Stuck in the Middle with You
Designers get to be known for particular styles of game. Uwe Rosenberg and his puzzle series of worker placement games with seemingly drab themes, Knizia and his penchant for auctions and strange scoring systems, Leacock and his co-operative ouvre. Bez Bonnie-Beth Shahriari has been a force of nature in the hobby for several years and is known for their expansive line of raucous party games, and the ELL series of word games. When designers move outside of their comfort zone, stretching their skills into other genres, the results can be surprising. With Last Bug Standing in The Circle of Doom (Last Bug Standing) we see Bez tackle a more tactical style of game with some success.
Last Bug Standing in the Circle of Doom is published by Surprised Stare Games with art by Akha Hulzebos.
I was sent Last Bug Standing in the Circle of Doom by Surprised Stare Games for review.
Last Bug Standing is a two-player game of cagey movement and investigative gunnery. You read that right. In a strange landscape you pilot a tank surrounded by Bug Eyed Monsters (BEMs). The bugs come in 4 varieties, 2 of which are effectively on your side. The others can be shot with abanadon, but total elimination is not your name.
At the start of the game each players takes the blue or red tokens that align you with particular monsters. You secretely pick one of the two monsters that are on your team as your favourite. The one you love the most. The aim of the opposing player is to work out which one of the two bugs you favour, and eliminate it. You might think this is an easy task with only two choices, but games throw strange spanners in the works.
First you have to drive the tank to the right place. It is controlled by a compass style board with 8 spaces pointing N, NE, E etc. This board has the pilot on it, who moves 1-3 spaces on a player’s turn, the amount determined by the player not the roll of a dice. The space the pilot ends up on trundles the tank in that direction.
When you settle on a space you check how many monsters are on it, intially 1 or 3. In another area of the game is a ring of tokens, the Circle of Doom of the title. It is made up of 12 tokens, 3 for each of the 4 monsters in the game. In the basic setup, one half of this monster clock is blue and the other half is red. The gunner starts on one of these tiles.
Landing on a tile moves the gunner around the circle a number of spaces equal to the number of monsters on the tile. If the gunner lands on a token that matches the type of monster on the tank tile, you shoot the monster and the token is removed. In order to fully eliminate a monster you have to remove all 3 of its tokens from the Circle of Doom. Of course in order to win you have to be removing the right monster.
The flow of the game comes down to manipulating the path of the tank to land on spaces advantageous to you, while also trying to hit the right bugs. This puzzle isn’t static however, because the risk to both sides increases as you play.
When the tank lands on a tile and the gunner doesn’t get to take a token from the Circle of Doom, that tile is flipped over. A flipped tile matches all 4 monsters and moves the gunner 2 spaces aroudn the circle. There is some nuance to how many of these flipped tiles will exists over the course of a game. I think you can see that as the landscape changes the game accelerates towards its end state.
In addition to the core movement puzzle, you can gain cards that change some of the ways you interact with the game. They add a frisson of surprise to the more predictable movement puzzle at the core of the game. A welcome bit of RNG in the proceedings.
Beyond the core setup you get a good amount of variety in the landscape, the make up of the circle, and how the tank responds when it hits the edge of the area. It is a decent game in a well presented package that won’t break the bank.
There is a ‘but’ coming.
You could feel it, couldn’t you? My only criticism of the game is that the rules feel a little fussy. They seem almost overly explained in places, using more words when fewer would do. The ‘but’ is this: But I don’t know who this is for.
Maybe what I have described sounds up your street, a little tactical puzzle in a box small enough to take on holiday. For me I enjoyed it well enough, but it just didn’t fire for me like some of my favourite two player games. I don’t get a lot of chance to play two player games and when I do I won’t be reaching for Last Bug Standing. Depending on the situation I prefer something lighter like Lacuna, or a more engaging puzzle like Compile or Imperium. It is a strange problem to talk about as a critic: how do we assess the games that are ‘fine’? A thought for a longer piece some time.
Last Bug Standing in the Circle of Doom is a well designed game in a competently put together package. Bez has done a good job of stepping outside of their more party focused designs, and partnered with a publisher that seemed to understand the assignment. I hope that some of you will check it out, even if it didn’t grab me completely.
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