I've played this with a physical copy, and I've played it on BGA (in real-time, over Skype). I've played it solo, and I've played it 3/4P. I *greatly* prefer playing a physical copy with 3 other players. I play at a small club (15 regulars) and every time we've played my copy the other players have immediately wanted to play again, something that rarely happens at the club. There are two additional copies at the club now, bought because people went away from playing with my copy and ordered themselves a copy. Yes, the game is swingy and has limited player interaction, but I think that's part of the point of the game: it has a socio-political point to make about the constraints on cooperation between power blocks as they try to address a global issue. The game repeatedly points out just how fragile the current environment of co-opertition is: power block A wants every other power block to reduce their emissions in a way that commercially/politically benefits power block A. Almost everyone that I've played the game with has enjoyed this aspect of the game and the very thematic way that the cards tell an emergent story - if you bother to read the card and think about the theme, rather than just looking at tags and effects. Despite the swinginess, I have found that the probability of success increases with repeat plays (I have played a number of games over the years where I have felt that win/loss was entirely down to card draws, only to realise that it was - at least in part - a skill-level issue, Daybreak seems to be one of those games). When I saw this had been nominated for the Kenner, I "knew" it would win. It fits very well with the market for which it was being assessed (Germany, family gamers who have moved on a little). I also agree that it was worth the win. Were there "better" games nominated? I don't know, the only one I've played is Forest Shuffle and I hated that game with a passion. Were there games that more deserved the win *against the criteria used for assessment*? By definition, no. Personally, I think it deserved the recognition. Perhaps scaling up to the predicted 100 000 copies that a SdJ winner can expect (I don't know how this scales for KSdJ) will reduce the costs. As to the "eco-friendly should be a synonym for cheap" viewpoint: have you bought a "fully ecofriendly/ethical" chicken recently? Or any organic fruit/veg? In a way this is almost part of the "meta" of the game itself 😄
Was a bit confused when you said at one point 'Yes its Eco friendly but its not cheap to conpensate". Why would you assume that eco friendly components would be cheaper than non eco friendly? The marketing fluff for the game game mentions what they mean by sustainable "Our wood and paper components will be FSC certified, meaning that they will come from responsibly managed forests that provide environmental, social and economic benefit. And will be harvested in such a way to guarantee they will grow back."
Because the components are cheap garbage, as demonstrated in the video. No amount of theme or gimmick (like eco-friendly) can overcome poor design and bad mechanics.
@@SmackMule ...well that's lucky, as the components are the opposite of that. You seem like you're describing your own home printed version of Monopoly!
@@TheBrokenMeeple Yes, they should perform an economic miracle of producing components in a more expensive way, but cheaper. And after that they should solve world hunger, and the Gaza crisis before teatime! SMH! Eco-friendly is a good thing, a good quality we should aspire to want, like breathable air, or drinkable water. So why do you have to compensate for this quality, with a cheaper price? I've never heard anyone say "That BMW has such a smooth engine and is so comfortable, if only they'd compensate for that with a cheaper price!" The OP was right, make it make sense!
@@tmcd5049 if people aren't interested, they're not interested. Personal attacks and insisting that they should because you do so much isn't going to change anything so go chill out.
I’ve played this game 30+ times on BGA and love it. Sorry to hear about production issues I don’t mind the swinginess because my friends and I plow through games in ~10 minutes. If we lose due to luck, we just run it back. I like your house rule of always being able to pass a card, would certainly add to cooperation
I bought it as a preorder. Things I like. The solo is straightforward. The rule book is pretty clear. The graphic design appeals to me ( you can easily see what's what). I like the mechanisms with the card play. So far I've found decent interaction with other players in discussing the best way to make use of cards, providing cards, assisting with resilience and communities in crisis. I'm a euro gamer anyway so massive direct interaction isn't a thing for me. The rules are such that if you haven't played for awhile it's not going to take long to pick up again. I like the use of qr codes to provide greater information (not interested in the background info personally, but I'm not in any game regardless of theme). It also means the guide to the card can easily be amended if faqs crop up. The implementation of theme and game play I find nicely integrated. Production quality is good. The components are very nice. Dual layer boards with the thicker cardstock for tiles etc is good in the hand. The complexity is a bit higher than pandemic so I'd say not necessarily beginner friendly (yes, I know there are exceptions) and there's definitely the potential for the AP hammer to turn up. I like the asymetry. I like that the games are going to go differently depending on card draws. Winning doesn't feel climactic (the same I've found with pandemic). On the normal setting I haven't gone beyond turn 4 for a win, but you can add difficulty with the additional cards. I haven't tried these yet. The board is a bit bigger than I feel it needed to be and with all the card stacks each player is going to make it's more of a table hog than necessary. Some of the cards don't feel as useful as others (the eco engineering ones particularly ) but as youre almost going to need to discard cards there's some mitigation. It's not going to be a game I pull off the shelf every week but if you've played it once with a group it's not going to be a difficulty to bring it to the table again. It's a decent game. It might have some use in education too to trigger discussion around the subject area but that's secondary (it's a game not a SIM after all). So, yeah, it's sitting with Pandemic and Thunderbirds as another decent co op even if it's not going to change the world
Really enjoyed this review. You nailed the core mechanism being something fun that you are engaged with but that it is defined by luck of card draw. Only played solo on BGA but that was my experience. Few quick plays was fun but no depth there to return to the game. Great point about fluctuating win times. Round 2-6 being the winning post is quite odd.
Ah that's too bad. I'm a sucker for co-op games and hearing its solitare disappointed me. It was nearly an instant buy for me. Glad I waited for your review.
I had been looking forward to this one due to the theme, but your critiques seem pretty valid. I'm especially disappointed about the lack of player interaction, especially given the thesis (I would assume) behind the game being that global geopolitical groups need to work together to make progress on this problem. No player interaction doesn't seem to match that vision very well at all. Thanks for the detailed thoughts.
Great review Luke! Same problem I have with Pandemic - very uneven experience from game to game. As contrasted with Robinson Crusoe, which is always a struggle but every game I feel is a nail-biter to the end. And I also appreciate your discussion of game cost and value for money. Thx!
I recently played this as a four-player game, and it really didn't appeal to me in the end. I also found it quite swingy, but others seemed okay with it. To each their own; I am glad I had a chance to experience it, but I don't need to play it again.
My friend and I played this a couple dozen times on BGA. We lost the first round (because we never read the rules), won the second round, and went straight to the highest difficulty. China, Third World, Challenge card for each and a group challenge. And we lost a couple times until we could win more consistently. There is skill involved. But sometimes you just don't do anything and you know on turn one, that you will not win this game. We still played this a couple dozen times, because there is not a lot of cooperative games on BGA and we liked that aspect for when we wanted something more relaxed. For 15 mins per game it's definitely decent to play. No set-up or take-down - just the fun. But it has many weaknesses: The crisis cards - we always ignore them. Most of the time you don't have the right cards to build resistance anyway, so why bother. The feedback loop effects - we ignore them. Again, you can't do anything against it - and even if you could, they are so minor. The group project cards - we ignore most of them - except for the 3 or so, that are absolutely broken. Like the one that allows you to get rid of all the bad energy at once. Usually the game comes down to one thing: Getting 4 energy with one card on turn 1 or 2. If you don't, you will always spend two cards per turn on energy and basically only play half the game. But similarly to the group projects, some cards are basically never worth playing. Also some challenges are much harder (impossible) than others. Sometimes they combine to an instant loss with the group challenge (which is not that bad in a on table game, where you can just get a new one, but on BGA you always have to restart the game). The card engine is cool, everything else is just fluff to make it work. About the education effect: What I mainly get from the game is one special crisis card: You cannot counter it with resistance, it might just hit you without counter play and move 3 crisis tokens from the person with less to the person with more. The card is called Migration. It's literally the most disgusting thing in the game. From a real world perspective, I don't think that's what the authors wanted to teach us ;) (Matteo Menapace made his political stance quite clear, not just with the game, but additionally with the incidence at the Spiel des Jahres ceremony) I think 4/10 points is fair. It's fun, if someone brought it, I would join. But even if I got it for free, I would rather sell it and use the money to buy something better. It's not worth the build up time. It's not worth the space.
Honestly, I think that the SdJ Jury has lost the sense of identifying the best games and seems to sit in a bubble ignoring what input there could be from the players. There are so many nominees and even winners that nobody talks about few years later. And it's not because the world of games develops too quick it's because there are games nominated that are just OK to good. Anyway, good to have you as a reviewer who talks about all the negative stuff in each game as well.
I'm not sure what they're made out of actually, but I've had them for years (bar 2 new thicker ones) and i just find them so comfy - they do a decent job of getting through this heatwave weather
I've only played 4-5 times, and I'm a bit more positive about it I think.. - Luck of the draw for the projects is generally fine with me. I wish crises cards were more visible as those can definitely be frustrating - I'd prefer to know what was coming and struggle to deal with it rather than get randomly screwed. - I wish the difficulty options were cleaner. I'd have loved them to have more clear level 1/2/3/4/5 cards or something rather than 'Have a pile of random variants glhf'. - I wish there was more nations, would be a fun opportunity for variance and you only really need ~6 cards to add one - I hope we get an expansion. Overall I'm happy for it to receive the Kennerspiel but I hope that if there's an expansion, that they do a *lot* of cleanup work on all those sharp edges ^^.
is "generally happy" enough for a prestigious award though? Games like 7 Wonders are played to this day because of how great they are and they got the award. Daybreak will be forgotten by 2025, I bet you.
The "ignore the Crisis cards" is good advice on the beginning. Most of the crisis scale with the rise of temperatures. So it is a better idea not to focus on avoiding the first crisis, which are going to be mild, and concentrate on reducing emissions as much as possible, as that will make the crisis down the line less powerful. I liked it when I played it on BGA, but I can really see the multiplayer solitary thing. Most of the time, there is no need to coordinate anything, just do your best locally. I dont think is a 4 out of 10, but well, perfect it isnt, either. But well, your score is yours and mine is mine :)
I get it. it's cool to hate on Daybreak. & u think maybe it doesn't deserve the award. --I think game is really cool in terms of theme, artwork, tags, engine mechanics. -- I can't speak to cheap material quality (that's a bummer). --I think the randomness (u mentioned emissions token) couldve solved by having two or three different decks representative of its purpose and mechanics. As far as COOP aspect goes, while I agree - u have conveniently omitted the part where several cards give Resilience token to other players, REMOVE communities in crisis of other players , & global projects allow several group benefits based ONE PLAYER's progress. I think simply put maybe one round shoulve mandated card exchange . -- COop ascpect - if one player has shitty cards ... they can simply focus on not losing out the game for all of them ( by keeping their resilience in checks) and averting most crises. as others overcompensate by removing their emissions , they can win the game together. TICKET TO RIDE was a legacy nom. (legacy in both sense of the word)so???
No it is not cool to hate on Daybreak just because. If Daybreak really was an excellent game that would be amazing and it would still be on my shelf, that is no excuse. The theme is nice to have but honestly it's not well represented in the stuff you're doing. The artwork is also non existant for the most part and half the cards look like clipart. I have not conveniently missed it out, I stated that there are not many cards that let you do those things. There really isn't. In a giant deck of cards, I don't want my co-op aspect to be randomly determined by whether I draw the cards that let me do stuff or not. It should have just been a general rule in the game, how would that not significantly improve it? How is it fun in a co-op to simply be going "well i'm doing crap, no-one can help me, so I guess I'll just meander here and try not to tank the game for everyone"? If that's what co-ops are going to be, the genre is dead.
Sold this after one play when I realized that the board has no purpose as a map. It could have been tricks. Completely turn off that the map of the world has absolutely no function in the game
Oooooh, 4 out of 10, that's harsh. The game is definitely not "4 out of 10" random. Other players can help/ save you when you're struggling, multiplayer is not to be so easily dismissed. You should try it 2 player. We love it! Yes, you can have quick loses -but so did Pandemic -but with this setting up again is so much quicker. We've probably played it 15 times in a row, and can't wait to get back to it! Please tell me, what do you think of the swinginess of Terraforming Mars -I've never played, and don't particularly want to. Does it "play you" too, if not, what is the difference in the design that makes it different?
Tm and Ark Nova have an element of card luck but if I don't draw exactly what I'd like I have plenty of other options that are just as good. Ark is far better though and that has face up cards also so I'm not just drawing blind from the deck which is not advisable. Also you say others can help you. But how? I already mentioned the tiny amount of cards that allow you to do that. There's no other way you can help me directly on this game. Just giving advice is not a justification, some one who isn't even playing the game and standing by your table can do that.
@@TheBrokenMeeple Those cards may not be plentiful, but they are there. You can also help others by mitigating (tucking cards under) crises and sorting global projects. You're a smart guy so I don't want to insult you: let's just say, I've really wanted to get X or Y done in the game and wanted to lose a 'get another card' card especially as I'd have to lose another engine to play it. But having made that sacrifice, I could draw more cards, then more cards until I had what I needed. This is not uncommon, and two player we've had to reshuffle the massive deck, with so much card draw going on! Those moments are awesome, the bad games have tended to be the ones when we've prioritised the wrong things... When I play Marvel Champions, it is thematic that Rhino should attack me three times in a row and destroy me! Do I burn the game in a huff? No, because it tells a story. This game tells a story that the carbon we've already emitted has us already on the knifes edge, in some universe we might survive handily, in another, we'll be crushed. It is fun to find out if we can hold it together this time! Especially with the heavy polluters China and Majority World in the game. Solo doesn't have that aspect to worry about!
I felt the same about the Luck element. Agreed with all your gameplay comments, but I was fine with the components. I REALLY liked the gameplay and combos, but the luck of the draw element was a real let down. There was no way to even mitigate bad draws. I still enjoyed the experience, so I look at this as more of an 'activity' game.
I agree with your ultimate conclusion, and I do agree that the player interaction is relatively low but not quite as non-existant as you make it out to be. But as for luck, its no more than Ark Nova. In fact I'd argue its less. Particularly with 4 players, which is the only way I've played it. (Albeit only 4 times) There are more than just a few cards that assist other players, not just by giving cards, but giving assets, removing unrest, trading clean energy, etc, and in our games only once did we NOT go through the entire deck and have to reshuffle. That being said, we found it too easy. We thought maybe we got lucky the first couple of games. And maybe we were just lucky in all 4 games. Its possible. (We did not play with the challenge cards) But that's where I agree. For us it just wasn't anything special, and there were no surprises. So its unlikely to hit the table again. Also, I've often not very impressed with the Spiel winners. Another great review. Thanks.
Compared to the size of the deck as a whole, there really isn't a ton of those "help" cards. And even then can you honestly say the game wouldn't be improved and more streamlined if it was simply a general rule that you could do like I described compared to "hoping" you draw the cards which can help? The game is too easy, that's a general view among a lot of players. The only challenge is then which round you win in!
@@TheBrokenMeeple OH it definitely could be improved by the rule you say, But then something else would have to be done to balance out the difficulty because I believe that would make it even easier. I'm not disagreeing with you entirely. I'm just saying that in my experience there was a little bit more interaction than you describe. But I wholeheartedly agree that it is not enough.
Pretty on sync with your thoughts. I did not expect this coop game to be multi player solitaire and the luck of the draw can be brutal. Sadly I will be selling my copy.
Based on everything you said up to the 27 minute mark I did not see your numerical value hitting that number. I feel like your one big main point of the game outweighed everything else. I guess reviewers can do that. But thanks again for another no nonsense review!
@TheBrokenMeeple No, slightly higher. I thought the fun parts would pull it up more. I haven't played it. I actually don't like Pandemic so reminding me with a label he designed it does not help.
Thanks for the review. I already (months ago) had no desire to play this. I'm sure it a fine game to those who like it. Just one that is not on the top of my list.
Regarding the production quality, it really feels as if they use the tag eco materials as an excuse to produce a cheap game. There is just no correlation between eco friendly and bad production quality (the re-wood components in Kutna Hora felt really nice). Also, it does not help if the card quality is so bad that everyone is basically forced to put them into plastic sleeves. This sounds more like an inexcusable pathetic greenwashing regarding the production quality.
And suddenly I am no longer interested in the game. The components look so so and it seems it is better at higher player counts. Regarding eco friendly materials, sure they are more expensive. Does that need to be? Not necessarily but the suppliers make good money out of it. I don’t mind, but it can still look good. That rewood from CGE looks good, this game looks cheap. Those boxes are indeed chip shop boxes. What is wrong with making those boxes you find in Wingspan from bio plastic. And it is single use plastic we need to ban. But a board game like this is hardly single use.
Yes, Re-wood is decent and looks great, I'm happy for that as an eco material, but these use of eco material is just cheap and nasty. Also Kutna Hora that used Re-Wood I think actually retails CHEAPER than Daybreak does.
You are the first reviewer who shares my feelings about this game. It's much too easy to win, even with the challenge cards. I can't understand the other reviews. I can't understand how this could have won Kennerspiel des Jahres.
@@mikolajwitkowski8093 I might check it out at some point but currently I play games like dice throne and too many bones. Both are also worth checking out. Thanks for your advice mikolaj
I couldn’t help but think of Captain Planet when you kept saying eco friendly! This does not feel like a good game to play. Thanks for the review as always!
Lame theme. No aspect of climate change is man-made, so the dumb theme is annoying. I can't stand these games that try to force politics into the hobby. The art is horrific and will be dated shortly. Co-op here is a fraud. It's not co-op, but the term is here to appeal to Care Bears. Awful, non-hobby game. I hate this trend.
