#oneaday Day 835: All night long

Remember how yesterday I said a group of friends and I were going to play Big Walk "this afternoon"? Yeah, well, we started in the afternoon, my time… and concluded twelve fucking hours later. I have never, ever had a multiplayer session so long that the batteries in my headset went flat. Until now! (It's also been a very long time since I pulled an all-nighter on a video game, but those are usually solo.)

There are some mild Big Walk spoilers ahead. I will not be sharing complete puzzle solutions, but I may talk a bit about the thought process involved in some of them. You have been warned.

I don't think any of us expected the session to go on for so long, since we were in Big Walk's "postgame". We had partly (and correctly) assumed that the postgame would just involve going around and cleaning up any puzzles we didn't complete as part of the process you go through to "beat" the main game, but we were also aware that we'd discovered a place where there were fifteen empty slots for the "Kong" figurines that are your rewards for completing the various puzzles, and thus there was probably still a fair amount of work to do. We didn't know what the end result of doing said work would be, though.

We should have known, really; in our process of beating the main game, there weren't fifteen puzzles left over. And sure enough, once you get into the postgame, a selection of "purple Kong" puzzles unlock in a part of the map that was previously inaccessible. These mostly take the form of challenges similar to puzzles found elsewhere in the game, but made significantly more difficult and/or time-consuming somehow.

That said, there were also two puzzles from our "main game" leftovers which had left us reasonably stumped, so we had intended to come back to them. Both of those proved to be extremely time-consuming, too, so in retrospect it's no surprise that solving fifteen puzzles in total took twelve hours. We did make up for it with one of the other main game leftover puzzles taking us less than two minutes, though, because our team are now Big Walk pros, apparently.

Some of the most interesting challenges we encountered involved having to split up the party in various ways. One puzzle tasked us with looking through telescopes to find a series of four pedestals, and once there was at least one person at each pedestal, we then had to find a way to synchronise our button presses. Another challenged us to find a specific sound somewhere on the island. Another still involved locating things that we had used in various other puzzles and taking them to another location. In each of these situations, the challenge was communicating over a long distance: the game does have walkie-talkie items, but given you are limited in what you can carry — you can hold one thing in your hands, one on a belt loop (once you've found one) and one on a backpack (likewise), but you cannot access the belt or backpack items yourself — it's not always practical for everyone to carry one of these. And besides, you have to find them first anyway!

We found a way in each instance, though. And it wasn't just the long-distance puzzles that gave us these communication challenges, either. One of the "purple Kong" puzzles required us to figure out how to communicate complex information between two different rooms, when one room could use an intercom but the other could only respond by turning a light on or off. Another tasked us with communicating auditory information between rooms with a completely soundproof barrier between them. Another still tested the limits of how precisely we could verbally communicate visual information.

The one we left for last was a harder version of an earlier "golf" puzzle involving an extremely heavy ball that we had solved earlier in the game. The initial, main game implementation of this puzzle was fairly easy to solve, but the postgame variant involved getting the ball over a significantly longer distance, which required some creative thinking and teamwork. Among the many talents and skills that Big Walk tests, patience is one of the most significant of all of them. In this modern, attention-deficit world, I suspect there will be at least some groups who find the patience and endurance challenges to be some of the most taxing.

Still, the "true" ending was worth it, and I was grateful we didn't have to go through the immensely difficult "finale" of the main game again. That finale was a great experience, but having to do it again after twelve hours would have probably killed me.

One thing I really appreciated about Big Walk as a whole is that it's just an excellently designed game. It's a game which understands that when you're tasking people with confronting some significant, cooperative challenges together, it pays to have a clear, distinct visual language that everyone can learn to understand quickly and easily. Subtly, and without explicitly telling the player at any point, it introduces you to various concepts as you progress through the game — many of which are in the "starter area" — and coming to recognise those different elements of the game and what they mean is a key part of learning to play Big Walk effectively. Communicating your understanding of those elements to the rest of your group is important, too; if you know something but the others don't, it won't help the group as a whole if you keep it to yourself!

Anyway, we successfully completed all of the game — with the only thing (I think) we didn't find in our playthrough being the "shiny paint station". It was very much worth it, and if you have at least one good friend to play it with, I highly encourage you to do so — and to take the time to play it from start to finish. It takes a while, but it's very much a worthwhile activity to spend a few sessions on together. I certainly won't be forgetting our experiences in a hurry.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 806: Absolute Direction (5 points)

We had a second game of Big Walk today, and one thing I appear to have impressed on the rest of my group is that I have a very good sense of direction, even in a virtual space. This is not something I tend to brag about — because why would you? — but it is something I know that I am generally quite good at, and always have been to a certain extent.

I'm not entirely sure where this sense came from. Perhaps from years of playing old computer games that didn't include an automap facility. Perhaps from time in the Cub Scouts, at least part of which involved knowing how to read a map. Perhaps from how I used to enjoy just looking at maps. I remember having a kids' world atlas that I absolutely loved just… looking at.

Or perhaps it's something I developed a bit later. I know that I certainly became particularly aware of it once I had left home for university, because it came in very handy every time I got absolutely smashed and had to somehow find my way home in the dark. Despite numerous very drunken evenings, there was not one single occasion where I didn't make it home — even when the night had, for one reason or another, concluded at the house of someone I didn't know very well in an unfamiliar part of town.

Did I develop this skill back then? Perhaps. But it's something that's stuck around with me. I also feel very conscious of it any time I drive to a new city, because I tend to find that I can get a good feel for how all the roads connect to one another quite quickly, even when it's a place I've never been before. This came in quite handy any time I had a job interview in an unfamiliar place, because it meant that even if I initially had trouble finding the place I was supposed to go to — I always left with plenty of time to spare just in case this happened — I would come away from the day with a better understanding of this new place. This is information that may or may not have ended up being useful in the future, depending on whether or not I ended up getting the job.

I do find it especially helpful in virtual worlds, particularly when you have an experience like Big Walk which deliberately eschews the trappings of modern game user interfaces in favour of a more minimalist experience that is dependent on cooperation and communication. On multiple occasions in our session this evening, I was able to lead us right back to something we had previously visited without having to look at a map, and this, I feel, is a helpful quality in a group that is effectively orienteering in the wilderness in the hope of finding exciting and intriguing puzzles to complete. (Okay, I did take a wrong turn once, but nobody's completely perfect.)

One of the things I've determined via various means that I could really do with getting better at is acknowledging the things I am actually good at; the things about me that other people might actually value; the things that I can be proud of and feel okay about feeling proud of. After this evening's session, I feel quite confident in saying that yes, I am quite proud of my sense of direction; I feel it is a useful skill that can help both myself and others, and I am glad to be enjoying an experience where it actually comes in handy, and where people value it.

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#oneaday Day 589: HeroQuest First Light, First Session

I've done it! I've finally played a game of HeroQuest with actual real human people. And we had a really good time! We got through the first two quests in the First Light campaign — I've bought both First Light and the big-box core set, but I wanted to give First Light a go because it's a completely different campaign to the big-box core set, and the big-box core set campaign is largely based on the 1989 original, which I was already familiar with.

Both sets stand by themselves, and both are a good means of getting into HeroQuest as a hobby; the main difference is that First Light is a lot cheaper and comes in a smaller box, because it lacks the big collection of plastic miniatures included in the big-box core set. And, having played the game with those big-box core set miniatures today, I'm glad I picked it up; making the whole game a lot more "3D" really adds to the atmosphere and makes it look great on the table. (For the budget-conscious, the cardboard standees for monsters in First Light have some great artwork on them — and you do still get miniatures for the heroes and a recurring dragon boss — but all the furniture items are flat cardboard tiles that just show a plan view of the furniture. They serve their purpose, but it's hard to deny that the 3D furniture is just better.)

Playing Zargon (known as Morcar in the European '80s version) is an interesting experience. One thing you have to remember while playing is that although you are technically an "adversary" for the Hero players, you are not necessarily trying to defeat them. You are, instead, attempting to facilitate a fun session of storytelling, using the game mechanics as a framework, and that sometimes means quietly fudging things a bit, rebalancing the difficulty on the fly and responding to things that happen in a way that isn't necessarily laid down for you in the Quest Book in black-and-white.

Some people turn their nose up at HeroQuest because of its simplistic mechanics, and I can totally understand that; there are games with similar theming that go much harder on strategy and tactics, with each encounter feeling a lot more like a tabletop wargaming skirmish than a dungeon crawl. For some, that's what they want; for me, though, I've always been very fond of HeroQuest's straightforward mechanics, because not only do they keep the game pacy and help emphasise the collective, emergent narrative of the players' quest, they also make it very easy for newcomers to pick up. There's very little trawling through an epic rulebook once you have the basic rules sorted, which means there's very little downtime, and a lot more time for moving, fighting and searching things — because those are the three main things you do in HeroQuest.

The two quests we played today were enjoyably different from one another. The first was a relatively open-plan dungeon in which the Heroes, by chance, picked the "correct" way to go at the beginning and ended up at the concluding encounter relatively quickly, but in the process they also missed out on potentially collecting a bit more treasure. The second quest had an interesting series of magic portals that could send the Heroes to different parts of the dungeon, some of which connected with one another and some of which did not.

The second quest was noticeably harder than the first. The Heroes did have a bit of a run of bad luck with dice rolls — particularly once they opened up a secret room and found a pair of Mummies, which are surprisingly tough enemies to beat — but that made their eventual victory over the quest's "boss" feel hard-earned and definitely worthwhile. And relatively little Zargon fudging was required to keep everyone alive!

The cool thing is that I think the Hero players learned something from how these two quests went down — notably, that it is helpful to stay together, but in a tactically advantageous formation so, for example, the Wizard doesn't get twatted in the face, so the Barbarian doesn't block doorways and so everyone is able to get a chance to line up and punch something. The Wizard got equipped with a staff after the first quest, which allows him to attack diagonally, so that helped inform some tactics, and the Heroes have also determined that getting themselves some better equipment probably wouldn't be a terrible idea, either.

Lots of scope for growth, and the players enjoyed themselves enough to want to play it again! So with any luck, in a couple of weeks' time, it'll be hitting the table again and the campaign can continue.

I'm really very happy about this. I've been wanting to run a proper game of HeroQuest since I was, like, ten, and now I am. And I'm having fun! Sometimes you just need patience. And to buy the game multiple times in the intervening years.

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2184: Warhammer Quest Cards: A First Attempt

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Tried out Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game with three of my regular board gaming buddies for the first time this evening. We challenged the first quest, which challenges the party to make it through three random locations and a quest location before getting splattered across the nearest wall, and came pretty close to completing it, but were ultimately unsuccessful. Fortunately, the penalties for losing this first quest are relatively minor, though we do miss out on the potential to grab a Legendary item in the next quest as a result.

So how does the game play? Very well, as it happens; each of the four characters gradually start to show how distinctive they are as the game progresses, with each having a clear specialism which can be further developed through the campaign progression system after each quest. The Bright Wizard is particularly good at dealing area-of-effect damage, for example, though many of her abilities require her to take damage in order to have increased effects. The Waywatcher, meanwhile, is very good at exploring, while the Dwarf Ironbreaker is good at tanking enemies and attacking two (or, later, three) at once. The Warrior Priest, meanwhile, is the aid-bot of the group, with his Aid and Rest actions both being particularly strong and benefiting both him and the party: Aid, aside from its usual effect of potentially granting a party member bonus "free" successes on a subsequent action, also heals both the Warrior Priest and the target of his Aid, while his Rest action allows him to endow a party member with the Empowered condition, which is very useful indeed — it prevents an action from being exhausted on use, as well as providing a bonus automatic success and defence on top of any results rolled.

The quest starts relatively straightforward, but gradually escalates as you progress. We cleared the last random location in a somewhat bloodied fashion, which meant we weren't in a particularly good position to deal with the Nemesis Odious Grump in the final location, particularly as the Peril track had advanced to its final stage, granting him two bonus activations per turn on top of his usual attack. Somehow we reached a position where in the last couple of turns, two party members were dead, leaving the Waywatcher (my friend Tom) and the Warrior Priest (me) to soak up the incoming damage from a good seven or eight enemies, which, of course, wasn't going to happen at all.

I get the impression the different quests each reward a somewhat different approach. This first quest rewards a quick, efficient exploration process, for example; the quicker you can get through the locations, the fewer enfeebling effects you'll suffer and the less you'll have to deal with Odious Grump being a nuisance. It's all very well knowing that, mind, but it's not always easy to put into practice: the game's elegant mechanics of exhausting your actions as you use them but allowing you to refresh them through the use of your character's otherwise weakest ability makes for some interesting strategies, particularly when you contemplate how the different party members can interact with one another by, say, Aiding one another to refresh actions ahead of time, or using other actions to exhaust enemies or cause them to retreat, taking some of the pressure off comrades.

It's a really interesting game. The basic mechanics are very simple to understand, but the execution of a quest gives the game a surprising amount of depth that might not be immediately apparent. I'm very keen to see how the game progresses over the course of the complete five-quest campaign, and everyone in our group seemed to enjoy the experience, too. So I call that a win — particularly as it was eminently possible to get through a whole quest on a weeknight evening, which is more than can be said for more conventional board-based dungeon crawlers such as Descent: Journeys in the Dark or indeed the original Warhammer Quest.