[Note: This is not a full review and is based purely on my experiences playing the game, reading the rulebook, and talking to the Mighty Boards team at UK Games Expo. Full review coming soon!]
My goal at this year’s UK Games Expo was to look for games that reduced setup time and streamlined rules while maintaining excitement, fun, and depth; there were a lot of incredible titles that fit the bill. Yet, these are not qualities often associated with big box, cooperative, narrative adventure games. Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan met all these criteria and still blew me away. This is why it is my UK Games Expo Game of the Show.
Having played seemingly similar titles, like Descent or Bardsung, I know all too well the pitfalls these types of games can fall into. Fateforge avoids almost all of them. Everything is designed from the beginning to be clear, quick to understand, and easy to follow on the tabletop. Put simply, the game just works.
Take the player boards for example. Each one marks out a space for abilities and gear, as well as your characters permanent special ability. Then there is a section for your toughness and your energy counters to be and a place to go when spent. It is clean and clear. You can always see what is at your disposal, what you can do, and what you have to do it with. Yet, there is never too much on the tabletop. Even with a party of four, the amount of things on the table is never overwhelming. It just works.
Player characters get a wonderfully detailed miniature to move around the board but enemies are marked by double-sided tokens featuring their artwork and a number. I love painting miniatures, so at first this would seem a step down from other titles, but it is in fact the opposite. Like pretty much everything in this game, there’s a real clear reason for the choice. Simply put, it helps the game setup and helps the flow of the game. It is easy to see what enemies there are, what special rules apply to them, and what their priority order is when it comes to their turn. It just works. There will be a set of Boss miniatures released for those that want to add that extra gravitas to climactic encounters.
What this means is that each turn has an impact on the game and, in turn, makes you feel awesome. Knowing which enemies to aim for first, and which ones will threaten you the most, means you can make every turn you play count. Having clean, visual information, that is easy to see and understand, means anybody playing Fateforge can very quickly get a grasp of how to best use their character and rolls. It just works.
The gameplay of Fateforge itself follows this design philosophy. Dice rolls show exactly what each one allows you to do. A sword means a melee hit, arrow ranged, special abiltiies icon means special ability, and so on. Dice rolls aren’t converted into a statistic on a graph. Enemies don’t roll to dodge or make you miss. If you roll a hit, you hit. It makes combat fun, fast, and fantastic. It just works.
You can choose to spend dice to use your special abilities by matching the dice you roll to the symbols on the ability cards. It’s that simple. No messing about. If I have the symbols on my dice to use an ability, I use it. Anybody sitting down to play Fateforge can play it and understand it in five minutes. It is genuinely a design masterclass. It just works.
Enemies are broken down into types and each type has a card with their turn actions on it. Going from left to right, they do the first thing they are able to do according to their options. For example, a Grunt’s only option is to melee somebody on their tile. Nobody there? They do nothing. Dogs, however, will move to neighbouring tiles if nobody is on there’s. This is all shown using clear visual flow charts on the card. It just works.
Special rules are also printed on cards in Fateforge and linked to token colour. Red tokens are Frontliners meaning they will take any ranged damage fired into their tile first. Turquoise tokens are Blockers; you can’t leave a tile they are on until you defeat them. All the information is there for you to see, is easy to understand, yet actually adds depth. Knowing when best to use ranged attacks, or when to hold off entering a new tile for example, forces you to adapt your strategy for best effect. It just works.
The setup, running of combat, and the role of storyteller and gamemaster is filled by a very impressive free app. While some may prefer a printed rulebook, the app is actually an incredibly elegant solution to many problems these types of games face. Also, who doesn’t have a smart phone or tablet these days? Needing an app isn’t the barrier it used to be.
The app actually tells you exactly what you need to be doing at each phase in a combat encounter, and actually makes the enemies react to what you are doing. It does feel as though somebody is running the enemies against you. They aren’t passive participants for your target practice. This alone made Fateforge stand out for me at UK Games Expo – it just ran different than others I have played in the genre.
The app also monitors and records what loot you find in each encounter, handled simply by pressing on the loot you have found on the screen, your health and energy levels, and your party resources. All is stored in the app. I was shown how you can play a session (which shouldn’t take longer than an hour which is incredible) come back two weeks later when your friends are available, and not have to remember everything. The app will tell you.
The Fateforge app seemingly does a great job of creating an engaging narrative too. You will have to decide, as a party, how to respond to NPC events. Should you trust this person with information or not? However, where it really impresses, is how it tracks whether you meet objectives during encounters. Fail to rescue somebody, that will change the narrative down the line. Don’t escape the area in the amount of turns given? That could mean something changes later in your campaign. The storyline reacts to what you choose to do, how you fail, as well as when you succeed. It feels more akin to a tabletop RPG in that way, without all the deep commitment those require. Oh, and it has background music and combat music built-in!
The truth is this – at UK Games Expo I was blown away by Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan. With a selection of strangers, I had an incredibly fun session that we were pretty much able to run ourselves (with helpful oversight of course) thanks to simply fantastic game design. Everything makes sense, everything is easy to understand, yet it never felt simple. Fateforge simply takes away the blockages to enjoyment. With a solo mode and a battle-focused mode in the rulebook (I didn’t get to play those modes at the Expo) and an expansion ready to go, there’s a lot of enjoyment to have.
While this is by no means a full review, that will come later and after much more playtime at home, these were my experiences during an hour at the table with Mighty Boards. Within an hour, I understood everything I needed to play Fateforge. Within ten minutes, I knew this game should be on everyone’s watchlist once it launches. I cannot wait to play more of it.
Within ten minutes, I knew this game should be on everyone’s watchlist once it launches
Hopefully, you now understand why Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan was my UK Games Expo Game of the Show.
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