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Heredity: Book of Swan is a co-operative, narrative game for 1 to 4 players in which you play a family in a post-apocalyptic world in a campaign structured in five chapters, for a total playing time of 12-15 hours. You can take any number of references as your starting point: Mad Max, Last of Us, The Walking Dead, etc. All will be revealed as you play!
The five chapters of the campaign are grouped into five adventure packs including everything you need to play: terrain that forms the game board, characters to interact with, objects, narrative cards, etc. Some cards describe what is seen, found, and met; symbols indicate how each card is used. Depending on your actions and events in the scenario, you can turn over these cards and change the playing field, situation, objects, and characters as you advance through the story in your adventure.
No matter the player count, four player characters are controlled by the players, while Swan, the youngest member of the family, is a non-playable character. Each character has three action tokens, and you collectively decide in which order to use them to make your characters act out the story you're telling. (Some actions may or must be done by multiple characters at once for maximum effect.) By using the tokens on your character's cards (head, torso, legs), you can talk to other characters, look around, move, fight, or get better items. Each card can also be combined with equipment cards, whose location is indicated using a system of matching symbols. Equipment gives you additional actions or helps you do things. You can switch equipment between games or create new items to use. If your character gets hurt, they can't perform certain actions.
A "karma" deck is used during checks and combat and can potentially change the outcome of your actions. During the campaign, this deck transforms to match your choices and will influence your morale, actions, story evolution, and ending of the game.
The game has no fixed order of moves. Instead players follow the "time line" of cards that controls the game's events. The scenarios are written, but your actions lead to cards moving along the timeline as you explore one part of a scenario or another. This makes it possible to create a deeply narrative game without the need for an app.
- Simple setup and tear down
- Quick to play
- Engaging story
- Tactical combat system
- Good replayability due to choices
- Good for solo play
- Mechanics are inspired by Walking Dead, Mad Max, and The Last of Us
- Zombie apocalypse survival
- Post-apocalyptic world
- Walking Dead
- Mad Max
- The Last of Us
- Stranger Things
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — Players use discs to select actions like search, attack, kick, or walk.
- cooperative play — A cooperative scenario-based campaign game.
- Dice Rolling — Dice are used for combat and other actions.
- Hand Management — Managing action discs and character abilities.
- Modular Board — A small map in the middle, with player boards representing characters.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Grim Coven is an absolute amazing boss battler.
- This is a genre that I just absolutely love. It is so good.
- the stories that they tell are like nothing that we've seen, you know, and just just knowing that
- that's Bonkers the for foresight and thought that had to go into designing this.
- This just brings it into the into the Elder Scrolls universe.
- it makes it a much more in my mind deeper experience than like a Too Many Bones cuz it's got a it's like a campaign game.
- This game is a masterpiece in its design.
- This is the epitome of where exploration RPG and campaign games really need to be.
- It was a no-brainer at this case. I knew what my number one and number two were, you know, pretty pretty easily.
References (from this video)
- Engaging and thematic gameplay
- Short campaign is good for new players
- Surprising and enjoyable experience
- Good narrative elements
- Small card tiles and standees
- Survival, narrative campaign
- Post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested world
- Story-driven campaign
- The Last of Us
- Walking Dead
- Stranger Things
- Westworld
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — Uses symbols on character cards (eye, speech, hands, feet) that are covered as damage is taken, limiting actions.
- Campaign play — A five-chapter campaign with branching narrative elements.
- cooperative play — Players work together as a family to navigate the campaign.
- Karma Deck — Used during checks to influence outcomes.
- Modular Board — Players lay out card tiles as they explore.
- NPC Management — Players protect and interact with the NPC character Swan.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this one um I've said this before when this has come up.
- Um, this one's modern day and you are um actually you have like a you know it's you have a ocean um it's like a science building kind of thing. You're in the open ocean and you're like exploring the ocean. You're doing different stuff like that.
- This one is a scenario-based game as well.
- This is pretty to look at.
- It has a good solid solo mode as well
- I love that.
- this would be a game though if we did the two top 100s and average it out be higher for me.
- one of the best, if not the only game that I can think of where you're actually meant to sneak in and not actually fight uh the the enemies.
- one of the coolest things about this game is the the sheer amount of scenarios that you pick based off of the corporations.
- The way it handles the enemies is very very clean.
- So uh this game and stalker I think do do NPC movement very very well.
- the brass mags were an awesome addition to this. too to give that 3D effect.
- Burn Cycle is a fantastic game. Very unique uh from a lot of games that are out there.
- The network board was always a cool little mini game because that was like a mini game itself.
- this was my favorite game of of the uh Garfield games and that is Raiders of the North Sea.
- this one is one of the first games I played back in the day that had that interesting worker placement because you have there's three colored workers out there, uh, black, white, and gray.
- You get two actions every round.
- But you have to be weary about what you're picking up because you may be opening up something for somebody else, you know.
- This one also has the solo variant.
- it's so simple to set up and play and it's just it's an easy teach.
- Um, and uh, and yeah, I mean, that's cool.
- Madara is is a very interesting game because it's one that I absolutely love the story and it's the epitome of like the best kind of character build game um in my opinion for campaign games.
- But its dice system and its bosses are so bad.
- But really why this game why I love this game is is the story and just the sheer amount of items and uh ways to actually build your character.
- There's nothing out there that's like that's that really even comes close to this.
- So the writing is superb for this one.
- So, that is my 41.
- This is what I want every time I'm a campaign game comes out and it's like you can build your characters it's like right but can I or can I have two items equipped and that's it, you know,