First Impressions of Diesel Demolition Derby

You remember Love Letter, right? Diesel Demolition Derby is like Love Letter, if the princess was a towering engine of destruction that smashed suitors beneath clawed steel feet and fricasseed Priests with flamethrowers for so much as looking at her. If that doesn’t sound appealing, I don’t know what would!

Diesel Demo – you know what? Let’s just go with DDD, is played over a series of quick rounds with the winner of each round taking a robot love cube, aka a shard of metal. Whoever gets the most wins the game, much like Love Letter. Likewise, this is a card game with the type of my card knocks your card out type gameplay that you’d find in any princess’ court. However, Triple D is a drafting game and that certainly mixes things up.

Diesel Demolition Derby

Players start with a hand of 4 Cards and draft them round ala Sushi Go aiming, in the basic game, to be the player with the highest total value of cards at the end of the round. However, each card has an effect, attacking certain other types, swapping things round and generally messing up your opponents’ plans. So, each turn is a game of risk as you try and guess what the other players might go for. The first turn is a fair bit of chance, but as you draft cards round you know what else is out there and what their options are. After your first round you’ve seen every card and you’ve learnt the game. But then it mixes things up.

D^3 also has a healthy pile of arena cards giving each new round a slightly different tweak and reframing your decisions every round. Maybe one arena makes it all about whoever has the single highest value card. It’s great! Preventing the simple core from becoming stale. Some are more complicated than others but you are free to decide what you fancy this game. By the end of the night I might want something simple. Earlier on, and I’m willing to experiment with more complicated rules.

Diesel Demolition Derby Arena

Diesel Demolition Derby is a nice little game! I may have mentioned it already, but it really does feel like a Love Letter. But with more knowledge about what others can do. You learn it fast, and then keep the decisions shifting with the arenas! Well worth checking out.

 

Diesel Demolition Derby will be up on Kickstarter until 31st August.

This first impressions post was based on a demo of a prototype version of the game at the UK Games Expo 2017. To see the other games I tried there, click this link!

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