Roguelike and roguelite computer games have become all the rage in the last few years. From Hades to Risk of Rain, these games represent some of my favourite digital gaming experiences in the last few years. Their mix of combo gameplay and tough challenges itches all the correct parts of my brain.
The culture of tabletop games sits alongside that of the digital world, sometimes uncomfortably. There have been board game adaptations of Slay the Spire and Dead Cells, but the roguelike influence ripples out into original designs as well. 52 Realms: Adventures, from publisher Postmark Games, attempts to ride that wave.
Let me start by showcasing the publisher itself. Postmark Games is the team of Matthew Dunstan and Rory Muldoon. The focus of this duo is on print and play games. So far these have been primarily focused on the roll & write genre with their debut being Voyages in 2021. All these games are very cheap to buy, £5, and you print them yourselves and play them using components most of you probably have lying around the house already. It is an interesting way to get around issues of global distribution and production which have hit so many game companies hard.
They have started to branch out from roll & writes with Battle Card and 52 Realms. The latter that I am looking at today requires just a few counters and a standard deck of playing cards to be provided by the purchaser. The company is obviously looking to experiment with what they can ask their customers to provide, expanding their design space as they do so.
52 Realms: Adventures, to give it the full title, sees you setting off into a dungeon to tackle monsters, score loot, and defeat the big boss that lies at the end of your journey. At the core of this experience is a standard deck of playing cards that are used to represent everything from a ticking clock to fearsome foes. You’ll battle through the two available maps with one of the four characters.
In choosing a character you get abilities to play with as well as spaces for loot, items, and equipment. Equipment is the main way that you interact with the maps you are moving through. Want to move along a corridor? Exhaust, turn sideways, a piece of equipment equal to or higher than the value of that route. If you can’t, or won’t, pay the cost then there is always an alternate route, with a foe to face.
Monsters are represented by cards, of course. Drawing two you get the type of monster and its health, and the value of the reward that it is carrying. The reward can become loot, which is ultimately what you are after, contributing to the points you total up at the end of a session.
Fighting is a war of attrition. The foe telegraphs what they will do, with the draw of a card of course. You respond by attacking, defending, or catching your breath (allowing you to refresh all your equipment). When you do take damage it can result in a wound. More cards from the deck. Too many of these and its game over.
On defeating a monster the reward can become a new piece of equipment, allowing you to fight on. Instead you can make it an item, gaining the ability to heal and manipulate the cards you draw. Each of these is discarded after use, so they are a precious resource not to be taken lightly. The reward can of course just be transformed into points for the end of the game.
I am not usually one for solo board games. I find the constant push for solo modes amongst some in the community verging on the fanatical, though I understand the appeal for those who can’t regularly get a group of folk together. To me tabletop games are fundamentally a group activity. I play games as part and parcel of the relationship I have with friends and family.
That said I thoroughly believe that one of the obligations of a critic is to challenge their own prejudices from time to time. To play games outside of their comfort zone, to see if that zone has changed space as time marches on. This doesn’t need to happen all the time, I just think it is a good idea to step into territories unknown.
It is in that vein that I backed 52 Realms. I wanted to see what Postmark Games could do outside of the roll & write genre. What they’ve achieved is a very compelling game.
The deck is not only your tools for exploration but a timer for the end of the game. If it runs out, you have lost. When you start playing you have a few cards out as your starting equipment and items. You feel like you will never run out of deck and that doing so is a hollow threat. Then you get into a fight. The monster deals two cards from the deck to represent it, then a third for its first attack. Each attack is another card. If an attack hits and you take a wound, that’s another card. Suddenly a single encounter has turned into 5-10 cards coming off the deck and that timer is looking a lot less generous.
This is a brilliant piece of design. It gives you a sense of urgency without a feeling of panic. You can see how much time you have left. The cards dealt out so far give you an idea of what is to come, allowing you to guess if that next attack is going to hurt or not. The deck brings pace to the experience of the solo adventurer.
Of course fighting gets you two things that you always want; loot, and a way to reset all your equipment by taking a rest. You can’t rest outside of combat, so the best way to get your equipment back is to have a fight.
The fighting itself is actually a neat little puzzle all of its own. The wound tracker you use to show the enemy’s health, has spaces that give you bonuses or further penalties when you reduce the foe’s health to that amount. This gives you something to think about other than just hitting the monster as hard as you can. The tracker gives you the opportunity to refresh equipment, parry attacks, and more besides.
The two dungeons available so far, feel unique and give you a different set of problems to consider. ‘The Tomb of the Ever Wandering Soul’ is your introductory scenario, getting you used to the rules. ‘The Eternal Midnight Forest’ brings a torch mechanism in that can offset how you travel, and the way you interact with monsters and various spaces on the map.
Each map comes with two adventurers and the current crop of four all feel fun, and different, to play. Barbarian and Seer are the fighting and travel focused ones that come with the introductory map. Fell Knight and Druid come with map 2, and they show off the design space that the team has to play with. The Fell Knight loves wounds, turning them into loot at the end and allowing you to spend them as equipment. This gives you a great feeling of risk vs reward as you venture on. The Druid can shapeshift, changing abilities to suit the situation at hand.
The £5 buy-in gets you both these maps and all 4 characters, so 8 different combinations to attempt a run. Stack on top of that the roguelike element of doing better runs and you have a good amount of play for pocket change. More maps are coming in ‘Season 1’, and I hope that means they will revisit this system in a ‘Season 2’ down the road.
I have been really impressed by Postmark Games since they launched. They have an eye on producing games that are fun to play, cheap to buy, and easy to print out at home. They remind me a lot of Cheapass Games back in the 90s who made very budget productions of games that nonetheless had compelling gameplay at their heart. 52 Realms shows what can be done with this ‘print-at-home’ philosophy. In just 2 A4 sheets of paper they have made a fun dungeon bash, with a huge design space. I can’t wait to venture into the new realms they create.
I backed 52 Realms: Adventures with my own money. Matthew and Rory have been interviewed by me before
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