I have written about Caper before. I played the physical game then. Caper: Europe is an updated version of Caper, and I played it online. It is mostly the same game with minor adjustments. The game seems to be doing well. It's getting a new edition after all. Had the first version not done well, the publisher wouldn't have started work on an updated version.
Unfortunately for me, I didn't find the game interesting. It is certainly well produced and it looks great. The back-and-forth drafting means any card you don't use now will potentially be used against you by your opponent. Competition is not only around being stronger in the three locations. This is just one part of scoring. During the game there are several other ways to score points, and you need to consider them all. You want to collect sets of artifacts. You want to make use of specific cards which can score points for you. You must consider the unique powers and bonuses at each location.
Another game which has a similar tug of war mechanism is Zenith, and that works much better for me. For me, I like that in Zenith you have a sense of building up something, e.g. choosing to advance in techs, and accumulating cards so that you get better discounts in future. In Caper: Europe, I feel I am reacting to the cards I draw trying to make good combos. My reason for a game not working for me is often the same - it doesn't offer me anything I haven't seen or experienced before. That is not a very good way of judging whether a game is good or not. It is only a measure of whether I have played something similar. I might like a game which many others don't like because they have played similar games and I have not. Let me diverge into a different topic.
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I am always a little uncomfortable thinking about my blog posts as game reviews. The first problem is I often play a game just once. This might not be sufficient for me to give a fair review. Most of what I write should probably be called first impressions than reviews. Some game reviews by other bloggers and vloggers regurgitate the rules, which is not something I like doing. I omit many rule details, but I do write about some specific rules which I find interesting.
When I write a blog post about a game, it is more of sharing an experience and introducing a game which others may not have heard of. I share why I like or do not like the game. If I help someone discover a game they like and enjoy, that makes me happy. One thing I have now come to appreciate is that generally there are no bad games. I have this appreciation after going into game design and publishing myself. Games as a product are designed to be fun and to make people happy. Most of the time they will work for the people they are designed for. There certainly are many games which don't work for me, and I can explain why they don't, but now I can better appreciate who they will work for. I can see what they have which makes them fun for their intended audience. There are no bad games, only bad fit games. You can easily imagine how Brass: Birmingham will completely kill the joy of game night if you try to foist it on a group of non gamers.
One awkward situation as I transition from purely a gamer to also being a designer and publisher is how I write about other local Malaysian games. In the past I never thought highly of local games. Now that I am friends with many local designers and publishers, it would not be nice of me to write poor reviews of my friends' games. I don't want to hurt their feelings. I often have my own games criticised, and it doesn't feel good to hear people say that your game is bad. It is something I have to learn to handle. I know I can't please everyone. I just hope I do please someone. I have now come to appreciate that in most cases I am not the intended audience of local games. That's why they don't work for me. But I want to talk about them, because I want to help my friends reach their intended audience. It's about finding the right game for the right person.
I still do what I do. I'll tell you I don't like this massive hit of a game. And I promise to do my best to articulate why. Perhaps the reason why I don't like a game will be exactly why you will like it.
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