 So, the other game, which is a more traditional to the modern era of indie games game, is Food Chain Magnate. I can see why, I mean, this is a real game, right, like a quote-unquote real ortho game. It has a kickstarted aesthetic. I don't think it was kickstarted. I don't even know. The aesthetic is actually kind of cool retro kind of sound. Oh, look, the game is beautiful. Yeah, it's not beautiful. Except for the board. I think the board is kind of bad. I don't like the design of the board. The board is bad, and it's like slightly unpolished, but it has that sort of retro fifties diner style. I'll put it this way, Scott. The issues that we have with the design, like the aesthetic design, are down to the level of those four things should be colored differently. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, but, and I can see why people like this game a lot, because it's like a real game. It's a high-skill game. It's an ortho game. There's very little randomness. This is a Puerto Rico style. Yeah, there's like no luck whatsoever. If you lose, you made bad decisions. Right, but I don't like this game. I don't want to play it ever again. Yeah, like, so, and remember, we played... Just because it's a game of skill doesn't mean that I want to play it, and it's enjoyable. Now, full disclosure again, we played like 10 turns of this game before I was so fed up with that. So, Scott and I both hate this game, but we have to be clear, this game was brought to us by people who we trust, who thought we'd like the game, which is interesting, and I can see why they thought we'd like the game, and I can see why they like the game. I hate the game for very specific and narrow reasons, and Scott hates the game to a degree that actually frighten me. It was just so, like, you know, it was just so painful. Like, we start playing the game, and I'm like, all right, so I'm going to make a decision here, but I take issue with the way this goes. I feel like there's going to be a snowball that I can't come back from already. Like, I feel like the decision I made this turn, round two, literally ended the game for me, and it's over. Right. And this very specific... So, Scott sits down, and basically, before I even got to that level now, he's like, what the fuck is this bullshit? What the fuck? Fuck this game, and starts going apeshit at the table at link about how much he hates this game to a degree to where bystanders came over to see what was wrong. Right. So, much like Age of Steam, right? This is a game that kicks your ass. Like, you fuck up one thing early, it's just like you're done. Unlike Age of Steam, and unlike fast food franchise, food chain magnet, you don't get eliminated. You got to fucking sit there, right? So, the main problem with this game is that on the right side of the board, there's all these bonuses, right, that let you upgrade your abilities. Everyone starts off on even footing, but... They're all crazy permanent powers. There's crazy permanent powers that are super strong, and you basically upgrade yourself for the rest of the game. Like, I am better at this now than everyone else for the whole rest of the game, because I got this thing. So... And there's a million of them. There's a ton of them. So, obviously, everyone's going to get a different set of them, and that's going to guide their course through the rest of the game. Yeah. You know, and that is a perfectly fine mechanic to have, right? It's like, aha, I will be the guy who's better at A, and I'll be the guy who's better at B, and we'll take different strategic routes to build our machines and build different machines and see who has the most money in the end. That is perfectly fine. Now, the way you get these things, and I'll let Scott go apeshit on why he's so mad about it, is that there's things you can do in the game. Like, a million things. There's lots of options. You've got all these different actions you can choose on your turn and different employees. You can basically choose which employees are going to work every turn that you've hired, and you can also hire more employees, and you can increase your capacity of how many employees can work per turn, and that sort of is what you do on each turn, right? But this mechanic, full disclosure before Scott goes crazy, it is a very clever mechanic that in a vacuum I actually really like, but applied to this specific game, I dislike it. But I want to make it clear, this mechanic has merit. So the way the mechanic works is if you do a thing, like every power has a condition. So one of the powers gives you like a ton of pizza or whatever. And its condition is if you are the first person to put a pizza billboard out on the board. Something like that. If you're the first person to hire a pizza boy, you get the super pizza upgrade, and no one else gets it. Yep. One of them is like, if you're the first person to fuck up and throw away food, you get a fridge that lets you never have to throw away food again, basically. And the way this works is if you hit the milestone, everyone who hit that milestone, the turn that anyone hit the milestone. Right. So that's a perfectly good mechanic, right? Because now you don't have a turn order situation. Like, oh, Rym went first and he snatched everything out. They figured that out. That's great. Right? It's like, okay, we'll give it to whoever does the thing first. But if everyone does it on the same turn, everyone gets it. And then after, if you do it on a turn lap after that, well, you don't get it. Yep. So if you do the thing, if me and Scott get the thing, because we both like advertised on the first time, no one else can get those powers for the rest of the game when you flip them over. Now that could be cool. Right. That's fine because obviously if someone didn't get those powers that we got, they're getting other powers, right? Because basically every turn someone is going to be doing a thing that gets them one of these powers, especially early in the game, right? Where everyone doing everything is the first person to do that thing, right? And if you see, you know, you can sort of tell what other people are maybe going for and you based on different things and try to choose things that they don't choose. But obviously if you choose the same thing on the same turn, that's perfectly fine. Yep. Because you're going to get it too, right? So it's like whatever direction you push in, you're going to be able to push harder in that direction. And the game among skilled players would be very clearly because there's no real luck in this game. Yep. Scott pushed in direction A and I'm pushing in directions B and C. So the competition is, is the direction we're pushing enough to overcome each other. Like you're specializing in the thing you're doing. Right. And then, you know, the game will actually come down to more specific decisions like which spot did you put your advertisement on the board and, you know, like you can really get. Did you anticipate that Scott was going to push B three rounds and then swerve and push C a little bit that's diversifying crazily? Like did you anticipate that? Could you counter it? Which is similar to what happens in non-luck games like Puerto Rico where did you anticipate that Scott was going the factory route and set yourself up to capitalize on that while you go the other route? It's like, aha, you were planning to, you pick trade. You thought Scott was going to craft, but actually, nope, he didn't pick craft. Now you're stuck trading nothing. Good luck. So Scott, it regale me with why you don't like that mechanic in this game. So the main problem is that if you fall a turn behind under any circumstance, you're basically just fucked, right? So what happened was is I misinterpreted some of the things in the game. Partially. I think Scott misinterpreted them because he's dumb. Partially because I'm dumb, but also partially because there's some issues with the design of the thing. There are a few cards that need, they really need to be a different color. There are a few things that need to be a different color and there's a few things that could be worded better, right? But I still, I just messed up. I didn't realize something. So I made a decision where I thought I was going to get a thing and I didn't get it. And the result of that was I could not be the first to do pretty much fucking anything for the rest of the game. So I couldn't get any more upgrade abilities and I was pretty much just done. And now this is no way and there is no, because everything is first come and that's it. There's no other way to get stuff. I couldn't catch up. So why was I still playing this game? It didn't, the game is a long game. I would have to keep playing the game itself. What they say on the box, quote, this game can be played by two to five serious gamers in two to four hours. And it's like, well, I fucked up one thing on like turn two because I didn't get it right. And now and as soon as I was afterwards, I realized it within like, you know, immediately like, oh, that's not the thing that I should have done because of that, but it was too late. And now I'm just fucked, but I have to sit there for three hours, fuck this. Now my rather complain and then leave the game. It was a little more narrow in that the game's a snowball game. What the way I describe this game is everyone starts at the top of a mountain and they make a snowball and snowballs are all the same size. And you pick what direction to roll that snowball off the map. And they just accelerate and accelerate and accelerate. If you like, drop your snowball. If your snowball hits a rock or something. Yeah, well, if it hits a rock, it was your fault. Yeah, but it might split into, you know. Yeah, but you might, there's all these if you make any mistake whatsoever, right? And the thing is, you know, I made a mistake of a beginner who didn't know the game early, right? You know, and early is like, it's the worst time to make a mistake, but you can make a mistake in this game at any time. You could be really good at this game, right? Not obviously, if you're incredible at the game, you're not gonna ever make a mistake, right? But you could be in a situation where like, you're good at the game, you understand it, but say midway through the game, like after hour one, you make a mistake and now you're just fucked. But you already invested an hour in the game and but you can't win, but you still have to keep playing. Now it's not over. Power grid, base power grid is an example of a game where if you, if like, if you play the game a lot and it's a bunch of skilled fucking players playing that game, it ends up being the same way. Like if Scott has three extra dollars left over at the end of over round, he fucked up and didn't optimize for the last five turns. And like, that's the fiddly, tiny decision that means he loses. But that only happens after you've gotten to the point where you're all playing this game at like ultra pro mode. In this game, that happens immediately. So if I had to describe what this game is really like and who would appeal to, if you like Twilight Struggle, you like this game because they're games where you have to commit to being very good at the game and navigating the simple, cause they're not complex, but highly divergent heuristics of the game. They are not intuitive. You cannot play this game by gut. It's like the difference in chess and go. If you just kind of feel your way through chess. You're gonna lose. You're gonna lose, but you'll do okay. Like if you know the rules and like you have some basic knowledge of chess and a little like you watch some people play. You'll try to take more guys than the other guy takes, right? Yeah. But if you play gut, like, and if you play the chess in the long, long run, the attractors in chess are slow to feed or else a draw. In go, the attractors as the game tree expands out into the void are all losing. If you go in semi random directions, you just lose. Yeah. And it's not, it says that like in netrunner, this happens a lot too, where there are certain types of play, certain lines of play that your opponent can have. And it's like, okay, I see that I'm losing this game, but I'm still doing stuff, right? It's like, you know, I still got stuff going on. You know, like in rarer tycoon, this is a big thing that happens, right? Where it's like, okay, I see I've lost the game, but I'm still moving cubes and I'm still building tracks and I'm still putting trains and playing cards. So I'm still enjoying myself and doing things, even though I know the best I could do and have a second place, because look what that guy did moving 10 cubes or something, right? Yep. There are certain things that happen. And in this game where it's like, not only did I know I was going to lose the game after making that one mistake on like turn two, but I pretty much couldn't do anything effective. I couldn't sell even one food, right? It's like, I literally could not do anything meaningful on my turns anymore. Like I, if I played the best I could play from that point on, it's like, literally, I've done nothing. I've made no money. I can't get any more stuff. I can't do anything. I'm just like a locked. I'm not even, even if I continue to play and try to enjoy it, it's like I can't build trains or put cubes or I'm just sitting here doing nothing, making meaningless decisions. I can't move. Now I'm going to say something. This is a good game. It is a well-designed game. But, and while I struggle is a well-designed game for what it is, those kinds of games. But this is the kind of game that because of these complex heuristics, well, not complex, because of these simple, but surprisingly diversion heuristics. And because of the harsh penalties for failure and because all of the attractors in the game tree are ridiculous failure. The only way to enjoy this game, you have to be the kind of person who wants to pick a game like this, play it a million, million times and become very good at this particular game. If you are good at games in general, that will give you almost no assistance in being good at this game unless you do what I was doing until Scott and Chris and Anthony yelled at me to stop. This game also can suffer from extreme analysis paralysis. I could have navigated that heuristic tree by sitting there for literally five or 10 minutes of my time. You did take a fucking long time on your time. Yeah, and you know what? I did better than you. Yeah, I'm not going to put in that kind of effort, especially if I had a convention, right? I'm not looking to, you know, right? But I'm saying this game, the only way to be good at this game is to play it a lot, to be good at it, or to study it and do a lot of analysis and calculations slowing the game down, which explains why they say the game takes two to four hours to play. Much like Twilight Struggle, you have to play it and be good at it because it has a whole bunch of name cards that do very specific things and the game's only interesting if you know what all those cards are and what they do. And your opponent also knows what they all are and knows what they do, or if neither of you knows. So you can only play this game. Yeah, if you play this with a bunch of people who've never played it before, you could all make mistakes and still maybe not, you know, have a problem because you all made mistakes. But then you still have to force people to not spend a long time on their turn because if someone does think longer, it's like a choir. If you actually calculate out, you could play this game very well the first time and it's gonna take the full four hours to play the game. And this game has another problem, which is one I've noticed in a lot of games before, one that always comes to mind when I think about this is Quarriers, which is the Dice Dominion. That game feels like it should be so good, but it's not. And that problem is basically big stuff never used. So it's like, there's these huge cards you can get if you upgrade all the way, like these ridiculous employees, like the CEOs and stuff, like these ridiculously powerful cards. And from what I could tell is if you were to play this game to completion, you would maybe get one of those cards, like on the final turn or second to last turn maybe, maybe you would get one of them and maybe use it like once and the game would be over at that point, right? It's like in Quarriers, you get like one fancy super powerful dice and maybe roll it once and the game will be over by that point. It's like, dudes, if you're designing a game and you got big powerful stuff in that game, right? At least let people use it like in Civ 5, at least let me use the Death Robot for like 10 turns. Hearthstone is actually a good example. It's like in Hearthstone, you can play and put out big, amazing legendary creatures and actually use them a bit before the game ends, right? You can actually get to use the heavy hitters and enjoy the fun of using them. As opposed to Imagine the Gathering where if you got one of those like legends, golden dragons of three colors out on the table, like good job, good job getting that dragon out there. And then, yeah, and you've probably lost the game before that happened. Or you won a long time ago. It's gonna die instantly. Yeah, you've already won and you're just playing that because you've already, because you can, because you're already controlling the game, right? It's like if you, the top level equipment in your, whatever game you make, right? The top level most powerful stuff, right? The big buildings in Puerto Rico, right? Whatever is the biggest, strongest stuff should be able to come into play, say between 75 and 80% of the game's completion, right? And then after that, there might be bigger stuff, but that stuff should be victory points only. It shouldn't do anything. In that way. You don't feel bad. You didn't get to do it. Like you buy a big building in Puerto Rico. Oh, it doesn't give you points. It's like, it's not a big, you know, but you get a university, which is like the biggest building that can do something and you'll get a lot. You can get that and use it. Yeah, you can get the wharf in Puerto Rico and use it, you can get it, you know, 50, 60% of the way into the game. That little machine game we were playing, the game where you pump stuff through your factories. The card game. You played it at PAX. I don't remember. I bought it or I bought it. One of us bought it. Oh, my goods. Yes. That game has a good mechanic where when the game ends, you know, you've built your machine of like all your different buildings out there doing shit. At the end of the game, you get to crank your whole machine a bunch of times. So you've built the crazy building at the end. You get to use it like multiple times at the end of the game, rewarding you for having it. Like there's ways to get around that problem that. Yeah. Whatever the biggest, the biggest, funnest, most awesome, powerful thing there is in your game, players should be able to get that thing if they play well, obviously, right? At least 20% of the game remaining so that they can actually use it a bit and have a bunch of fun with it. And then the game should end not, you know, you don't want to give it to them too early. If you get that stuff halfway through the game, then it's like, oh my God, why isn't it over yet? Right? Yeah. But like with 20% or less of the game remaining, you should be able to get the biggest, strongest, most fun thing and use it three, two to four times. Right? Get some uses out of it as the finishing blow. Yeah. Right? That, you know, if this game, it's like you could never get the most powerful level stuff. You know what they could have done to make that better? Just remove that top level of powerful stuff. Just not have it in the game. And that way, the funnest, most powerful stuff is stuff that's, you know, get a book, right? It's like just cut away your top level and now make the second to top level, the top level. And that will now become simply because it's at the top of your tech tree. Like in place of five, you can't actually get and use XCOM dudes, right? I have used them in long wars. Only if you continue after the game ends. No. I've used them in long wars to win the game. I've never gotten XCOM dudes before the timer was up. I had a fleet once of a bunch of XCOM dudes and not one, but two giant death robots. And I use those to take out a bunch of cities from a civilization that was close to a culture victory so that I could then get a science victory. Well, obviously we're having a science victory already thing is I could have just taken out his capital and had the domination victory, but I never was getting domination victory. Right. But I mean, you know, whatever your top level of stuff is, should come into play before the end of the game. Yeah. But anyway, I mean, we didn't play the game enough to give you like a deeper review than that, but suffice it to say. Unless you like being punished, right? Don't play this. Or if you like games like Twilight Struggle that are serious, luck-free, long. Twilight Struggle has some luck. Yeah. But heavy analysis requires significant investment in that specific game as opposed to games in general. I can think of a lot of kinds of people who would really like this game. Jared. I am not one of those people. No. This has been Geek Nights with Rima and Scott, special thanks to DJ Pretzel for the opening music, Kat Lee for Web Design, and Brando K for the logos. Be sure to visit our website at frontrowcrew.com for show notes, discussion news, and more. Remember, Geek Nights is not one but four different shows, SciTech Mondays, Gaming Tuesdays, Anime Comic Wednesdays, and Indiscriminate Thursdays. Geek Nights is distributed under a Creative Commons attribution 3.0 license. Geek Nights is recorded live with no studio and no audience, but unlike those other late shows, it's actually recorded at night.