Forgotten Waters Review - The Best Pirate Game

[Music] what's up board games it's your boy efka and i had a shania twain song stuck in my head for the last two months and let me tell you that don't impress me much another thing that don't impress me much narrative driven games with the storybooks and reams of text and lots and lots of dice rolling that's frequently antithetical to the experience oh don't get me wrong me and narrative board games we spent many a wistful summer frolicking in the fields and watching the sunset and whispering wishes upon falling stars but those weren't falling stars they were big burning meteorites of clunky mechanisms poor storytelling and unsatisfying writing painful meteorites that's as far as i can carry this analogy so imagine my delight when i hesitatingly opened forgotten waters and all i found inside was fun laughter good times and fun did i mention fun this isn't fun this is just a flashlight in forgotten waters you'll take on the role of a pirate a naughty nautical and set off on a grand sea adventure in pursuit of whatever ridiculous goal you've been given on your character sheet some of these are really weird assassin pirate sure grifter pirate yeah i get that debater pirate okay that's a little bit thespian pirate now you just oh come on there's no such thing as a safety pirate this is ludicrous stop that what is a colony pirate even supposed to be and those forgotten waters turns the silly dial all the way to 11 from the get-go and as things continue it just keeps smashing it moments after choosing a character sheet you'll find yourself unable to suppress a smile because not only are you asked to fill in mad libs to personalize your backstory but you'll quickly realize your friend's choices are equally ridiculous whimsical and will turn the most cynical amongst you into a laughing crying mess for golden waters is a cooperative game following plaid hat's crossroads game series massively popularized by dead of winter and tarnished by the lackluster sequel gen 7. saying that it does retain a sprinkling of the previous entries semi-cooperative nature whilst you lose together and thus work together and succeed together you'll each get a different outcome based on how many stars you manage to color in in the constellation on your character sheet each of your pirates will also be assigned a role on the ship so you could be the bosun the first mate the ship's scribe etc you could even be assigned multiple of these and likely will if you're not playing with the full complement of seven players is that right seven players who has is there something wrong with me who cares about ship duties that stuff is for champs or chimps if you could afford to start your ship with chimps thankfully this role simply means you'll be in charge of tracking a relative statistic for example the first mate will track the cruise stat if your ship loses some crew the first mate will move the token down simple the rest of your time will be spent on adventures in a glorious ring bound tome of sandy beaches stormy seas and forgotten waters this is how it works when you start the game you will select one of the five included scenarios the scenario will then tell you how to set up this map so that it instead looks something like this then you'll get a narrative introduction read to you by the app a place full of honorable merfolk powerful witches towering monsters and legendary i feel awkward making this stop right now stretched it goes on for so long it's gonna then it'll ask you to turn to a page in this book and that's where the real joy begins and by joy i of course mean a second timer as soon as this timer kicks off each player in infamy order will have to place their pirate figure on one of the action spaces in the book here's a problem you have no idea what any of these do but first things first i'd like to address people in the board gaming sphere with a condition known as timophobia this this is of no consequence in all of the games that i've played so far each featuring a multitude of timed rounds not once did we actually run out of time because the goal of the timer isn't to frustrate you instead forgotten waters hopes that whilst you're busy deciding whether this thematically you want to swap the deck or deck the squab you won't peek behind the sail and see what these actions do mechanically why good question first let's look at an example of a standard action let's say i'm trying to steer the ship some actions have a chance of failure and require a skill check normally you would first get a permanent boost towards the relevant skill coloring it in in your character sheet if the space you colored in had a star you also get to color one of those in your constellation in this case because i was steering the ship i would get to upgrade my navigation stat and then roll a die and add my navigation skill to the result and that's it sure there's some extra rules like reroll tokens which will let you reroll or die or misfortune tokens which will make you roll the die twice and use the worst result and then this treasure that will give you a permanent boost to relevant stats will give you a unique ability but that's all the rules you need to know to start playing which might make you wonder just how mechanically robust is this system to which i say stop it stop wondering the one thing that forgotten waters does very well is finally reconcile the fact that the ethos of plant hat's storytelling based games frequently try to fit too much into a package that can't really support it this was particularly evident in gen 7 where in the latter stages of the campaign narrative wise you were having space fights with lasers but mechanically you were reorganizing your warehouse so yes mechanically forgotten waters is as light as a feather and thank god it is i mean you know me you know i like my crunchy systems but if you ever watched anyone stream a board game including our own streams on twitch.tv and open included you'll know just how um piratey it all feels we're used to board games that want us to consider maps and find the smart path but that's just not what a swashbuckler does a swashbuckler mounts a cannonball and rides it as a propellant towards the next ship the moment they stop to consider the probability of failure they stop being a pirate and start being a eurogamer here your inner c3po isn't given a chance to pipe up and seize you with indecision and your reward is always a delightful surprise frequently outcomes of your chosen action will give you a resource or maybe even a treasure or if you're really lucky you'll get to read passage something something something and these are zany laugh out loud funny and most importantly unpredictable i've played this game to death and every time i'm meant to read a passage i still have no idea what to expect to make this featherweight framework work a game needs a robust foundation of good writing and obviously good writing is a subjective term i think forgotten waters has some of the best writing in any board game made so far but that's just my opinion and opinions aren't very good at conveying emotional resonance so i had elaine make me a forgotten waters mood board the problem is i forgot to ask her what any of this is meant to be i think this is pirate karl marx and that's so i let's just move away i guess what i'm trying to say is that every ounce of text has been injected with wit whimsy brightness and bravado the writing in forgotten waters is a weightless anchor that lets the ship charge full wind ahead which makes it feel effortless which of course means that to make it feel effortless a lot of effort went into making it feel effortless and i've now successfully confused myself but afka i hear you say the last thing i need in my life right now is steve's post-free pint attempt at doing that voice his efforts are less likely to make me feel pirate and more likely to make me feel pirate don't worry even here plaid hat has you covered because in a genuinely rare move for board games there's voice over narration for everything the narration itself 12 out of 10 every pirate cliche loaded into the app from fake irish to fake scottish to everyone's favorite fake english cool blimey governor line after line the voice acting is guaranteed to make people all over the world delighted and people in the british isles moan with misery which is a win-win for everybody i want to be very careful here because i think all the people who put their voices into this game did a fantastic job and the narration itself is a beautiful addition i hope other publishers take notice and use it as an example of how to do it right but i do have one point of criticism and has to do with the narration editing frequently the cuts were so precise and so sharp that it felt less like i'm listening to a cohesive narrative and more like i'm listening to a cassette boy collage and that's a problem when you're trying to get immersed and have add and this attention to detail isn't just evident through the once again very impressive narration struggling to come up with a pirate name don't worry at the back of this rulebook there's an included pirate named generator that has so far failed at not producing the best pirate name every time i've rolled the dice in a very first game elaine didn't just roll a character called mcmuffins to chased but her first narrative encounter immediately put mcmuffins the chaste into a salacious tryst which inevitably reduced her character's name to just mcmuffins the madonna of the pirate world i would also be remiss not to mention some of the best flavor text on cards i've seen i don't care how many times i draw this same card and read the same joke it's still funny it's funny cause it's true but my favorite bit is the mad libs it's such a minor addition but it speaks volumes about plaid hats understanding of what's just not fun about story games and what is i hate reading text in board games because it's never good but here i get to personalize the text myself so of course i'm going to write in jeff kornberg when the game asks me to come up with a dumb name and now i'm actually looking forward to reading the rest of this story text what sorcery is this now let me tell you how much forgotten what this costs which is 45 pounds which is an unbelievably generous price point considering there's five scenarios inside which played at a fair pace gives you about 10 play sessions now let's assume that unlike me you have six friends which brings you to a price per person per game cost of 45 divided by 10 is 4.5 further divide that by seven and you get 0.642 which of course means we have to create a share we must consider the probability of yeah seven steven's two divided 72 australian dollars and 57 cents i should have stopped at 0.64 told you i have atd which means that no matter what i say for the rest of this video forgotten waters deserves an undeniable recommendation but i cannot stop myself from now telling you that somehow in this nearly prophetic sublime design vision plan had games managed to snatch defeat out of the jewels of victory i will 100 vouch for the play experience in the first two forgotten water scenarios i mean sure this game isn't perfect and mechanically i glossed over a lot of criticism because criticizing this game mechanically is sort of missing the point a fact that i'm sure some viewers will lambast this video for although i suspect they're the same type of people who say things like it's not a game it's an activity but what strikes me as ultimately misguided in this box is plaid hats approach to difficulty and how they implement it let's get something out of the way first i have no bias towards games being easy or being hard i think difficulty is just another tool in game design and if used right it can make a game much better if a game experience can benefit from repetition by reinforcing mastery that's a thing a lot of people enjoy but i can't help but feel like the designers of forgotten waters just went well it's scenario free so the ancient bylaws of board game design dictate that we must make it harder that's my payback for the fake english which of course in a game system mostly governed by rolling a die and seeing if you get the thing translates into tedious unfairness and you mostly not getting the thing this notion pervades through all scenarios but at least in scenarios one and two it happens towards the end which is a fine and natural conclusion in scenario 3 however there's all the chance that you'll get shafted right at the beginning which is tedious when it happens because it's long and protracted and it's tedious after it's done because if you did manage to survive you'll be so battered you might as well change your pirate name to chip shop sausage and now it's time for the kovit 19 disclaimer hooray playing with one other person is a luxury actually some of us can't even afford and playing with six other people so why would you buy this game right now when the minimum player count is free here's what plant had comes through in every way imaginable not only did they develop a two player and a solo variant that in some instances actually works better than the normal game but they also created a remote play system that is the next best thing to how we used to play games in what by now feels like 2012. it's not even that complicated all you have to do is set up a zoom meeting where you share your webcam but then also screen share the app itself so other people can hear the narration and then call in into your own zoom meeting with your phone not your computer so that your phone's camera could be pointed at the map so people can see the changes that are happening on it and then have another web page open where you actually play the game like i said simple here is where i admit that i've only played three of the five scenarios including in this box normally i like to get an idea of most things that a game has to offer but this time i couldn't bring myself to play more partly because scenario 3 was a bit of a letdown but mostly because i wanted to save something for myself i've been enjoying forgotten waters so much that i would have loved to see it finish as i rushed through the games scenarios just for the sake of completeness and if that's not a recommendation i don't know what is this video was sponsored by skillshare the website with thousands of tutorials by industry professionals on almost any subject imaginable for less than ten dollars a month you can gain access to some of the best advice no matter your interests in an effort to make my living space a little bit brighter i decided to learn about houseplants by watching happy houseplants by botanist chris sach chris instructed me to start off with just one house plan naturally i took his advice to heart i think one of them's trying to eat me please send help i found videos on everything from dog training busy do an impression of french stuart it's not exactly working is it to board game design including from industry professionals whose names i've recognized best of all the first 1000 of you to click the link in the description will get a two-month free premium membership so you can explore your creativity and your houseplants finally nope included would absolutely not be possible without the support of our patreon backers who've gone beyond the call of duty and helped us reach our goal of being sustainable thank you so much to patrons like michael j lewis who make this thing float if you would also like to contribute to some of the best board game media in the world we would really appreciate it our next goal is to move an open included into a studio and with your support we can make that happen thanks again bye

Channel: No Pun Included

Views: 48,551

Keywords: no pun included, board game, review, npi, boardgames, boardgamegeeks, brettspiel, brettspiele, jeuxdesociete, tabletop, games, juego de mesa, gamenight, forgotten waters, crossroads game, plaid hat, crossroads system, isaac vega, 2020

Id: clHhsLthJsE

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Boardgaminglurker]

Great review. I was tempted to buy this to play as a family game (which the story telling focus seems perfect for), but I have heard that the writing is a little zesty for a seven year old. But I suspect I'll pick it up in a few years.

[u/MintyMousey]

Great review. I genuinely think this game is one of the best gateway games out there after only a couple play throughs. Storytelling and pirates are so universal, and this game does both so wonderfully... whenever a friend of mine realized the full genius of this a hilarious mad-lib cooperative pirate romp, their eyes would light up. This one is a staple at £45.

My one complaint is that the story can kind of grind to a halt right before the climax as you and your friends stall, sailing around open ocean trying to make sure everyone gets their final constellation points so they get their good ending.... which is fine, but I just wish it kept up the pace somehow.

[u/amalgam_reynolds]

I feel like I still have no clue what the game actually plays like.

[u/Snuckems91]

The game is very easy to learn once you understand the flow of a round. The problem is, I don't think the rulebook really provides enough information about how the flow of a round goes. I thought it was nice how short the rulebook was...but then tried playing a round and found it nearly impossible. I wish I had watched a video that goes through the flow of a round, would have saved us some struggle. Great game though.

[u/rob132]

Better than Seafall? I can't believe it.

[u/Notfaye]

I think the 1-2 player modes were a little under developed vs higher player counts, and the game was extremely long for what it was with lots of repetitive game play loops.

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But the writing and voice acting was fantastic, I genuinely laughed out loud a bunch, and if you can get it cheap and like story telling games, it may be the best one ever created.

[u/Jeffreedisme]

It really is great.

[u/DharmaLeader]

I wish there were avenues for these types of games to exist outside the anglophone world. You just can't enjoy these unless localised. Which in most countries is not economically feasible.

[u/AimeeoftheHunt]

Great review!! My family (teens and adults) loves this game. Like you said that it is pirate storytelling silliness. We love fighting the monsters. We have loved most of Plaid Hat games.