Page Quest Review
Your hands tremble as you attempt to judge the weight of the game before you. Will your stand in be enough? There’s nothing for it now! You swiftly replace Page Quest with the sheet you brought with, disaster! The pedestal sinks down and the room begins to shake! It was 250 grams per square meter! Not 200! There’s nothing for it but to run.
Players: 1-2
Time: 10-20 mins
Ages: 12+
Designer: Michał Jagodziński, Paweł Niziołek
Artist: Paweł Niziołek, Jarosław Wajs
Publisher: Board&Dice
Page Quest is both a very cool game concept and a fascinating distribution/publishing model. Kickstarted a few months ago, backers (myself included) were opting into a 6 month game subscription. That is, we would receive 6 ‘episodes’ of Page Quest over a period of about 6 months, telling an on -going story as you played each release. Since shipping is expensive for one game let alone 6 one month after another, Page Quest was also a print and play game. That’s right! A print and play, succeeding on Kickstarter! And it works… because it only needs a single page*.
*mostly
An entire game on one piece of paper!? Well, sort of. You need to supply a few dice and some markers, there’s a few item and character cards you can print off and each scenario has a page of story and a page of rules for reference, but you could access those on a suitable electronic device. The core gameplay element is indeed on a single piece of paper and looking damn fine for it too.
It’s a Map!
Each page of Page Quest is… a quest! A comic strip journey that a Meeple of your choice will undergo. Well, you can use the full art standees if you’re willing to print them out too but, look, I’m not made of time. Besides, my Meeple is a movie star.
Like a comic strip, you must always advance along the sections relentlessly until you either reach the end or, apparently far more likely, perish in the attempt. Sorry Meeple.
The game in this high stakes adventure is in what you do in each spot and how you assign your limited selection of dice-shaped actions. Although really it’s about figuring when and where your next meal will be coming from, which certainly helped me identify with the character. Hmm, I wonder when lunch should be… You only have 4 action dice at any time and doing literally anything involves spending one of these dice. Once you run out you’ll need to rest and have some dinner to get all your dice back.
This regular structure allows you to look forward and plan out many steps ahead, spending your dice carefully, stalking through the jungle/tomb/whatever like a special forces unit behind enemy lines. Each play deliberate, always having the full scope of the puzzle in mind, but, because of the dice, never being able to math out your whole game despite having the whole thing literally printed out on the table in front of you. It’s a neat system!
Every step forces a choice as tough as that beef jerky you found in the abandoned cabin last turn because you can only do a single action, despite the majority of spaces having multiple options. You want to search because because the rewards are great, but maybe you need to save those high valued dice for the upcoming fight? You need to hunt because for some reason you barely brought any food with you and God knows you need your breakfast. And 2nd breakfast. And elevenses. But what about those totally pointless in-adventure coins that could be amazingly useful later in the campaign? Should you take those?
There really are no easy answers and making it through a Page Quest is always going to prove challenging. You need to carefully manage your resources (food, health, equipment). You want to time your rest spots efficiently to avoid traps and not miss out on valuable stuff. And you want to use your dice to beat the bad guys as efficiently as possible to earn XP and level up. You’ll need it to face the bosses.
If you hadn’t picked up on it, this game is hard! Which is what you want from a solo game. But it doesn’t feel hard for the right reasons – to me that is.
Snake Eyes!? Why did it have to be snake eyes?
My difficulties stem from two factors: the fact that higher numbers on your action dice are simply better, and the massive variance in enemy strengths. These factors both lead to situations where you can be brutalised because of how the dice land. Now, 1s on your player dice aren’t completely useless, and a lot of the puzzle is in figuring out how to ditch them without missing out on better opportunities. If you roll an average mix of values throughout the quest you’ll have a solid puzzle and a great adventure. But if you get a set of 4 bad values at the wrong time you’re up a certain brown creek without a paddle.
The enemies are even more frustrating and, sorry, I’m going to get technical for a moment. Each fight, when you come across one, involves rolling up the enemy’s stats on the above table and then rolling another die, adding it’s value to each of those stats. Which gives a variance of 6 points of strength and armour in any given fight. Given the max strength you are likely to see is 10, that is a huge degree of randomness, especially when a bad hit will strip you of most of your health.
Both of these amount to luck and I don’t like to criticise a game, especially a solo game, based on just luck. When people do this it often means they didn’t understand the strategies. Given how I consistently failed to win the first quest despite numerous attempts this would seem to be the case for me too. So I want to clarify that I don’t think the game is broken, just balanced more towards the wilder side of dice rolling than I, Euro lover that I am, tend to enjoy. I expect there are many of you out there that will prefer the unpredictable side of Page Quest, who would find that exciting. I found it frustrating.
This is a real shame. I really thought it might be up my street. The Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider theme is classic yet surprisingly rarely used. The single page concept is brilliant and the artwork is lovely. The action selection system gives you lots to think about and, thanks to the reference sheet you have each game, can be varied endlessly for each scenario that you play. But I was ultimately left grinding my teeth more than I was left smiling. I hope you get to ride off into the sunset with it instead.
Rating: the page is mightier than the board
I was provided with a review copy of Page Quest scenario 1, but I had also backed the Kickstarter by that point.
If you want to get hold of Page Quest, you can access it via the Board & Dice webstore.
Leave a Reply