My group really enjoys the game. We all love movies and love the theme, so we might be looking at it with roses colored lenses. I thought surely this would get a DT SOA.
Liked the game a lot, although I'd also ignore the player privileges. The thematics of dice placement to recreate elements of the scene being shot was also strong for me.
Great review Mike! After two plays, I agree with some points and disagree with some. I think you're spot on with the awkward balance of a coop more geared toward the social side than the strategy side. That works fine for my groups, but will definitely be off-putting for some. My experience with pacing was different from yours. I found the first 2-3 turns were spent begging to be able to do one more useful action, but not really having anything that would help. Once the set gets built up a bit, though, the tension you describe is really strong. You also nailed the balance of watching out for money and time. I'd also add that we've tended to focus less on quality until 1 or 2 scenes have been shot, before having that 'uh-oh' moment where it becomes a third priority. This will stay in my collection as a more lighthearted coop option. I think there's enough puzzle-like elements that it stays interesting while having a ton of charm.
Definitely agree. The theme came through pretty well, but the mechanisms were a little lacking for me. Glad I backed it and tried it, but it has moved on.
I'm confused by the rules explanation as to what makes this a multiplayer game? Are multiple players just acting like a solo player, taking turns over and over? Good explanation, but unfortunately the review is not useful to me without understanding this dynamic, since I'm only interested in the interaction and social dynamic between the players.
So the object of this game is to make a masterpiece movie (Lord of the Rings, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Martin Scorsese style) to win, or lose by making a movie so bad, like The Room and be the worst director, Tommy Wiseau.
Thanks Mike, I have my copy sitting on the shelf. Looks fun to me but I think I will agree with you and remove a few of the problem cards that seem out of place
Having not played the game, I feel like this is the most balanced review I've watched so far. Thank you Mike for taking the time to share your thoughts ☺️
Thanks Mike, you dodged me a bullet with this review as I was just about to pull the trigger on the purchase. I can't stand it when board games try and artificially inject "humour" in to the game with goofy mechanisms like "stand on one foot" or "bark like a dog". Those kinds of games didn't cut it in the 80s let alone today. I liked Meeple Circus because it had those goofy "humour" cards clearly labelled and gave you a variant where you could remove them from the game (which we always do).
Mike comes across real stiff in this review: "If you are not a fan of movies"....I would rhetorically ask "who isnt?", but I take it he's not? And then the complains about the privileged or the silence card - Its like he doesn't have a sense of humor. My group really enjoyed it. And as long as your group gets the joke, its a solid 8.
@@hasakicb yeah well I will never back a ks just hate the idea of ks in general i'll always buy it secnonded handed or just on retail if possible... I do find a copy in amazon that says that it will be as a retail on November so there is still hope for that.. also there is the full game as pnp I just don't own blank dices and stuff like that to create it on my own... I'll wait till November first and see what will happen I guess
@mabos555, I bought this retail from Funagain just last week. This is not the game i thought it was. I didnt realize it was co-op. Im going to sell my copy if your intrested.
As someone who loves movies and movie making, this review makes the game a complete miss for me, just going off the description and examples of how to play. Apart from how bland it all looks, the game play just made me think about a slow version of Fuse, and rolling dice for what you can deploy in a turn is just not anywhere close to a movie production. It looks like they've paid attention to the jargon in the industry, but it's still completely pasted on theme-wise. It might be a decent abstract, but as someone who looks for theme, it's a total pass. Even the score track annoys me - no-one sets out to make a so bad it's good film. The real decision is between making something artistic, and making something with commercial intent, and that's a much more interesting dilemma. When you get to a movie like Tarsem's "The Fall", you know it's not one that is going to work for a fair number of people - too quirky, maybe a bit cold, but at the same time it is beautifully shot to the point where I suspect it's a film that cinematography students will debate for hours. At the other extreme you get the blockbusters who will do precisely nothing challenging, and run the risk of ending up forgettable. There are a number of cult films that were uncompromising at the time, and have grown to be appreciated later (John Carpenter's "The Thing" is maybe the best example, but there are many). I suspect that people don't want it in a co-op game but what makes films interesting from a product standpoint is if they will find their audience - would people want to play a game where even if they did their best, it could just fail? There should be a great game about the movie business, but I don't think it has even been done in computer game form - Peter Molyneux's "The Movies" had a similar mechanism of compiling scenes together to form a film, but it felt a bit too random and somewhat micro-managed. Maybe someone can try to make one about the early years of hollywood where each studio tried to tie stars down to their own productions? A competitive game to be the most successful studio just feels more achievable
@@karljenkinson8241 On the contrary, I think The Networks is a very good game - the distinction though is that it's not about production, so much as the commissioning and scheduling of shows on TV. It has a bit of thematic wonkiness, like knowing exactly how the audience will change over the life of the show, and there isn't really a sense of counter programming since the audiences of shows don't affect each other, but it's coherent enough for what it's trying to do. I'd love to see a heavier game to complement it though - there is a fascinating conflict within TV between producing popular cheap content, and trying to produce something to be proud of, and each network/channel will sit at a different place along that continuum. Would you want to be HBO and trying to make brilliant dramas or a channel that made a lot of profit by showing game-shows, reality TV and re-runs? How would you handle the news as that has been a dilemma since the 50s ("Wires and Lights In A Box" is a brilliant Edward R Murrow speech, well worth a google) with the questions of how much should you try to be honest, and how much should you cater to the audience tastes? Network from the 70s is a brilliant film about this (and unfortunately prescient) With movies, scheduling is a pretty minor concern - you can usually bump it a few weeks here and there to get more time to get it right or to avoid cannibalising the box office of another film (or running the risk of them doing the same to you), so there is plenty of scope for having games about films and about TV as they have very different concerns
I backed out of this one on Kickstarter because it felt like there was something lacking to me and after watching the review I may have been better off for it. I wouldn’t mind giving it a play because I love the theme but I don’t feel like I need to own this one. Great job Mike!
