So do I just say it to the camera? Hi! I'm... I'm Paul. I'm in the Vancouver area But I'm actually English and I'm looking for adventure. I spend most of my time making videos
on the internet and writing and... I like to cook Risotto get punched and look at animals The type of adventure I'm looking for is I guess something independent and, um... with lots of travel and maybe involving an animal like a dog or a cat or maybe a platypus that's... (phone beeps) - Huh? Looks like I've got a match (knocking on door) Sometimes a game comes out that surprises you it blows you out of the water
with its exuberance and its excellence Sometimes a game comes out
that you knew was going to be bad And you saw it coming being bad and then it arrives and it's bad and you feel kind of quite justified and then sometimes you cannot wait
for a game to come out and you're excited about that game and that is the case for me with Near and Far which I was really pumped to try more than a year ago now when I first saw it announced on Kickstarter As you might know, Shut Up and Sit Down
very rarely reviews Kickstarter titles. Because it's kind of pointless. The whole model of Kickstarter means that
all of those copies of that game have already been pre-bought before the game is actually released in its final form making reviews wonderfully irrelevant However more and more Kickstarter titles like Near and Far are getting reprints or distribution deals or general release which is great for everybody because if it turns out when those games come out they're rather good. then more of us can enjoy them! I'm just making a mess. Near and Far is of particular interest to me because I've been following its creator Ryan Laukat - if I'm saying that rightly - for a while now and I've really enjoyed two of his previous games. He's one of those rare breeds of people who's both good at game design and good at game art doing both of them very capably and on our site you can read written reviews of Eight-Minute Empire and Above and Below both of which we were quite effusive about and the latter of which is the predecessor of this So you can understand how this has piqued my interest And right out of the box I am immediately excited about all of the potential here First of all, like Seafall and Pandemic Legacy Near and Far is a game that actually has a campaign that runs through it. Something you will play across multiple sessions if you want to because it doesn't demand
the same level of commitment It's not as big a deal in this game as it is in those peers it's more of a light dusting on top of something that you can actually play as a whole bunch of standalone sessions if you like. Because this board... This! Look at - look at... What's this? This isn't a board. This is actually a book of
a whole bunch of different maps that you could play instead if you wish to and hidden just out of shot is this whole book full of hundreds and hundreds of quests, encounters and vignettes just waiting to be... encountered and vignetted and discovered and explored as you crawl your way across all of this There is a lot to find here And you won't find it all quickly. And everything is pretty as well awash with this whistful, wonderful sort of warm-hearted vision of the world that Laukat has All these wonderful different adventurers waiting to go and have wonderful different adventures, but adventures that are never too dangerous either and while you will encounter things from bandits to gigantic underground tunnel complexes to huge robots nothing will ever get too nasty. However you're playing whether it's a standalone adventure, or if you're continuing a campaign and by the way I'm going to keep this review
very low spoiler you will always start the same way which is in a town roughly at the center of the map where you are rushing about
gathering supplies for your journey trying not to bump into one another because this is a kind of a rudimentary
worker placement game you might be trying to grab a pack animal
to put treasures on or you might be headed over to the saloon to recruit more adventurers that make you better at everything: exploring, fighting, challenges you might just want some food from the farm whatever you want apart from the Saloon, each space can
only take one person at a time. It's first-come, first-served a sort of constant race or merry-go-round or carousel of trying to grab what you want so you can get out the front door get out of front gate as soon as possible however if you do find the spot is occupied and you really really want what's there... you can be kind of a jerk about things. So here's the first of several
slightly odd rules in the game If you really really want to be somewhere where somebody else is you can duel them for that spot. Which is basically some opposed die rolls and adding your combat values if you also want to fight dirty which will lower your reputation you get another bonus, and if you have any spare stamina hearts left you can further boost your die roll If you succeed you won the duel which means you... just get to be in the shop with them Well done. If you lose you're a bad person you go to prison for duelling and the next turn, when you come out you can go wherever you like including a spot that's already occupied. So it's basically a mechanic that's like do you want to risk rolling a die to be delayed for a turn to get to do what you want to immediately rather than go somewhere and not kick up a ruckus. I could have explained that more concisely. Look the point... The thing I'm trying to explain is, it's, er...
a very undramatic duel possibly the least dramatic duel in history because the other player by the way, just does... does nothing. If you... If they beat you er... nothing happens If you beat them and you're now in the shop with them nothing happens As well as racing about town you are also racing to just get out there in the world and stick pins into the map. It's very very tempting to think: ooh, I could spend another turn in town I could grab another party member again or now that I have a really skillful party I can go back to the farm and get even more food But that's treacherous because someone else is Inevitably already rushing out the front gates and even if they don't seem as prepared as you they're in the world and they're claiming things the world is seeded with these one time story tokens these unique encounters that only one of you will ever experience
when you go to that place. It's also full of... of... coins and gems There are bandits hiding round corners waiting to fight you there's trade routes that you can set up and as you move through the world just like you do when you're camping you poop out little tents behind you to claim spots, and once a spot's claimed, that's it. That's done. That belongs to that person forever Dropping, emitting, ejecting, releasing tents is always a good idea You drop tents on bandit cards whenever you've defeated someone. You claim that. You keep that. You drop them in town whenever you mine resources - more on that in a moment - and, as I say, you drop them on this map claiming your territory and scoring points for these. I n addition, when they come off your player board they sometimes reveal an extra secret bonus and the person who uses all of their tents first ends the game, but also almost inevitably tends to win the game too. So I keep talking about resources, right, how you're constantly dredging them up as you move from space to space across the map, how you dive into this town mine, and you get more gems and more gold And that's cool, right? I mean you need gold to hire adventurers and surplus resources are worth
points at the end of the game But that's not really the point of them and so here's another rather unusual thing
about Near and Far You start the game drafting all of these cards between each other, and they're all unique items that do a special thing. They're all exciting and sexy and one-of-a-kind and I like all of them But none of them work when you start with them They are all nothing more than deadweight and in order to activate them as you probably guessed you have to pay the price along the side and then they're worth however many points they're worth at the end of the game If not, they're actually a victory point penalty these are ten a penny in town, and you can just grab handfuls of them but until you can pay the price to get them working they are inert, and they are just penalizing you and so here's the other thing: they're all useful, I like that they exist, but they're actually not as victory point efficient as just constantly pitching tents as fast as possible you want these because they're cooler, but you should just be doing these because it's faster Speaking of white elephant type things there's also the game's treasure cards which you can sometimes acquire on your travels but they're also given out like candy in town and like candy, they're not necessarily very good for you. First of all they require a pack animal for you to carry them which is already an investment of some resources and time and then second, when you get them, they're not actually necessarily very useful There's all kinds of different things you can find but they're kind of context-specific and if they don't help you they just don't help you and they aren't exciting and they aren't worth getting and they're probably like the
least dramatic element of the game and if treasure should be anything it should be dramatic and exciting, right? And I haven't even got to the adventure book yet, all of the encounters in the game, And so here's the rub. Here's the rubbiest of rubs. Here's the rubbiest rub in all of review rubbing ever. Yeah, there's loads of stuff in here the encounters are... they're great! Alright, they're frequently like good Some are better written than others some are more interesting than others but there are recurring characters that reappear there are keywords that you become associated with while you do something And then a later event pops up again that might be relevant just to you There are side quests. There are your characters' own personal quests. There are all sorts of things to be found from cave complexes to weird fields of meteors to strange strange characters and... it's cool. It's great. I love that it's there. Most of it boils down to making
pretty simple choices though a lot of it is skill or combat checks that are just die rolls that you add your party values to and then if you fail You can just sort of burn your heart tokens
to succeed anyway. which is kind of anticlimactic and then you come away with probably a few more resources or one of those treasures that you might not be able to fit on your pack bird because it already has another treasure Or just something that's not very helpful. I thought adventures were going to be like the beating heart of this enormous exciting beast whereas instead, they're kind of the docked wagging tail of a small dog. I really like them I'm glad that they're here I think it's really really entertaining to read these out to each other and to see what happens But they're not relevant to actually being a successful adventurer. All of this means that your life is much less about assembling an eclectic party or finding life-changing treasures or having exciting encounters in the middle of the wilderness than it is just about accurately managing your energy levels and trying to make sure that you don't get too tired And then that you do go home when you're sleepy And you're doing all of this rushing past one another exchanging jealous glances and angrily coveting the things that other people have already claimed because there's very very few ways you can actually affect what anybody else does There's very little interaction and as you read more and more paragraphs from this book you start to realize This reading to one another - that's actually really the only thing you're doing together Though I started to find it more mechanical than magical though, I don't think it's good enough
to get our seal of approval I still enjoyed this a lot I still thought it was a good game and clearly I still wanted to make a video about it It's still charming. It still looks gorgeous. And I really appreciate the fact that it has so much in it that it has its campaign mode that it has an arcade way of playing that won't actually spoil anything in the book that it has so many different things to be discovered and that it will still find times where it makes you laugh or it makes you feel joyous or where you share a moment with your friends that is kind of spectacular and silly I've had a really good time with Near and Far but I'm also ready to move on to something else, and it will never hold much more than a small space in my heart We did have a good time together and nevertheless it has a lot of love to give. It may be the game for you. But if you are also not convinced don't worry you can find many many more wonderful board games on our board game dating website shutupandsitdown.com Many games just waiting for a loving home waiting for the right person to appreciate what they have to offer
Thought the review was spot on to be honest. It paints the idea that there is so much to like in this game but that the overall design doesn't flow as much as you would like. Paul pretty much sums up my distaste for Ryan Laukat games; on paper they are amazing and I always end up wishing their execution followed through. The duel mechanic for instance is such an underbaked mechanic.... I digress, SU&SD continue to offer sound buying guides.
In my experience the quests are way more important than Paul is giving them credit for. Quests give you faction tokens and reputation. Both of which are required to buy artifacts, another downplayed aspect of the game in this review. I have played several games where the person who completed their tents first did not win. It was the artifacts that pushed them over.
I think people play this game, find a strategy, and think it is solved but it really isn't.
I love this game.
A shame Paul doesn't love it because oh my god I do. Played it twice in a row today because everyone was just having so much fun. Do you know how rare it is to want to play a 90 minute game back to back? We would have gone a third time if I didn't have to go to work!
The game looks as beautiful as expected. He didn't really get much into how rewarding the campaign mode was or it developing the characters from game to game was satisfying. Generally, I get the impression that the success of Near and Far relies on getting sucked into the world and the adventures, and for Paul this clearly failed. Overall, I am left feeling slightly better about selling my KS copy of the game still in shrink (I simply neither had the group nor the time for it right now).
It's a really fantastic game. Quaint, adventurous, and whimsical. A real joy to play and behold. The main reasons I play games, and have been for decades, are the worlds they build and how they get my imagination going with emergent stories, and Near and Far is excellent for this. It has the same simple elegance of a Studio Ghibli film. It's a shame the last couple of reviews from popular youtubers have been less than positive. I think they're missing the mark.
My experience with Near and Far is exactly what Paul describes. It's gorgeous (and charming!) and it's not a bad game. I had a fun time playing it. But I also had no real need to own it or play it again. Of course, I only played one standalone game, so perhaps the campaign would add that thing that seemed to be missing. I also only played it once, so perhaps it needs a few more plays. I do think it's amazing what Ryan Laukat has been able to do, given that he did all this himself. I hope he keeps making games.
Played it with my gaming group last week. I think the review was pretty spot on. It was OK, but nothing ever happens that makes the game very exciting. It's just a lot of going back to town to scrape up some resources to go back out and get a few more resources on the map while shedding tents (building camps). The quests are, meh. One player got his engine up faster than others and was just able to do everything he wanted without any risk, ended the game quickly and was way out in front of everyone in points. I don't think there is enough there to want me to play it over and over in campaign mode. It is a beautifully produced game, but isn't that one of the things that is becoming a problem with Kickstarter? High on production value to entice wallets to open up for a game that no one has really played yet?
I guess my wife and I are one of the few who are disappointed by this game. I love the stories but they don't mean much and everything else just seems so "meh".
So far we are only two maps into the campaign but we haven't found it very thrilling. Usually just mine or place tents to get lots of money to buy companions that give lots of hearts so that I can fight, place tents or do quests while spending hearts to allow me to pass.
We haven't touched the game in a few weeks now and as much as I want to keep playing it, I look at the box and just seem to let out a sigh..... then find something else to play that's more fun.
What a terrific premise for a game, though it seems like the mechanics and balance didn't quite hit the target.
What if you had something similar where there was something to do in the town, but collaborative? Like some big effort that you could pursue towards victory (points) but then some people would have to travel outside the town for supplies/whatever? You could have those encounters in and out of the town, where those inside the town build up the overall feel/attachment to the little village that slowly grows and develops as your characters play over the course of the campaign.
I would be all over that.