504 (Joke) Review!

Matt: In the near future, scientists will develop the technology to produce small alternate Earths. Imagine! And so the residents of our presumably smog ridden and over-populated Earth flood through on to these new worlds to begin a new life free from restraint… but wait! It turns out these scientists are megalomaniacal beings and have applied arbitrary rules that the citizens must devote their lives to. Some planets are engulfed in endless war, some are resource obsessed slave labour camps. Others just feature endless quests to build roads… everywhere, to nowhere! Will this dystopian nightmare not end!!??

And so ends the lesson on applying loose themes to abstract games. According to rumour, the new game from Friedemann Friese (him of Power Grid and Friday fame, also noted for his obsession with the letter “F”) is a mega-collection of 504 games. How many!? Indeed, through a clever modular system, 504 games can be created: 3 modules of the available 9 are chosen for each game you play (giving 9x8x7=504 possible permutations). These modules involve classic game formats, like racing, warfare and exploration. The first module chosen determines the main victory conditions, the second determines the game’s economy, while the third provides flavour. Of course, this is mostly rumour at this point…

Until now! 504 is expected to be unveiled at Essen, but we have an exclusive first look at the game to get you all excited! That doesn’t mean we’re going to pull our punches, no sir! If it’s not any good, we’ll let you know! So how is this exciting new game… multi-game… modular game!? Well, hold on to your hats because it seems they’ve made some last minute changes…

100 Games Box Cover

Gone is the slightly surreal floating green balls artwork we’d seen up until now, in favour of a slightly less imaginative, though admittedly clearer image of the game’s contents. Sadly, it also seems that the number of games has been significantly reduced. I’ll be honest, this kind of took me by surprise! Given that the game’s title also no longer starts with an “F”, in German or English, I worry that this is a case of significant publisher meddling.

Indeed, it seems like the drop in number is to open the door to future expansions! The rulebook, strangely, actually contains rules for many more games than are contained in the box, and contains a legend for what sets you need to play the games:

100 Games Contents

Seems we can look forward to 200 Games and 300 Games boxes in the future! A cynical decision if ever I’ve seen one. They’re expecting it to be popular too, with hints at a “200 games” chest. Typically these are limited edition “Designer Editions” for massive fans of the game, like this beast Days of Wonder released for Small World this year.

While it is certainly disappointing that fewer games are included than expected, just look at all the components they managed to fit in!

100 Games Components

It’s an impressive haul, all squeezed into an inlay that makes good use of the space in that box. There’s a pile of double sided boards, and a small mountain of plastic pieces. No miniatures I’m afraid, these are just tokens, though I suppose you could paint the chess pieces…? Hmm anyway there’s a set of dominoes and a nice solid plastic dice cup, no issues with aging leather cups and their associated smells, eh Stone Age? There’s even one of those dice with powers of 2 on the sides that I’ve never understood the purpose of. Quite the set!

Those 8 game boards form the modules everyone was talking about. There’s your chess board, a Ludo board (Sorry, to our foreign friends. That is the game, Sorry, not just ‘sorry’. Sorry. About that! Oh god…) and the possibly racist Chinese Checkers board. There’s a weird looking board that looks suspiciously like an electrician’s diagram called a Morris board, though who Morris is I have no idea. There’s even a Snakes and Ladders board. But what happens when you start putting these modules together? That’s where the magic starts!

 

100 Games Snakes and Ladders Chess

We started with a couple of games of Snakes & Ladders Chess, in which the objective is, as in normal Chess, to checkmate your opponent’s King. Except you’re playing on a Snakes and Ladders’ board, opening up all new options for movement thanks to the snakes… and ladders. Think that Knight is a safe distance away? Wait until it jumps to the bottom of a ladder and magically ends its move within striking distance of your King! It makes for a much more dynamic game, with the action kicking off right from the word go!

It gets even more exciting with the third module. The Chinese Checkers flavour allows you to leapfrog your own units forward while the Ludo (sorry, Sorry!) flavour allows players to bring back taken pieces on the roll of a 6, finally removing that frustrating Piece Elimination element of traditional chess. Be warned though, the Ludo flavour does extend the game length somewhat.

In playing some games, we did notice trouble with the components that wasn’t immediately apparent. In particular, the draughts (checkers) pieces were too large to fit on some of the board squares, making those module combinations virtually unplayable. Also, playing Snakes and Ladders on a Chess board is crap.

100 Games Chess Snakes and Ladders

504, or rather, 100 Games as it’s now known, was always a bold piece of design. The rumours held a lot of potential and generated a lot of excitement, but it appears someone mistranslated “classic games” somewhere along the line and I can see a lot of disappointed gamers out there when this hits the shelves. Getting into the games, it appears our worst fears are true, that not all module combinations were created equal. While some are excellent (I’m going to always play Chess on a Snakes and Ladders board from now on) and others are interesting (Backgammon, where pieces are taken by leaping over them instead of landing on them, is a nice tweak), many just don’t work at all. It’s a real shame when a hyped game doesn’t live up to everyone’s hopes. Unfortunately, we just cannot recommend 504… 100 Games… whatever it’s called.

Rating: 504 disappointments

Marc: Matt… what are you doing?

Matt: Just finished reviewing Friedemann Friese’s new game 504! Pretty disappointed to be honest.

Marc: You got a copy! Oh wow! Wait… 100 Games…? Matt, you idiot, that’s not 504!

Matt: What are you talking about? Of course it is!

Marc: This is just a compendium game published years ago! Friedemann’s name isn’t even on it!

Matt: … I thought he was just ashamed of what it had become after so much promise… Thinking about it, I was wondering what it was doing in that charity shop…

Marc: Thank goodness I found you before you put it online!

Matt: … it’s already up, Marc, it’s too late!

Marc: What!? But then how are we still talking about it!?

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