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Game Info
Year
2018
Collection
Mechanic profile
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Description
Ruthless is a pirate themed game in which players will gather their crew and fight with their opponents.
The primary mechanic of Ruthless is deck building. Every turn a player must play a card or set of cards from their hand after which they may buy new cards to their deck. The deck consists of pirate cards, which allow to attack opponent, draw more cards and perform many more profitable actions, and treasure cards which allow to buy more and better pirates. Treasures can be discarded immediately to acquire gold when needed or added to the deck to benefit repeatedly from their bonus. New crew members are laid out in front of the players and their effects are used at the moment of acquisition.
At the end of each round the players will form poker combinations with the cards in front of them and compare the strength of their crew in play. The player with the strongest crew wins the battle and gains most points.
After five or six rounds (depending on player count) the game is over and the player with most points wins.
–description from the publisher
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Browse transcript mentions, sentiments, pros/cons, mechanics, topics, quotes, and references.
Total mentions: 3
This page: 3
Sentiment:
pos 2 ·
mix 1 ·
neu 0 ·
neg 0
Showing 1–3 of 3
Video sibCUIhBxQo
Playthrough at 0:00 sentiment: positive
video_pk 67727 · mention_pk 163931
Click to watch at 0:00 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
- Easy and quick setup.
- Great solo experience.
- Engaging narrative and world-building.
- Fun dice placement puzzles tied to classes.
- Satisfying character progression through experience and leveling.
- The reputation system adds variety and replayability.
- The player board is well-designed.
- Lots of replayability due to numerous stories, bosses, and items.
Cons
- Players need to be comfortable with randomness.
- Limited direct player-to-player cooperation in co-op mode.
Thematic elements
- Adventure, exploration, and combat against corruption and impending doom.
- Avarion, a world of endless woods, cities, and wilderness where corruption is spreading and monsters are appearing.
- The game uses an adventure book with numbered encounters tied to locations and specific adventure codes.
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — Players choose from various actions each turn, including travel, resting, engaging with adventures, and trading.
- Adventure Book — A large book contains numerous numbered encounters tied to specific locations or codes, driving the narrative.
- Character progression — Characters gain experience by exploring and can level up, increasing attributes and gaining new professions.
- Combat — Players engage in combat against monsters using dice rolls and character abilities, with distinct phases.
- dice placement — Dice results are used to trigger class abilities and manipulate outcomes, creating a puzzle element.
- Dice rolling — Dice are rolled to determine random events, combat outcomes, and progress on the doom tracker.
- exploration — Players move across a map, exploring new locations which can trigger events, grant experience, and cause damage.
- Reputation system — Reputation with different cities can be gained or lost, providing discounts and unlocking benefits.
- set collection — Players can acquire various items, weapons, armor, and profession cards that enhance their character.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- This game to me just screams solo player. So if you're a solo player, this is definitely for you.
- The game is so easy to set up and play, right? It'll take you literally 5 minutes to set it down, have an adventure.
- This is one of the better adventure systems, especially for solo mode, because it plays quick.
- The writing, I feel like, is quite solid in here.
- The player board is also awesome. So dang cool.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video IXOacyfD7V4
Review at 0:18 sentiment: positive
video_pk 67682 · mention_pk 163863
Click to watch at 0:18 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
- Absolutely love this game.
- Does so many things that I love in adventure board gaming.
- Perfect solo game.
- Effortlessly easy to learn and play.
- Excellent at the character level with many ways to build out your character.
- Lots of build variety.
- The game plays very quickly, especially solo.
- Super super cool.
- The turn sequence is very simple.
- Combat is pretty fast and fun due to dice manipulation.
- Love exploring this world.
- The writing is pretty good.
- A whole heck of a lot to love about Restless.
- It's in a really good place as a prototype.
- The box size is normal and will fit on a shelf nicely.
Cons
- There are some errors in the adventure book, and they are going through corrections.
- The reviewer found two mistakes in the adventure book so far.
- The red and purple D10s are pretty close in color in the prototype.
- The design of the D20 timer mechanism has some randomness.
Thematic elements
- Adventure
Comparison games
- Runebound
- Talisman
- Lands of Galier
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Campaign play — The game is played over a short campaign consisting of three chapters.
- Character progression — Characters gain experience, unlock abilities, and can improve attributes like intellect, strength, agility, and fortune.
- Class system — Character classes are based on the weapon equipped and are represented by double-sided cards.
- cooperative play — The game can be played cooperatively with up to four players.
- Deck building — Players can equip gear cards, including weapons, armor, and magic potions, from a large deck of numbered cards.
- dice manipulation — Players can manipulate dice rolls in combat to achieve desired outcomes or trigger special effects.
- Dice rolling — The game uses D10s for combat (strength, quick, magic attacks) and a D20 for the doom track, along with a D100 for random adventures.
- exploration — Players explore different regions on the map, shading them in as they are visited and gaining experience.
- questing — Characters can undertake quests that may involve multiple steps, often initiated by random encounters or events.
- random encounters — The game features random encounters keyed to specific regions, utilizing a large book of adventures.
- Reputation system — Players can gain or lose reputation with different factions, which can unlock benefits or lead to becoming outlawed.
- Resource management — Players collect resources like plants, fur, bones, and gold to buy items or trade.
- World Events — World event cards introduce ongoing effects that can complicate the game and change various aspects of gameplay.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- The goal of this rulebook is to be read only once. Ideally, you could use it to kindle the flames in your fireplace before the first session.
- The giant book of adventures is really just a huge book of random encounters.
- The combat in this game is fun. There's lots of dice manipulation and as your character grows, you can do some really neat things by manipulating dice, rolling extra dice. You can manipulate the dice that the monsters have rolled, all kinds of cool things. It's really neat.
- There is so much build variety in this game and I can't wait to kind of just play it again to see what kind of a new build I can make.
- Restless. This game ticks off a lot of boxes of games that I look for and it is a lot of fun.
References (from this video)
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Video YFdXZvZWtOI
Board Game Critique Review at 0:00 sentiment: mixed
video_pk 62552 · mention_pk 155273
Click to watch at 0:00 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
mixed
Pros
- Engaging tactical dice combat with a clever slotting system
- Clear, tactile production elements (dual-layer boards, slotting, visible progression)
- Accessible for newcomers while offering meaningful decisions
- Strong variation in player loadouts and playstyles across acts
Cons
- Overwhelming randomness can crush strategic control over longer campaigns
- Limited and often solo-leaning cooperative interaction outside boss fights
- Expansion content and base game contents are not clearly delineated in campaigns
- Production risk and delivery timing warnings due to a first-time publisher
Thematic elements
- cooperative fantasy exploration with dice-driven combat
- Everion, a three-act cooperative fantasy world
- choose-your-own-adventure influenced by D100-driven events
Comparison games
- Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
- Descent: Legends of the Dark
- Merchants Cove
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- D100 adventure book events — Exploration and events are driven by a D100-based adventure book, with territory lookups and quest codes guiding multi-step objectives.
- dice slotting — Roll colored d10s and assign them to slots on a character board; minimum values activate abilities; middling rolls can be combined with gear to achieve effects.
- doom tracker and boss encounters — Global doom progression pushes toward boss fights; escalating pressure creates tension across chapters and acts.
- dual-layer character boards — Character progression is shown on layered boards with dedicated spaces for weapons, armor, spells, and items, providing clear loadouts.
- simultaneous combat resolution — Damage and outcomes resolve simultaneously; killing a monster doesn’t prevent its attack that round.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- The dice combat system is genuinely the most fun part.
- Dying is super forgiving.
- Overwhelming randomness crushes strategic control.
- Combat is a tactical puzzle, but broader game structure lacks meaningful player control.
- Dual-layer boards with visible progression are brilliant design.
- Campaigns feel like choose-your-own-adventure with rules that you keep needing to reference.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
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