Matthew BaileyAnother story-driven game that is very similar to yesterday’s game. So for game 22 of the “Bailey Family Sorta Summer Board Game Bonanza” we will be looking at “What Next?” played by myself and Jack(7) & Toby(4).
What Next is a deck-driven story based choose your own adventure style game (try saying that fast after a double JD and coke).
The game comes with 3 unrelated stories. We played “Drums of Koala Cave.”
You play through the decks and do as it says. Each time you turn a card you rotate the daytime counter. If it ends up at night you play the reverse of the card which is harder.
the main interaction in the game comes through dexterity mini-games and these general control whether you pass or fail certain sections.
These include:
Find the correct shape in a bag quickly
Place puzzle pieces in a shape
Flick a token the correct length down a board
drop and catch a card in pairs
Each time you fail you have to stack a purple block on the “peril tower” this is fine but if you knock over the Peril Tower it is game over.
Component quality is outstanding. The box is really nice thick cardboard that all opens out. Everything is super high-quality card stock and it oozes quality.
it’s much cheaper than yesterday’s game and can often be found for the £40 mark. I got it from GAME on sale for £30 last xmas but it rarely drops that low.
Unlike “Wonderbook” this is a lot more simplistic and the story is less involved. I thought it was quite good fun as did Jack(7) but for some reason, Toby(4) really didn’t like it….. like REEEEAAAAALLLLY didn’t like it. I think this could be the fact the dexterity challenges are often timed and fairly strict. Also, there were times when we just got fail points through no fault of our own which seemed unfair and I think annoyed him.
It comes with 3 very different stories but these could def be replayed making different choices. I think in one playthrough we saw less than 50% of the cards.
This is another difficult-to-recommend game even though I liked it. But if you look at it as an experience there might be something there. The cost comes from the very high component quality but it might be a push to justify the price again on a price-per-play basis. If I could only have one id def choose yesterday’s “Wonderbook” but it is a lot more expensive.
So yeah… sorry that wasn’t super conclusive.
Note for tomorrow… more decisive
Also if I am going to beat last year’s game count before the end of Summer I may have to do a few days of double games.
