The sky breaks blue and bright over a mouth-watering field of obstacles. You’ve adopted, loved, and trained your team of Agility Dogs to share in the joys of a day just like this. Their exuberance is catching as they prepare to breathtakingly weave the poles, sail over hurdles, blast through tunnels, round corners at top speed with fur a-tussle, and harness lightning while waiting for your cue on the trust-testing pause box. Your Husky's glacier blue eyes are clear and focused, your Golden Retriever mirrors the sun with radiant energy, and the feisty little Jack Russell pup is ready to run with the big dogs. Test your wit and instincts in this two-player game of vision and versatility!
Agility applies a unique mechanic in which cards that supply resources also select actions. On your turn, you play a Training Card that provides one of two types of resources in varying quantities while also granting an action building off of what your opponent just played. This encourages clever planning and timing. Training you need may be at odds with the action you’d like, so weighing your options will be crucial. Resources may be used to adopt dogs or to clear obstacles on the three courses you've drafted from the six available each game. Courses can only be claimed once a dog is adopted, so there is a race within a race to snatch up Wonderdogs or Underdogs well suited to the available courses. Then it’s nip and tuck as the canine competitors bound over, under, and through to the finish lines!
- gorgeous box art
- interesting distinctive look
- not into abstract games
- path-building and sabotage
- abstract strategy with hex-based stations
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- abstract strategy using finite state machines — Gameplay is based on finite state machines within an abstract grid.
- path/bridge alignment — Create paths of bridges between stations while protecting your own path.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this is a ravans burger release and they're a huge board game publisher
- it's a cooperative dice game
- Back to the Future as a movie franchise is all about time travel
- you are going to be building out network tiles all across this map
- hidden movement
- I think this is a wonderful looking cover
- this is an incredibly ambitious game
- the decisions that you make have a lasting impact on game to game
- history is embedded in each copy
- there are no scripted narratives or predetermined end points
- it's a work replacement style game but the workers are communal
- the unique meeple distribution system and innovative mechanism of mining the resources
- the card game looks like it has a lot of similar things to fresco the main game
- in the dice game version you are going to be rolling dice exactly three times
References (from this video)
- Humorous self-awareness and meta-commentary
- Creative integration of card terminology with video game lore
- Presence of a real-world game reference (Magisite) adds a touch of authenticity
- Potentially dark or grotesque imagery may not appeal to all audiences
- Limited concrete gameplay detail due to the concise transcript
- Milling cards, graveyard interactions, and corpselike humor
- Dark fantasy dungeon-crawler world with necromantic motifs
- Self-referential, playful, meta-commentary on game mechanics
- Magisite
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- card milling — Drawing and discarding cards to manipulate future draws and resource availability.
- Deck Manipulation — Drawing and discarding cards to manipulate future draws and resource availability.
- graveyard summoning — Interacting with a discard/graveyard zone to trigger effects or revival-like advantages.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Hi, I'm Panie Valentine. I'm playing Tara, Herold of Hope. Tara is my favorite Final Fantasy character.
- I'm milling cards and then summoning them from my graveyard, which is a reference to Magisite, and playing with the corpses of your father and his friends.
- This is every trans woman's favorite Final Fantasy character.