Pretense Review

Hey guys! It’s so awesome you’re here! We’re going to be reviewing Pretense! High Five!

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Ok, well, never mind, why don’t you come on through. Here, you can have my seat while I explain the rules. Oh, erm, how does it go again? Man, this is embarrassing, can you pass me the rule book?

Pretense isn’t a game, oh no, this is more than just a game. This is a meta-game, a game that has transcended the restrictions of time and space of mere mortal board games to become something ephemeral and probably glowing. It is a game you can play… while playing other board games!

I know! We now have so many games available we must play multiple games at the same time if we are to keep up! Fortunately, Pretense has been designed for expressly that purpose, containing a diverse set of roles for you to embody, each with it’s own secret objective for victory. As you saw above, the Frat Boy just wants a high five from someone… anyone really. Then he’ll be happy, and he’ll get to take that other player’s card, giving him a new role and eliminating his victim. Whoever has the most cards at the end of game night, or the last player standing, will be the winner. BUT! You can’t be too obvious about it, because anyone can accuse someone of having a certain role. If correct, the accuser takes their card, if wrong, the accuser loses their card to them. So subtlety is the name of the game! (Actually it’s Pretense but shhhh.)

So there you have it! That’s how you play. Wait… did I just teach you a game?

A game like this is all about the roles. There are some roles that sound great like the afore-pictured Bookworm, or the Sport who hilariously needs to catch something thrown by another players, or the Clown who scores when they make everyone laugh. I hear about those and think yeah, they sound like they should be fun. But the thing is, everyone knows about them, they are watching for them. There is a pile of tokens on the table to remind everyone what roles are out there. This leads to bizarrely stilted situations. For example, a rules query arises (as they are wont to do) but everyone refuses to pass the player, or the game’s owner, the rulebook. This is a situation created by Pretense, but it is frustrating rather than amusing. Imagine this: someone round the table cracks a joke. It’s funny. But because the Clown is a possible role, people don’t want to laugh!

Then there are other roles that are just hard to do, like the Champ who has to win 2 games in a row, or the Maid who has to be the only person to pack a game away. They also have the sort of unpleasant rule of letting you take anyone else’s card, freely, which… really sucks for that player. Then there’s the Sore Loser that is a role that should probably be incinerated: it requires you to come last in two games. That’s awful! You shouldn’t be forced to throw other games you are playing! That ruins the rest of game night for everyone!

However, you can tailor the set of cards used each game and I recommend you do so. Most of the roles do require some degree of ingenuity, forward planning and clever execution. Getting someone to pass you food as the Glutton, or suggesting a game to play that you know two people will turn down but not be so obvious as to give yourself away as the Critic. The Nerd, who is looking to correct players who make a mistake, can be applied to literally anything (financial decisions, someone’s girlfriend, someone’s fashion sense… hell I could probably play a meta-game just focussed on the Nerd). The best part of this game is successfully executing the condition on your card, sometimes after a long time of planning it. It just feels really satisfying!

The issue I have is that your satisfaction is not shared by the group. Nothing happens in Pretense for a long while (naturally, you’re playing another game) then suddenly someone might get caught out or achieve their goal. For the successful player, they feel awesome, but the most anyone else experiences is a “heh, nice.” I don’t want “heh, nice.” I want peels of laughter! I want a shared sense of triumph!

Maybe I just crave everyone’s attention (it would explain why I spend my evenings writing board game reviews!) but when you’ve had to think hard to create something, it’s even better when people appreciate your ingenuity. Like pulling off a great turn in a thinkey Euro game or even just a fantastic dice roll in the trashiest of Ameri-trash titles. Most games have you all sharing in the experience. But in Pretense, because it sits in the background, and because everyone has their own unique role they are working on, it’s hard to appreciate a player’s ingenuity if you even notice it at all. Hence, “heh, nice.”

This is hardly a big flaw but, you see, I know it can be done! A few months ago I wrote a review of Ninja: Silent But Deadly (yes, I know it sounds like a fart name, bear with me), another meta-game where you are trying to get people to see your Ninja card, without anyone seeing you hide it. So they’ll get slipped under game boards ready for clean up, or hidden in cupboards or in the bathroom. And every so often you’ll hear the anguished cry of a player stumbling upon one and you’ll all be laughing, even if you didn’t hide it there. The fact that everyone is faced with the same challenge in Ninja, coupled with how much scope there is for ingenuity, is I think why everyone enjoyed playing Ninja so much more than Pretense.

With repeated plays, as people get to experience the same roles as others, this appreciation may grow. There is certainly much more variety to Pretense, there’s even some blank cards for you to create your own roles. Pretense feels great when you’re pulling off a success, and otherwise blends into the background, to even be forgotten about. It’s a game you could enjoy if you’re all happy focused on your own element of the game, or if your group is willing to play it regularly to push the ingenuity and group appreciation. That’s certainly easy to do here as you can literally play the game every game night without disruption to your schedule! But I know it could have been so much better.

 

Rating: Heh, Nice

 

Our copy of Pretense was kindly provided for us by Esdevium Games. It has an RRP of £8.99 and will be available through your friendly local game store!