1210: Reppin’ the Squad

Those of you who know me well will probably know that Mark and Lynette, the people Andie and I are staying with on our vacation in Toronto, are members of the Squadron of Shame. The Squad is, of course, a ragtag group of gamers who came together back in the heyday of 1up.com to champion the underdogs of the games industry, and we’ve been doing an admirable job of that ever since through a combination of online discussion, podcasting and playing games together.

One of the reasons I’ve been enjoying this vacation so much is because as well as getting out and about a bit to see some of the city — something we’ll be doing a lot more of in the coming week — I’ve had the chance to hang out with people who have very similar tastes in games to me; people who understand why JRPGs and visual novels are awesome, and why a middling-to-low Metacritic rating isn’t necessarily something that should put you off playing a game if you like the look of it.

In the last week or so, we’ve been repping the Squad pretty well between the games we’ve been playing. Mark has been playing a lot of Fire Emblem on 3DS, of course, since he’s been glued to it since it was released back in February, but we’ve been exploring some other interesting games together, too. As I type this, we’re enjoying the distinctly Canadian flavour of Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves, a very strange game that combines elements of tower defense, strategy games, role-playing games, action games and survival horror to create something quite unlike anything any of us have ever seen before. Meanwhile, I’ve completed three playthroughs each of Long Live the Queen and Spirited Heart, two extremely interesting if somewhat unpolished “life sims” in which you build up stats in an attempt to complete various tasks and/or romance any of the in-game eligible bachelors and/or bachelorettes.

Sang-Froid (above) is an interesting game. At the outset, it looks like a rather ordinary third-person action game with a distinctive aesthetic, but as the levels progress it grows in complexity a bit at a time until — I assume, anyway; we haven’t got that far yet — the game you’re playing at the end of the story is virtually unrecognisable from the hack-and-slash it appeared to be at the very beginning. I haven’t played it myself yet, but it looks like a challenging game with a huge amount of depth. The two different playable characters allow you to enjoy the game in two distinctive styles, too — one has better combat skills, making the action sequences easier, while the other is weaker, meaning that the strategic sequence where you lay traps and build structures is considerably more important to get right before the hordes of darkness come running.

But I digress. Allow me to talk about the games I have been playing personally.

I’ve already talked about both Long Live the Queen (above) and Spirited Heart (below) in two previous posts, but they both bear mentioning again, I think. Both games are examples of the “life sim” genre — a style of game which is rarely explored outside of low-budget indie games. I guess you could count The Sims as a life sim, but it’s not quite the same thing — The Sims is a detailed simulation of social interactions and other related business, but both Long Live the Queen and Spirited Heart are more like role-playing games in which you’re not travelling the world in order to save humanity, but instead trying to eke out the best possible existence for your (female) protagonist.

Both Long Live the Queen and Spirited Heart differ considerably, however, despite having fundamentally similar mechanics. Long Live the Queen sees you playing a predefined character — the titular Queen — and then sending her down the path of your choice, while Spirited Heart allows you a lot more freedom to design your own character and choose what your goals are, be they romancing a specific character or attempting to accomplish a mission set for you by your race’s goddess. While neither of these games are particularly shiny or exciting to look at, I’ve found them surprisingly compelling, and they make me want to check out more games of a similar ilk.

One reason I’ve been enjoying them a lot is due to their similarity to an old favourite visual novel/dating sim known as True Love (above). I first played this back in probably 1999-2000 and still think of it very fondly today, despite the fact it is an absolute bugger to get running on modern machines. Like the life sims I’ve been playing recently, True Love saw you managing your time carefully in an attempt to build up your stats enough to attract one or more of the game’s heroines and make her your “true love”. I attribute my present-day love of games like the Persona series to my earlier experiences with True Love, and I’m getting a lot of the same feelings from titles like Long Live the Queen and Spirited Heart, too, which is nice.

The other interesting thing about them is that these are games obviously designed with a primarily female audience in mind, and that in the case of Spirited Heart at least, they’re gay/bisexual positive. Long Live the Queen doesn’t have a strong romance component, whereas it’s a key focus of Spirited Heart. In Spirited Heart, you even have the option to turn the girl-boy and girl-girl romances on or off independently of one another — in fact, it’s sold as two separate “games” that bolt on to each other, so if you want to play an all-yuri life sim, simply pick up the Girl’s Love version by itself and go nuts.

And the one final reason I’m mentioning these games is that there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of discussion about them online generally. I’m a strong believer that great games should be celebrated and appreciated as much as possible, regardless of their budget or where they hail from, and thus, well, I’m doing my bit.

You can grab Long Live the Queen from Hanako Games’ website, Spirited Heart from Winter Wolves’ website, and Sang-Froid from Steam.

1209: Further Adventures in Fudz

As I noted the other day, one of the fun things about our trip to Toronto is that we’ve had the opportunity to sample some of the city’s more colourful eating establishments. Mark and Lynette both know the places that Torontonians (I bet they hate being called that) visit on a regular basis rather than the inevitably much more expensive touristy places in touristy areas. Consequently, we’ve had the opportunity to eat well for relatively reasonable prices — Mark and Lynette refer to a $20 bill as a “yuppie food stamp” and it’s easy to see why, since the vast majority of meals we’ve had while we’ve been here have come out somewhere in the region of $20 each.

We’ve had a lot of Asian cuisine of various descriptions since we’ve been here, as I noted the other day. Today I added to the range of Asian foods that I’ve experienced by having a taste of okonomiyaki. I had no idea whatsoever what okonomiyaki was prior to today, but I had at least heart of it — the character Kirari in the visual novel Kira Kira (which is eminently worth your time, by the way) is obsessed with it.

I was half expecting okonomiyaki to be something similar to takoyaki — the small fried rice flour balls filled with octopus meat and other goo, then drizzled with Japanese mayonnaise. Okonomiyaki is, as it turns out, absolutely nothing like takoyaki. No; rather than being small bite-sized thingies like takoyaki, okonomiyaki is instead somewhat akin to a cross between a potato cake and an omelette, with lashings of a rich barbecue sauce-style substance slathered all over the top of it. I forget exactly what the omelette-type-thing was made from and am far too tired to actually research it at this hour in the morning, but it was quite tasty. Like an omelette, it could also be made with a variety of different fillings, ranging from beef to shrimp or squid. I had a squid one to make up for the fact I didn’t have a squid taco at Banh Mi Boys the other day, so I now feel suitably guilty about devouring some of Ika Musume’s relatives.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to make of okonomiyaki, as I was aware going into it that it was made with onions, which those who know me well will know are a vegetable I despise with a great passion. (I had terrible trouble growing up convincing my parents that I really genuinely didn’t like onions, despite actually retching at the dinner table when I could taste them on several occasions; the fact that being able to taste onion today still makes me retch makes me feel somewhat vindicated that I wasn’t just being an awkward child about them.) Fortunately, however, the onions were shredded up to such a degree (not to mention having had the shit fried out of them) that they were inoffensive to my palate’s delicate sensibilities, and consequently there was no retching.

Actually, I enjoyed the okonomiyaki very much. I’m pleased I tried it; I’m not sure it’s my favourite of all the Japanese food I’ve tried to date, but I am happy that I’ve tasted it and now know what to expect should I find myself ordering it again.

Now all we have to do is complete the “Japanese trifecta” by having sushi one night this week and we’ll be all Asianed out.

1208: Spirited Heart

Inspired by my recent excursion into Hanako Games’ Long Live The Queen, I decided to check out another “life sim” game that has been sitting in my virtual pile of shame for some time, ever since I picked up a “Manga Bundle” from Hanako and Winter Wolves a while back. Spirited Heart is a very similar sort of game to Long Live The Queen, only instead of playing as a princess-slash-queen-to-be, you’re playing a “normal” person in a fantasy world. Specifically, you’re playing as an 18-year old human, elf or demon woman coming to “the big city” for the first time and trying to “make it” before she turns 30. Just like real life, then.

Spirited Heart does a number of interesting things that distinguishes it from Long Live The Queen. Chief among these is the fact that you’re not playing a fixed character — you’re playing one of your own design, to a certain extent anyway. There isn’t any option to customise your character’s appearance, for example, but the way you play does determine what sort of person your character ends up as.

This starts right from the beginning of the game. Choosing a race sets your initial basic statistics, and you can then tweak this starting set of abilities by “role-playing” a few simple scenarios with multiple-choice questions. By the time you’ve answered these basic questions about your character’s childhood and adolescence, you have a good idea of who they are and what kind of person they can be, and can start working on their statistics further.

The way the game works is that each week, you choose whether your character goes to work or takes a week off. Going to work allows you to choose any occupations you meet the prerequisite stat requirements for, while resting allows you to restore your health and morale, which can often be negatively impacted both by going to work and through random events that occur. You can’t go to work if you’re too unhealthy or if your morale is too low, so sometimes you need to take a week off in order to progress. Working, meanwhile, often improves your stats and allows you to earn money, which can be used on more effective vacations when required.

Occasionally during your work day, you’ll have “random encounters” with the game’s other characters. These visual novel-style scenes see your character interacting with these other potential love interests — both male and female (assuming you’ve bought both the basic heterosexual game and the standalone Girl’s Love expansion) — and occasionally offer you a choice to advance your relationship.

This is probably the most interesting thing about the game: the emergent narrative created through the stat-building gameplay combines with the prescripted narrative of the visual novel-style romance scenes to create something that is much more than the sum of its parts. For example, in the game I’m currently playing, my character is a strong young woman who grew up on a farm and thus doesn’t have a lot in the way of social graces. In her career so far, she has worked as a farmer and a builder. In the latter case, she encountered a young and somewhat clumsy elf noble whom it transpired she was building a house for. Somewhat later, after improving her skills enough to become a maid in a noble house, she ran into this elf maiden once again and discovered that she was betrothed to a fat, unattractive nobleman who obviously didn’t give a shit about her. And thus we’re into a pleasing “star-crossed lovers” sort of situation as my commoner character attempts to prove herself worthy to this noble elf maiden and her family. I don’t yet know how that ends yet, but I’m curious to see.

Just to confuse matters, partway through the game, my character was visited by her Goddess and tasked with attaining a particular “title” by the time she reaches the age of 30. Unfortunately, pursuing the elf of her dreams and following the Goddess’ quest are not really compatible, since the Goddess’ quest requires me to become an Artist, while pursuing the elf requires me to continue working as her maid. CHOICES. DECISIONS. CONSEQUENCES.

Like Long Live The Queen, Spirited Heart is a fairly no-frills production with minimal graphics, animation and sound, but like Long Live The Queen, it’s also a surprisingly compelling game if you take it in the spirit in which it is intended. It’s a role-playing game in which you’re not battling monsters or going on epic quests; you’re living a (relatively) normal life in a fantasy world and trying to make the best of your situation. It’s an interesting little game, and one which I see myself playing through a few times.

Find out more here.

1207 Part 2: Food Travels

Here’s a full update to make up for the pitiful effort last night. Apologies for that, but I was in far too much pain to even contemplate writing more than a couple of sentences at the time. I was even sick. You really wanted to know that, didn’t you? Of course you did. BLAAAARGH.

Anyway, what I actually wanted to talk about in last night’s post was one of my favourite aspects of travel: food. I’m not necessarily talking about sampling local cuisine — which here in Toronto would probably be poutine, I guess — but wandering around and having a chance to sample some local eateries, and eat some interesting food that you might not be able to get back home.

Toronto is particularly good for Asian eateries of various descriptions. Yesterday we sampled two of them: the Banh Mi Boys sandwich shop, and Kinton Ramen.

Banh Mi Boys is a pokey little shop that often has queues extending out of the door. They serve a variety of Vietnamese-inspired food that includes Asian-style tacos — floppy rather than crispy — and steamed rice flour buns known as bao. They also do Vietnamese-style baguettes, the titular banh mi, which are a decent meal in themselves. We tried the tacos and the bao, both of which were delicious. I had pulled pork in my bao and some sort of spicy beef in my taco — there were several different options on offer besides these, including squid tacos, which I sort of regret I didn’t try now, even if eating them would make me feel a bit guilty towards Ika Musume-chan.

Kinton Ramen, meanwhile, is fairly self-explanatory. It’s a ramen shop. All they do is ramen and a few side dishes. They do do several different types of ramen, to be fair, but if you don’t want ramen this is probably not the place to come. I must confess to not being overly familiar with ramen, as it’s something we don’t seem to get all that much of back in the U.K., but the couple of occasions I have had it in the past have been thoroughly enjoyable.

For those unfamiliar with Japanese cuisine, eating “ramen” generally involves getting an enormous bowl full of broth made from pork bones (with the amount of fat used in it determining how “rich” it is) which is then filled with ramen noodles, vegetables such as beansprouts, nori and various other bits and pieces, and typically topped with a lump of pork. Some also have a whole egg in them — sometimes this is served chopped, but at Kinton, there’s just a whole egg dropped in it, which is quite amusing. You then proceed to consume the whole bowl using a combination of chopsticks and a wooden Japanese soup spoon. At Kinton, they take your photo if you finish the whole thing, which is actually quite an achievement — there’s a lot of food there, and due to the way it’s structured, it often looks like you’re not making any progress with it for a very long time. Like the Persona 4 beef bowl, if you will.

Anyway, that should hopefully make up for last night. And hopefully my headache will fuck off and die now.

1207: Ow ow ow ow

Sorry for the brief post. My blogging ability is currently impaired by possibly the worst headache I think I’ve ever endured. Normal business will resume tomorrow.

1206: My Holiday, by Pete, Age 32

I am still on holiday, or “vacation” as you crazy Americans call it, and I’m having a great time. A significant proportion of this can be attributed to our gracious hosts Mark and Lynette, whom I’ve been looking forward to coming to visit again for the past several years. It’s a bummer not living near the vast majority of my friends, most of whom live in various parts of North America and a few of whom live even further afield than that. This means that the opportunity to actually spend some time with people who mean a lot to me is something that I will seize whenever possible.

The other part of the reason I’m having a great time is simply the fact that I’m on holiday with absolutely no commitments or worries right now. It’s a thoroughly pleasant feeling to be in a position where I know I can just enjoy myself without having to think about getting work done, or live up to any responsibilities, or anything like that. It’s a feeling I haven’t had for quite some time, so I’m taking full advantage of the opportunity while I can.

Today has been a lazy day. Andie has been feeling a little under the weather as a side-effect of being a bit ill shortly before we left, so we took it easy for the day. Most of our time has been spent sitting around playing video games, watching TV and generally just hanging out. Some people may think it’s a waste to come three and a half thousand miles to do things that I’d do at home anyway, but combine the opportunity to relax without responsibilities with the chance to hang out with friends I literally haven’t seen face-to-face for years — despite talking to them most days thanks to the Intertubes — and that sounds like a thoroughly good time to me.

I’m a very easy guest. Provide me with a couch to sit on, something to look at and occasionally someone to talk to and I’m happy. I never feel obliged to be doing stuff constantly, unlike many other people I know. (That’s not a passive-aggressive thing — it’s simply the fact I know different people like to holiday in different ways.) I’m very happy just sitting around relaxing and doing things I enjoy with people I like rather than always being on the go, trying to cram as many “sights” into a short period of time as possible. To me, that way lies madness; I go on holiday to chill out and relax, not to be stressed out trying to mark things off on an imaginary, arbitrary checklist.

Basically, all is well in the world, and the holiday period is progressing pleasingly slowly. By the time I return, I should be ready to face whatever the future has in store for me.

1205: Long Live the Queen

A short while back, a few indie developers that I enjoy the work of very much released a bundle of games that looked interesting. Among this selection of games was a title known as Long Live the Queen by Hanako Games, developer of Magical Diary, a game which I enjoyed very much. I picked up the bundle and, as tends to happen frequently with this sort of thing, forgot all about it completely until recently.

The specific circumstances which caused me to remember the existence of Long Live the Queen as a Thing were catching a glimpse of it on Steam Greenlight earlier. The premise of taking a young anime girl, dressing her up and then watching her die horribly sounded appealing and interesting, so I decided to check the game out for myself.

What I discovered was a very interesting “life sim”/strategy game with a surprising amount of hidden depth. Since Hanako Games is a small developer with only a couple of people to its name — creator Georgina Bensley and one or two others — it’s a game that was obviously made relatively “on the cheap,” as it were, with relatively little in the way of graphics and sound/music, but that doesn’t stop it from being very interesting indeed.

Essentially, Long Live the Queen is a game somewhat akin to old Japanese games like Princess Maker, in that you have a young anime girl to take care of and must train her up to deal with various situations appropriately. The course which the game’s plot takes depends on the skills which you choose to train up, and the skills which you can train most effectively are determined by Our Heroine’s current mood — for example, if she’s depressed, she’s particularly wont to express herself through things like music and singing, whereas if she’s angry, she can channel her aggression into training in things like military strategy and proper use of weapons. Training to particular levels in things unlocks various costumes appropriate to the skills she’s learning — for example, learning a lot of spiritual skills unlocks a priestess outfit, while becoming a “Lumen” and awakening to her family’s magical heritage unlocks a particularly awesome “magical girl” outfit.

These skills aren’t just for bragging rights, though. Each in-game “week” sees various events happening, many of which require a skill check to successfully resolve. Failing the skill check isn’t necessarily a bad result, though — it simply means that Our Heroine doesn’t have the requisite skills to resolve a situation in a particular way. For example, early in the game, she’s sent a necklace by a Duke who is proposing marriage to her, but having a distinct lack of knowledge of the way things work in the royal court means that she doesn’t recognise the gift for what it is and instead responds with a rather unqueenly “Oooh! Sparkly!” — but it cheers her up.

Making it through the game without dying horribly is a case of carefully making decisions and levelling up skills appropriately, and it’s not at all uncommon for Our Heroine to meet a sticky end — in fact, it’s positively encouraged via the “collect them all!” death checklist in the game’s main menu. It’s almost preferable to play the game like a roguelike — starting from the beginning, only saving when you’re stopping playing rather than before you make a critical decision, and dealing with the consequences of your actions. In a nice touch, reaching the end of a game — whether with Our Heroine’s coronation as Queen or with her death — allows you to export a complete log file of everything that happened so you can perhaps figure out what on Earth went wrong.

In short, it’s a very interesting game, and well worth checking out. Don’t go into it expecting something spectacular — the music loops are nice, but very short and repetitive, and there’s not a lot of variation in the graphics (though Our Heroine’s various costumes are all great) — and you’ll have a great time building your own custom princess and seeing how she survives in the world.

Find out more here.

1204: Torontonia

We went out and about for a bit in Toronto earlier, primarily to pick up some computer bits for my friend Mark to build his “Steam Box” PC but also to get some dinner and have a little wander. Again I was struck with this city’s enormous diversity.

It is, for me, one of Toronto’s most defining characteristics, and one which you can notice very quickly upon spending some time downtown, or even out in the greater Toronto area. Go for a walk and you’ll be in one distinctive district one moment — perhaps Chinatown — but then you’ll round a corner and suddenly it’ll be suburban-style houses with lots of greenery. It’s quite disconcerting at first, but you soon realise it’s part of the city’s character.

Today we had a wander in the Kensington area, which is fascinating to walk around. It’s difficult to describe exactly what it’s like, but there’s a definite sort of Latin/Central American vibe going on, with lots of pokey little shops, many of which have their wares strewn all over the street outside them.

We happened to find an amazing video games shop in the middle of all this. From the outside it looked like just another crappy used games store, but inside it was like a treasure trove of Every Game I Want To Play Ever. Seriously. I have either played or very much want to play every title on the back wall of that place. It even had some rare offerings, such as the original Persona games for PS1 and rare stuff like Dracula X, Chrono Trigger and Mother 2 for SNES — all of which cost a pretty penny!

It’s very warm here at the moment, which makes going out and walking for too long a little uncomfortable. I think I might invest in a pair of shorts while I’m here as I feel like wearing jeans is suffocating my legs!

1203: Back to the Mansion Again

I played a bit more Luigi’s Mansion 2 earlier. Haven’t played it a lot yet, but I’m really liking it for a number of different reasons.

Firstly, the single-player mode has a very strong “adventure game” feel about it. Specifically, it features frequent occurrences of getting “stuck” — something which is not altogether common in modern games that hold your hand quite a lot. Luigi’s Mansion, though, despite appearing quite tutorial-heavy in the first couple of levels, very quickly turns into a game where you’re expected to work things out for yourself, to remember things from earlier and to explore thoroughly rather than just following the handy glowing trail of breadcrumbs on the map.

Secondly, the multiplayer mode is awesome. It hadn’t occurred to me that multiplayer in Luigi’s Mansion 2 might actually be good, but by golly, it really, really is. I’ve only tried the “Hunters” mode in Download Play so far — this apparently means it’s a “limited” form of the full multiplayer experience — but it was a blast by itself.

Essentially, the multiplayer mode is a cooperative ghost hunt for up to four players at once. Before starting the game, the players choose how many floors of a mansion they want to tackle and must then clear each of them against a strict time limit. Each level is randomly generated, requiring methodical exploration to locate where all the ghosts are and then to take them down. Communication between players is also helpful, but for those who don’t want to actually talk to each other — or those who are unable to due to playing online, for example — there’s a handy little “quick chat” thingy on the D-pad, allowing you to make Luigi say various things, but more importantly, display a callout on the map indicating that the other players’ attention is required in a specific location.

It’s a really interesting mode because it’s simple but extremely flexible. If you want a short game, you can play just 5 floors. If you want a longer game, you can play up to 25 floors, and successfully clearing this opens up an “Endless” mode, which sounds like a lot of fun. Within the individual play session, players earn points towards upgrades that are valid just for their single play session, making a single multiplayer game feel like a microcosm of the main game’s upgrade and reward structure. It’s really, really neat and I can actually see myself playing it quite a bit.

The Download Play functionality also reminds me of one of the great unsung features of Nintendo’s handhelds. It is absolutely awesome to be able to wirelessly beam a limited version of a game over to your friends and play them without them having to own the game. Wireless multiplayer on its own is great — remember the awkwardness of hooking up link cables? — but when your friends don’t have to have their own copy of the game? Brilliant. The only thing about this that I hate is the fact that the 3DS’ stupid region locking prevents handhelds from different regions downloading these multiplayer-specific packages. Sometimes. (If it was consistent, I might not be quite so mad about it, but still.)

Anyway. Luigi’s Mansion continues to be an entertaining experience, and I’m looking forward to investigating it further. For now, however, I bid you good night!

1202: Say Anything

We’re in Canada! Also quite jetlagged. Andie flaked out pretty early and went to bed, but I powered on through and played a bunch of board and card games before being introduced to Adventure Time (hilarious) and Polar Bear Cafe (also hilarious, but in a completely different way).

We played a few games this evening, including Love Letter, Magical Athlete and Say Anything. All of them are pleasantly lightweight, quick games that can easily be slotted in to an evening, and they’re also particularly friendly to casual players or inexperienced gamers.

Love Letter is an exercise in simplicity. Each of the players are a prospective suitor to the princess, and they’re trying to get their love letter into her hands. The card they have in their hand at any one time represents who has their letter at any given time, and the numerical rank on the card represents how “close” to the princess the love letter is. When the deck — which is made up of just 16 cards — is exhausted or all players except one have been eliminated, the surviving player with the highest-ranked card is declared the winner of that round. Play then repeats until someone has won four rounds.

The interesting part of Love Letter comes in the special effects all the cards have. Each turn, you draw a second card, and you must then “play” one of your two cards by discarding it. Discarding any card causes its effect to occur, and these range from swapping hands with other people to being able to peek at their cards or potentially eliminate them from the current round. As you might expect, the princess card is the strongest if you survive to the end of the game, but if somehow you find yourself having to discard it, you’re immediately eliminated.

It’s a very simple game that is easy to understand, and there’s a surprising amount of hidden depth to it — card-counting, bluffing and working out the best way to pull the wool over the other players’ eyes.

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Magical Athlete, meanwhile, was described to me as “Snakes and Ladders with special powers”, and that’s a fairly apt description. The game unfolds in two phases — firstly, each player must assemble a team of five magical athletes, each of whom have their own special abilities, and secondly, everyone then has to compete in five rounds of roll-and-move racing using a different one of their chosen characters each time. The player with the most points at the end wins.

While roll-and-move games rely heavily on luck, Magical Athlete sidesteps the experience being completely random through the aforementioned special abilities, many of which are designed to either help the owner out, hinder the others, or sometimes both. Many of the abilities are also designed to interact with one another to various degrees, which makes for some interesting encounters. By far the most memorable race we had earlier included the combination of the Siren, who pulls every other player towards her — forwards or backwards — by a single space at the start of her turn; Cupid, who moves forward five spaces any time a male and a female character occupy the same space; and the Pirate, who can “kidnap” any player and bring them back to their space. Consequently, the race became a farce: Siren constantly pulling people onto her space activated Cupid’s power, which meant that Pirate would inevitably pull him back every turn.

It’s a fun game — perhaps light on the strategy, but a lot of entertainment to be had here from simply observing how the different cards interact with one another.

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I think my highlight of the evening had to be Say Anything, though, which has a certain degree in common with Cards Against Humanity, only with dry-wipe markers and less filth provided up-front.

In Say Anything, players take it in turns to read one of several different questions from a card, and the other players must then scrawl an answer on their own personal whiteboard and put it in the middle of the table. The asker then picks their favourite and secretly records their choice, then everyone else bets their two coins on which one they think the asker will pick. Points are then awarded according to whether players bet on the asker’s pick and various other means.

The beauty of Say Anything is that it “scales” to any type of social group — I’m not talking about difficulty or group size, but subject matter. The questions are all fairly “general” and you can literally write anything you want on your whiteboard as an answer — even if it’s not “true”. Like Cards Against Humanity, there’s an element of playing to your “audience” when providing an answer, but unlike that game, there’s no obligation to delve into depravity unless you really want to. Cards Against Humanity is as filthy as you make it to a certain extent, but there’s little denying that a card that reads “Pac-Man uncontrollably guzzling cum” is anything but questionable in nature. There’s nothing stopping you writing exactly the same thing in Say Anything, but equally you’re not forced into the less salubrious side of things unless you want to. This means it can be played with the whole family, as opposed to Cards Against Humanity’s well-deserved “mature” rating.

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I’d write more about all of these but I feel like I’m about to pass out from tiredness/jetlag. So, hello Canada, goodbye U.K. for a couple of weeks — expect updates at strange times for the next two weeks! 🙂