a ton more in order to create a full, "real" deck. Constructed decks in Magic: the Gathering cost over $300 on average because this collectability aspect inflates the price and gets in the way of you actually playing the game. I know the makers of CCGs apologize by saying it's fun to play with gimped decks as you go through the expensive collection process, but really it's a hell of a lot more fun to have a full-strength, tournament quality deck from the beginning. I like picking Protoss in Starcraft, not a gimped Protoss until I buy all the units (which come to me in random packs--still waiting on that Void Ray). The same goes here, it's great to get the complete game without the garbage.

Grave & Jaina 2-pack, from the backSo anyway, the more normal way to sell the complete set of Yomi would be to not sell it at all! To instead, sell only random packs, so that the entire set of 10 decks could come out to around $3000. Or heck, let's cut the price all the way down to $1000. You wouldn't get a rulebook, playamts (those are worth $10+ bucks each), or the beautiful packaging of the 10 deck-boxes and the big black box it all comes in. You wouldn't get that stuff because you'd really get the cards from the secondary market where they are selling you just the (uncoated, CCG quality) cards themselves, without even real packaging. Somehow, the complete Yomi set isn't $3000 or $1000 though, it's $100. So if you bought that, and threw both the awesome playmats in the trash, along with the nice box, the expanded rules, and the life counters, you'd be paying $10 per deck. Or like $8 if you don't throw the playmats in the trash. (I stress again, those mats are pretty awesome).

The 2-packs get you two different Yomi decks for a total of $25. Yes, $25 is less than $100 and the cheaper price-of-entry is certainly a reason you might want one. But if you chip in with a friend or something, the complete set is the better value. And either way, this game is so absurdly cheaper than the CCG I *could* have made it, that I hope that doesn't go unnoticed. I hope you sing the praises that this game costs $100 for the *entire thing* and not $3000 with psychological tricks of rares in random packs that has somehow become acceptable.

So here you go, the complete first edition is here, and the five 2-packs are here. The 2-packs let you try out the game for cheaper than the full set, if you're not sure about it. Of course, you also try it out for free in the early online version (www.fantasystrike.com/dev). All flavors of Yomi, as well as the second printing of Puzzle Strike, ship in January.