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In Drum Roll each player takes over the role of a circus owner in the early 1900s. Each player moves around Europe hiring performers and giving shows.
There are five main categories of performers: the Tamers, the Acrobats, the Bizarre, the Magicians, and the Jugglers. Each of them have different demands the player must fulfill in order to give their best performance.
The requirements, which vary between performers, are Rehearsal, Equipment, Supplies, Costumes, and Promotion. There are three levels of performances that each performer can end up doing in a show: a poor one, a good one, and an outstanding one. The higher the level of performance, the more requirements each performer will have to fulfill in order to achieve it.
The better the performance, the more each player can get out of it. When performers do outstanding performances, the player must choose between getting the maximum amount of benefit out of them, or getting the Prestige Points they are offering. There are also other ways to improve a circus such as trailers, investments, and personnel that will help your performers do their best.
- Thematic humor and artwork
- Accessible 1-4 player design
- Engaging drafting/set-collection combo
- Fits casual to mid-weight gamers
- Prototype balance may change
- Some cards duplicate in the set leading to less variability
- High planning demand for younger players
- Set collection and drafting via posts/ads
- Fantasy social media network run by imps
- Humorous parody of social media
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area influence / influence tokens — Influencers reduce cost to sell ads and affect scoring in ties.
- Drafting — On each turn, players draft cards from a market of posts and AI/ads.
- End condition / ending — First player to sell three ads ends the round; others get a final turn.
- Hand Management — Players manage a hand of cards and actions to maximize sale of ads.
- Influence Points — Influencers reduce cost to sell ads and affect scoring in ties.
- Set Collection — Players collect posts to match icon combinations to sell ads.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Doom Scroll is a light set collecting and drafting game
- The set collection is very challenging
- this is a game that has a theme that I like
- it's a silly fantasy social media Network
- the cards are silly and they're kind of fun
- it's quite complex in terms of the Drafting and the set collection