Top 10 Immersive Games - A Theme Where You're Truly Invested

0:15 hi folks welcome to the show I'm Luke Hector and I'm the broken Meep this is a show devoted to board games where I get reviews top 10 and always give my honest opinion regardless of the consequences that might before me we'll get on with the top 10 in just a second but first I want to say a quick word from the sponsor of this channel difference sponsor for this video chaps I just wanted to give a quick shout out to shirts and merch Studio on Etsy this is a small UK based company selling shirts basically gaming related t-shirts as you can see I am donning the cavera shirt as I call it I know it says the agricul shirt on the website but Cava beats agria blow me but they also do other ones as well such as this keep calm a read the rules t-shirt that I've also been donning for recent conventions and as I say they are gaming t-shirts this is a large t-shirt which fits fairly snugly on someone as somewhat big and rotund as myself maybe I might get a couple of extra larges just to get me through the summer heat wve but they fit pretty fine they're roomy they're comfortable and of course they have various different designs to coincide with certain games like Arc NOA and as I say Ag gri and a few others even idel and root I think feature on there and of course there's other ones with typical meat pool designs to cater for both genders clothing delicious clothing so check them out and see if they've got a design that you want to buy your gamer spouse for their birthday thank you shirts and merch for sponsoring this video and now on with the top 10 get on with it right quick costume change because it does get pretty warm in here with the lights and that and I want to wear that gaming shirt later on for some gaming so uh you know I kind of wanted to put it aside for a moment but this top 10 is top 10 immersive games I've

1:47 made a lot of like talk and big deals on podcasts and that about theme in games good mechanics will make a game good but a good theme will bring me back for the second play this is kind of Luke's law basically when it comes to my feelings on a lot of games and certainly theme makes a game a lot better for me it makes it easier to teach it makes it more enjoyable to play and this can go for marres Euro story based campaigns whatever it can go for any type of game but I thought okay can we expand on this a bit cuz I didn't want to just do top 10 ftic games firstly I've already done top 10 ftic euros with Paul Grogan you can have a look at that live stream if you want that was quite a lengthy one but it was a good fun one and and certainly one of the more popular ones actually funny enough but I didn't want to just simply just do top 10 formatic games because well the sky your limit when it comes to talking about 10 formatic games so I wanted to go into a little bit more detail get it a little bit Niche and I thought well what about immersion cuz I talk about immersion I used to talk about it when I did detail reviews before and immersion was one of the segments on there and it's not just a case of oh the game has a good theme but it's how immersed in the world am I in you know how how like sucked into the game am I with it setting and what you're doing and all that and I thought that's different because you can have a thematic Euro where the mechanics make sense to what's going on but it's not necessarily immersive I mean arnova for example you know yeah the mechanics make sense for like you know like the different animals kind of make sense for their abilities and building the zoo and getting AAL for people coming to see animals and getting conservation points

3:19 for helping the environment the theme is there but imersion h i mean I'm making up a lot of the stuff for the emersion in that game yes I'm joking about other people's zoos but you are still building the of cards and getting icons and stuff like that so I would I would call it reasonably for M but I wouldn't necessarily call it you know immersive there is a little bit of a difference between the two and so I figured I'd try a top 10 and see how things go and it was uh harder than I thought in fact I dare say I could do a top 20 of this and this is a mix of euros and you know story amera fry games so Euros can be immersive as well although most of the Euros probably ended up in the 20 through 11 segment so the top 10 is probably going to be a little bit more away from that but it' be interesting to hear your thoughts on some of these and I'm sure that some of the honorable mentions you're going to be like why weren't they in your top 10 but I have my reasons cuz it's not just the game being immersive it's also the fact that I enjoy playing the game you know there got to have some Factor you could have the most immersive game about a train driver who goes off to you like oh my God he's got to run the small business he's got to lay the train tracks will he pay the dividends to his shareholders oh we'll find out soon and it would still suck what the hell was that okay it doesn't matter how rich that story you make it would still suck as a game so you know there is a bit of a difference but enough waffling let's get on with it for my number 10 we have probably my only space game on the list and people will think well surely a lot of these Space games can be immersive depends and even then the game play's got to match

4:50 with it for me this is my favorite space game the one where I go right this is the space game I want to pull out if somebody wants to play something of the genre there are many to choose R but for me empires of the Void takes it and I'm not even going to call it a second edition anymore cuz frankly you can't get the original so who cares but this one is my space game of choice the idea yes you're building up your kind of like your Colony ship and you're going off to different planets and meeting the population and waging battles and doing missions but I like the fact that this world feels like a living world when you're in this you can see the planets that are out there but they've all got different species on there you can decide whether you want to be friends with them or whether you want to attack them I claim this planet in the name of Mars H isn't that lovely both have different repercussions one gets you the resources but then one gets you the allies of the planet to help you in combat and then on top of that you've got all the different Mission cards that you pull the power card so one minute you're doing a delivery from X to Y the next minute you're you know battling some other warship and next minute you're you know like doing diplomatic negotiations over another planet you know it's it's not like you know the it's not like there's a mechanic for each of those bits but you are telling like little mini stories of your Saga and I love the events in it I don't like it when games have events which is just start of the round here's the event round one event round two event I don't like those these ones are very Dynamic events because you take an event for each of the planets and you just shuffle them into the deck and then they come out at random times they could come out all at once they could come spread out one could happen at the very

6:22 beginning and these range from economic Booms to sea monsters to self-destruct mechanisms on planets you know there's a lot of variety in those cards and the fact that they're just in there randomly means that the world feels alive and as a such I can get immersed in this space game way more than something like Twilight Imperium and certainly more than something like Eclipse now I did contemplate something like ISS Vanguard but Isis Vanguard with it dice puzzle does kind of take me out of the immersion when I'm in a mission most of the immersion is when I'm on the ship doing all the tinkering and all the upgrades and stuff like that so coupled with the long setup and everything that just kind of falls off the list and doesn't quite meet my standards for this but empires of the Void is still one of my f well still is my favorite space game to date and I love it the world is alive and therefore I'm going to get immersed in it more my number nine was a bit of a heated debate with myself cuz I had a choice of two games here and this is to fit the Star Wars license and I thought well technically this one is maybe a little bit more immersive but then I never get it play it's only two player and a lot of things just kind of thought I don't know maybe it doesn't fit to be on this list cuz I just don't know how often I'll ever play it this one though I can play solo or with other players and I get it to the table more and the recent expansion has uplifted it in my appreciation which is Star Wars outer rim this one is basically the bounty hunters of Star Wars so you're going

7:52 around doing missions and you know getting in the way of the Rebels the empires the huts and things like that you're you know getting you're getting bounties from all these different NPC characters you're upgrading your ship buying a new ship doing all these missions and and all sorts of things like that and it you're telling the story of your character as they rise to fame throughout the game and everybody else is doing the same occasionally getting in your face or sometimes even cooperating with you at times but this one is a very good immersive world for the Star Wars Universe this one doesn't when I'm playing the game I don't feel like I'm just playing a bunch of mechanics I feel like I'm telling my character story and while going through and doing everything by the end of the game I have this story to tell from start to finish from this ship to that ship to these guns to this bounty to this Mission and it does a good job but it wouldn't necessarily be higher on the list I did contemplate Star Wars rebellion but again two players three hours hard to get to the table compared to this one it's it's just that I did debate I mean Star Wars rebellion could easily make my 20 through 11 frankly but I just figured that for game play this one kind of elevates itself above it purely because it is easier to get played and yet still does a good job of the immersion Factor Star Wars rebellion has a lot of immersive elements but you still got to remember one or two like you know mechanics in there and also one of the main problems with the original game the combat wasn't fixed until an expansion came out for it so I am denied

9:25 and I'm sure if you want to replace it with Star Wars rebellion at this number nine spot then by all means do so you know you've got to have a Star Wars game on this list somewhere and for me outer rim is my choice this one is interesting cuz some of you are going to agree with this wholeheartedly some of you going to think I'm on quots this is a pure Euro game pure Euro game very formatic Euro game very interactive Euro game very recent Euro game yes this monster of a Euro game this 4our plus you know four player tops monstrosity of an economic Euro game is in my top 10 immersive games because even though this isn't a theme I typically go for you know I don't like to talk about real world politics outside of this but it just this Euro game has surprised me in just how invested I am in the game and what's going on every time I bring out hegemony what so much so that at bacon this week I'm probably going to be bringing it out twice and I brought it out at the last convention and I even played it solo on tabletop Simulator the other day this is yes it's a Euro game it's economics and tax and things like that but the the social politics part of it you know the idea that you've got the working class that are good with you know that they can exert pressure on the on the like on the voting side of things for laws you've got the state watching over everything the capitalists just want to make money they don't care about the

10:55 workers they want to pay them little the middle class is self-sufficient all these things interact together in such a clever way that when I'm playing this game with other people we are talking about the politics side of things both in and out of the game and everything in the game feels just richly ftic and I just kind of just get into the role whichever one I'm playing the capitalist the capitalist scum or The workingclass Peasants as we call it you know just for last obviously and it just kind of works I couldn't be much more higher up this list and I did debate whether this was going to meet my maybe my 2 through1 but maybe it's a cult of the new factor I mean I'm not typically Cult of the new but it is a new Euro game that I am enjoying but I'm enjoying it a lot and this is for a game with a fairly eclectic theme and a long game length so it talks wonders I'm still enjoying it this much I never get involved in politics I'm invested I'm immersed in what is going on I even though it's based on real world settings it just does it so well that it's a good representation and it makes me enjoy the game more and makes it slightly easier to teach I mean it's a long teach don't get me wrong this is not a game that you think oh yeah I can teach this easily but when you reference certain things F matically in the game people get it they understand it it's long it's huge it's a brain burner but even though it has a long game length I'm still interested in what's going on with everybody and I'm immersed in the the theme of the game rather than just simply the mechanics of the card system or the law system and

12:28 that it works really well you may think it's a bit of a cheap but for me I think it just does such a good job with its theme that it deserves a mention my number seven has been a top 10 game for me for many many years in most cases my number one yes this one is a card game it's a co-op but every time I play this partially because you know slight bias I do love superheroes as a theme I got to give props the Sentinels in the Multiverse which all always gets me immersed every time I'm playing it whether it's Solo or preferably with other people and everybody is role playing their hero we've got the villain every single one behaves uniquely differently F matically and while I'm playing it I feel like I'm just basically telling my own MCU movie you know with all the different characters one on support one doing the fighting one blocking the fact that everybody gets hit Lots at the start and then slowly reels back and and starts to punch the other guy in the face it's well you know all right it's a bit more glamorous than that but still dude you're embarrassing me in front of the wizard I'm sorry I cannot wait for Rook City to come out we are in the UK which sucks when it comes to releases which means that we still don't have Rook City out on retail Rel everybody else has enjoying it in America and all that on Kickstarter and I don't have Rook City on my shelf I want Rook City soon please soon hurry up import Duty border control whatever hey calm down I just want it so bad there's so

13:58 much good stuff in expansion I'm looking forward to but just generally Sentinels and the Multiverse I mean one of the most immersive experiences I had with the old version the enhanced version was in the first one playing the uh what was it called Oblivion uh it was the last expansion they did and it was basically Jumping the Shark for the game but it basically was the whole thing of going up against the equivalent of Thanos or dark side and or Galactus I suppose would fit and it was like a multi-hero battle it went on for hours this is me playing it solo and you'd have different to do and if you did them like new characters and items would appear out of time and reality it just made for one of the best experiences I've had playing a superhero game ever even though it took forever and burnt my brain but a typical game of Sentinels will still get me immersed and I know some of it is because I love superheroes but then to be honest that's kind of going to factor into your immersion really isn't it I made that like ridiculous train driver example earlier I don't care about trains it doesn't matter what you do with a train driver story I'm not going to get immersed in it so naturally I've got to have some liking for the subject matter although hgem not always there are exceptions to the rules so you know I suppose I mean it's not on this list but Obsession for example I talked heavily in that review about how that can be something I can get immersed and even though I don't necessarily like the theme that's attracted to it so you know these little things to bear in mind but Sentinels ah yeah every time immersed always works you ever tried schwarma

15:31 it is getting hot in here I got to be slightly careful but this is now going on to more of a story based game cuz you there are story based games and I think as we get further up they're going to be mostly like that but this one is an lcg probably in terms of immersion my favorite lcg not necessarily my favorite lcg that I play it's hard to rank them at this point but in terms of story and immersion Arkham Horror lcg does the best job this one tells a very good interesting story throughout the whole campaign it retains that really good horror element of the culu universe while giving you you know uniquely identifiable characters that you build up with experience over time so you get more invested in the character you're playing and their backstories I mean I've actually got let me show you on this I know here we go I haven't even finished reading this yet I bought this book ages ago right it's got backstories short stories for all the characters so there's like Marie Lambo there and it's like usually about four or five pages or so depending there zoies there and it's got great artwork and it basically tells the backstory of how they get involved in the culu universe I haven't even read all these yet because M I just don't get time to read but this is the kind of thing that I like from the Arkham Universe to you know just a short quick snippet to give me a backstory for a character and you know that book is really cool but then I also it's it's things like that that make me like the lcg the story that it tells who the campaign it's kind of like a short story but it's gritty it's you know it's

17:01 immersive it's very fmatic and there are times where I'm dreading some of the missions I'm going on I mean call blind me as an arachnophobe you can understand that I struggled a little bit with the Dream Eater Saga I have never sweated in a card game so much before playing a spider esque scenario hello for Arkham Horror the first mission that you do in the waking world in the dream eaters I swear would give me nightmares I swear probably did give me nightmares we have such sites to show you it was the scariest experience I've had to do as an arachnophobe with that game it's got to be immersive if it's going to do that to me cuz it's not just oh the picture's nasty or whatever no the whole concept of what's going on in that scenario is just downright freaky and so it's got to be doing something well in the emersion department to make me like go to make me dread that much your kids are soft

18:02 my number five is a brand new game that I've been playing mainly only since what December time I think I got it and this is huge it comes in a box about this big on the camera I mean I took it to a convention recently and I pretty much carried it on my shoulders like that that's how big this game is but I like dark gritty settings for board games and computer games because I feel that it's easier to get immersed in those worlds because it is more meaningful you know and you know it's not sort of like happy happy sunshine and rainbows and all that boring stuff no I like a good gritty dark setting when it comes to you know World building and so this one based on a video game and probably the best board game adaptation of a video game in terms of representing the source material Frost Punk is definitely a really immersive game I mean you are surviving in a post-apocalyptic cold winter yes it's worker placement with how you do the various actions but you are conferring with everybody else around the table playing it solo it works for me I mean I played a free player of it for ages at the last convention and it was a blast they enjoyed it you know we had a great time we won the scenario the storm scenario on easy mode yes get those easy Society startups from uh Board Game Geek trust me your experience will be more enjoyable if you use them rather than the stupidly hellish difficulty ones in the base box just give us you son of a but the game itself is still great fun and where the immersion comes from is not just the interaction with other players it's also the stories that are told throughout with those morning and dusk cards you

19:34 flip over a card in the morning has something that you got to decide multiple options and they add different cards to a dusk deck that at the end of the round you draw from and you might have to face the consequences good or bad of your decisions doing other things so the whole game is basically one big story that you're telling and all these different events you will remember from the game like you will remember what you did whether you put children to work or shove them into a shelter you'll remember whether you built a fighting ring and then and some guy actually accidentally get killed in the fighting ring you'll have something about a quack doctor in a cave somewhere and you thought you know what let's train him up maybe he'll be a good doctor and it turned out he was but then they'll be another story about look we ain't got time to worry about your safety concerns or whatever I just want a railing you know one railing right here and then the generator half explodes and you end up with a casualty and you know cool stories like that are told from those cards making this a really rich formatic game and there is just nothing better I mean that's close there are close approximations out there but in terms of respecting its original Source material Frost Punk is just an A+ example of

20:48 such my number four is a game I have not pulled out for some considerable time mainly because I need to relearn the rules to it and it is a little bloated with the expansion thrown in it's not even a theme that I typically go for I know pretty much nothing about movies from this genre I've watched a few and frankly they're more parodies of the setting rather than being proper examples although maybe with one or two exceptions certainly I've not watched any of the classics you know Clint eastw and all that lot but yeah you can see where I'm going for this this is Western Legends Western Legends is a Sandbox game where everybody takes up the role of a character in a western theme I do not watch western movies and when I say I've watched stuff that's mostly like parodies of the setting I mean yeah I've watched stuff like Django Unchained is that Western I'm not entirely sure but then what else have I watched Maverick Back to the Future free Wild Wild West I mean you know most films I watch that involve the wild west are typically just parodies or comedies I've not watched a Clint Eastwood movie for example I've not watched Tombstone or anything like that I'll beg the differ sir even though I use the clip every now and again you know I know the clip of the scene I just never watched the actual movie but when I played this game you can do whatever you like you can go fight Bandits you can go rob trains you can go play poker high stakes you can go you know go find go rat was it Russell cattle you can go find gold prospecting you can go off and do other little side missions with the expansion you can do even more stuff go to a different city and do all sorts and get items and horses and guns and and be

22:19 a Lawman or be a be a bandit you know soort be aband you know be be against the law or with the law you know am I going to catch perpetrators am I going to be the one robbing the bank in the first place so much you can do in this game so much theme strong theme I mean no game represents the Western theme better than Western Legends does and when you play it you are immersed in the wild west setting even if you're someone like me who doesn't typically know anything about westerns Clint East would never we anything like this you can't help but talk like a cowboy you can't help but you know get into the fact that all your cards are poker cards and you're playing it like you're in a proper High poker game you and and stuff like that it works wonders and granted I need to seriously relearn the rules to this game I've ever going to bring it out again but if somebody else wants to take it to a convention and knows it all inside out then b means I'll jump into that game although curb the game length if you're going to play with more than four players just saying but it's still great fun wonderfully immersive Western Legends does the trick if you're into this theme a lot better than I am then you need to try this

23:29 right for number three we are looking back at the culu myos and this will be the last culu game that makes the list I kind of wanted to keep just one game for each license for the most part but in the case of culu I couldn't quite do that you know this one had to be alongside Arkham horr lcg and when I thought of the two of them I thought now this one is clearly the most immersive because this one is scenario based quick scenarios with the app giving you assistance with cool stories the theme the soundtrack it all the different sound effects of it and just the the puzzles that you do of course mansions and madness has to be on a list about immersive games this one is certainly one I haven't played in some time but I still have it and I still enjoy it and I will still happily bring it out every now and again and you know whether it's for a short scenario which sadly there isn't a lot of seriously fantasy fly what is it about you and not making games short or the longer scenarios that take a lot more time whether it's by yourself or with a group this one is just a perfect immersive culian storytelling game I mean it's you know you don't have to worry about it being some extended long length campaign that you got to commit multiple sessions to you can just play the scenario one evening one day perhaps and go through the scenario and you're done IND dusted but the app does a brilliant job of keeping you immersed in the story what is going on the characters you interact with the soundtrack The ambient noise the Ambient sound effects that come off there even the combat when you're fighting against different monsters and it's not just the case of you attack do free damage it's all right what type of

25:00 attack you're doing and then it gives a little example of what is happening in the combat you know do you slide under the knees and then give it a sweep you know and take out its feet you know it's do you like you know cous spell that Sparks off in your hands and then shoots like Star Wars s lightning bolt or whatever you know it it tells a good story and keeps you fully immersed in its setting yes you know some people are going to be like oh but what happens when they don't support the app the app will still work for some considerable time okay it's not not like it's going to suddenly die and I'm the bad guy and trust me even if it died right now like completely died right now and I couldn't play the game I've gotten enough hours out of that game to make it worthwhile especially with all the expansion content that's in there but Pro tip for maners of Madness forget the Miniatures the Miniatures in it are garbage they're not good-looking Miniatures they're fragile and frail and you have to try and get them on these little plastic cover pieces that hide the tile that's relevant to it with all the actual important information on and by the time you've got a lot of expansions you can't even identify what these Miniatures are leave them in the box or burn them frankly what you do is that as soon as it says bring out this monster get the tile put it on the board it has artwork it has useful information that is all you need the Miniatures are dumb don't use them Z Garcia agrees with me on this and believe me it's the way I will always play Mansions of Madness now forget the Miniatures So Pro tips aside that you do have to deal with this game is still wonderfully immersive if anything taking out the Miniatures

26:31 probably helps with the immersion Factor but yeah I can't think of a more immersive culu game although I'd be interested to know your thoughts if there's one you consider better from number two we are going back to video game sourced adaptations and this one was the king of the world before Frost Punk came along but this one is still fantastic I have so many memories of games I've play played of this whether it's a scenario or the freea campaign you get in the latest expansion I think days of The Siege or something like that and this one is just great it's brilliant it's dark it's gritty it's based on a real world setting kind of like the aftermath or the like a different perspective from a war torn city yes this would trigger a lot of people who play this game because it's uh doesn't hold back in some of its subject matters I mean put it this way the last campaign I did involved to me having to do loads of side missions for an orphanage only for it then to be shelled by the time I got to it in the epilog because somebody didn't do a good job of finding the safe location whoopsie you're a monster but this is this war of mine this war of mine dark gritty you know really Grizzly I mean you've got characters who get miserable and commit suicide because they just can't handle it anymore this is a very dark game okay and not for the fainthearted not for the easily triggered I do warn you of this now I mean play the video game for about 30 minutes and tell me if that is enough to

28:03 like go okay maybe this is a bit too dark for me because trust me it doesn't let up in this game you know the mechanics are fairly straightforward I mean for the most part you are you know allocating actions to the different characters so that you can try and scr food make water you know make a chair whatever you know C excavate part of your house border up because thugs are going to come around try and steal your stuff but then you go out on Scavenging missions and you have have a deck of cards you Shuffle it they've got different little things that happen in them like you know you may have uneventful times you might have other ragers you got to contend with you might find an old woman and an old yeah an old woman and uh husband there and it's like well what do I do I mean do I negotiate with you for some stuff do I uh you know Nick your stuff do I try and steal it do I you know do I horrifically actually kill you and take your stuff I mean this is how dark it can get sometimes people it's hard to talk about it boy that escalated quickly especially for what's supposed to be a familyfriendly esque you know Channel but yeah that's what this game is like but it is immersive it is great to play I love playing this solo there's really no reason to play this multiplayer and that days of The Siege campaign free acts free games multiple endings multiple paths I if I had more time I would love to put out again and play through it like even another time but oh it's given me one of the most rich thematic story experiences that I have had only possibly santed slightly by my number one and even then maybe you could argue this one has been slightly more immersive in places but

29:34 the gameplay wise I mean my number one and two are very difficult to rank here but yeah if you like the setting you want dark and grizzly this war of mine is just so good for immersion you will be sucked into this world and you will care about the characters that you meet and control because you'd be a monster if you didn't

30:00 and so my number one for Rich immersive storytelling has to go to the one extended length campaign game that I can put my stock behind because I'm getting fed up with campaigns now every game's got to have a campaign and I roll my eyes every time a Euro game says it's a campaign Legacy of view that's come out recently for the solo games oh look it's a campaign in arnac you know it was a great Euro game and then they thought no we got to have a solo campaign and my city a legacy game from rhne ksia and it's got a campaign mode in it seriously can we stop it with the freaking campaigns is it so hard to just have a scenario have you heard of the word scenario but ah I'm I digress this is still a campaign game you've got to commit time to it it's going to take a long time for you to get through it because you're talking like 12 15 chapters per like per setting you do but man is this world cool it's a cool world it's a Grizzly Dark World it has some of the best writing I have seen in any campaign game to date the stories that it tells the World building it is topnotch material in tainted Grail yes mechanically it's got some issues and you have to house through a few things particularly in the first edition but the new one Kings of ruin the Prototype I played for a Kickstarter review you know did fix a lot of those things and is certainly showing promise and the fact that they're introducing a lot of those changes to the first one means that if you are going to jump in on the first tainted Grail game with those

31:31 upgrades it will be a much better experience but you know tomato tomato you can pick the first one or you can pick Kings of Ruin to start off in Tanger gr if you're brand new honestly doesn't make a huge amount of difference they're both Standalone but man you know the world I am fully immersed in I love playing this I mean something I haven't mentioned with the other games I like playing them with soundtracks so the frost punt soundtrack The this war of Mind soundtrack the culu app has its own soundtrack here play you know play another soundtrack play like a ariran Legend soundtrack you know one of the more dark Grizzly folklore ones and it is just so immersive the story is Rich I am interested in what's going on I want to know about these different settlements and people that you meet the artwork and again Aesthetics make up for a lot of that immersion as well and in here tainted Grail all that horrific Grizzy artwork of the monsters that you fight against with the the cool combat card system and just everything kind of being you know happiness is not something you find in this game at all I mean everything even your own character has a bit of a dark dismal backstory but you want to explore you want to find out what's going on you want to progress through the story but then you also want to just kind of detour and just go just have a look at here and it's like oh this is interesting we were in terrible Peril look let me go back in there and face the Peril no it's too perilous it's such good writing really really solid and so when it comes to Campaign games I mentioned is says Vanguard briefly before uh there's other games like o sworn and then of course the overrated

33:02 Gloom Haven and stuff like that I just can't get into those anywhere near as much as tainted Grail from an immersion perspective this one is the king of all campaign story driven games that I know of and that's including some actual pretty good ones like sleeping gods and a couple of others but sleeping Gods is really cool but I don't know that one is more short story like immersions type thing this is a proper Epic level of immersion tainted Grail can't wait to try out Kings of Ruin when it gets released proper but I've still got all the tainted Grail material downstairs I think I've played for it all now except for Red Death I don't know when I'll get time for that but I'm certainly looking forward to Kings of Ruin when it comes out yeah easily number one so there you go my top 10 mive games that I love there's certainly some honorable mentions and most of them would just be in my 20 through1 and there's certainly going to be ones that you like where is this game Luke explain yourself you like to do that don't you well you know let me go over a few here on my phone and just mention a few so okay first off pursuit to happiness and you'll be like what that Euro game how exactly is The Game of Life some the immersive you when you teach Pursuit of Happiness I can teach most of the rules in a thematic sense when you're doing all the different cards and projects and buying items everybody is trash talking each other and making fun of what story and life that they are leading that has to speak volumes about the level of immersion and theme in the game I am invested in what people are doing I am

34:33 role playing my character sometimes I'll make decisions based serly on the roleplay side of things rather than it being the most efficient move to do and it just creates a lot of hilarious stories particularly when you throw in some of the expansions the mini expansions and community and stuff it has to be immersive for that to work and I played it at the last convention with somebody's copy I taught them their big box version and ah again great fun great fun with my slightly worried golf Punk girlfriend Mel and my family of kids that was sucking up a lot of my time from being a uh you know a high CEO of a company as you know there was a lot of cool stories you can tell with this game but top 10 probably not but certainly I'm a 20 through 11 for sure all right uh Sniper Elite I consider Sniper Elite hidden movement I haven't really played the video game at all despite the fact that I've actually got one on my Steam for like two quid and I still haven't even tried it but for terms of hidden movement games this one just feels a lot more fmatic and immersive than a lot of the others oh I mean you could argue that maybe Fury of Dracula is a bit more immersive but Furia Dracula takes forever it's got too many rules it's clunky it's just not it's too long too long and drawn out Sniper Elite is a lot quicker and it feels like you feel like a sniper I mean you're trying to taste stealthy from all the uh supposed German forces or whatever it is your fighting but the fact that you can take pot shots with your sniper rifle and there's different roles in that it it is a very immersive Ive setting but top 10 Again probably not now people are really going to have my head off for this where was

36:04 Nemesis Luke well Nemesis it is immersive I will concede it's immersive but gaml lets it down I'm actually tempted to sell my whole collection downstairs which is going to hurt because it cost me a lot on Kickstarter and I've got the folded space insert for it but if it had a better solo mode I'd be more interested but I found the solo mode kind of lacking in this game you pretty much just wander around try not to get caught and then just hopefully Escape that's pretty much it but then the multiplayer kind of feels a bit like that as well you know you wander around just trying to find the room that's relevant for you you might get it yeah might not it's possible to be eliminated early in this game I mean we had a friend of ours who it took 30 minutes to explain all the rules they died in the second round okay the second round they were eliminated from a game that they'd spent 30 minutes having it all explained that sucked for them okay and trust me it it it would suck for me if it happened to me as well and I've had games where I've been eliminated it's like well what do I do now the the gaml is quite clunky it's not the easiest one to do but it is very immersive and so it could be a 20 to1 pick but it would still be quite low down because the game play hurts this one it's it certainly is aan the movie but I just wish it was a bit shorter a bit cleaner and you know more robust system lockdown was an improvement over the original Nemesis but even that one still feels quite linear it feels like you're doing the

37:35 same stuff every game and some of the side stuff they throw in like you know getting alien you know like samples and like finding out their weaknesses you just don't get enough time in the game to do it it's just it doesn't feel like the gameplay element is lacking too much for this to be anywhere near my top 10 that's just the way it is all right okay uh what's the next one uh spirit Island I considered Spirit Island which is currently in the other room CU I played it the other day it is immersive yes and it certainly is well it's more formatic than it is immersive because when you're playing Spirit Island yes all the spirits make sense for their theme and yes it certainly is you know rich in how the spirits have done you know the theme works brilliantly but when you're playing it you do feel like you're playing one brain burny puzzle game because that's essentially what the game is it's a brain burning puzzle and as soon as I'm having to make a lot of decisions like that from a puzzle aspect it starts to draw me out of the immersion side of things it's still very ftic and I still love the game you know it was my number one last time on my top 100 although Will it remain that way that remains to be seen over time as it passes but it's just one of those things where yes love the puzzle but the puzzle isn't necessarily the immersive part it's just the Fun Brain burny part of it so thematic yes immersive not entirely sure uh VI culture this one felt a little bit biased because I like wine I I like the I like the concepts and all the stuff behind wine making I sometimes I think I've dreamt in the past that in

39:06 a different life I was a a viticulturist like I just went around cruise ships and did stuff with wine and you know went to Orchards and stuff it just sounded like a cool job frankly but this one it's a Euro game there are mechanics thrown in but and yes you have to kind of abstract how grapes and wine age but still I am immersed in that game and I think this would easily be a 20 to pick for me but I am kind of biased on the basis that I really like wine and wine making if you're not interested in those two things this game isn't really going to feel that immersive for you all right and what else we got uh last one on my in mentions yes Street Masters Street Masters cool game you know beat them up Street Fighter res all the characters feel unique it plays out a little scenario you got a different villain different stuff happening it's certainly very immersive when I play it it would probably be 2 through1 but I haven't really played the sort of campaign stuff that's in that game it just feels too clunky and I've heard not great things about it I just play it as one-off scenarios and it feels like you're playing for a very quick episode of Streets of Rage or something and it is immersive but probably just not top 10 material there's probably a ton of campaign based games I haven't mentioned a ton of story based games I've not mentioned and you know I'd be interested to hear about those but I would particularly be interested to hear your thoughts on any Euro games that you find in immersive you might have been shocked to me mentioning Pursuit of Happiness and hegemony and stuff like that it'd be interesting to know if there's any other Euro games that are fit the bill for you in terms of immersion and why but of

40:38 course B me get your comments down below and let me know your thoughts on the list and what games you would consider to be immersive hopefully this has been a bit more interesting than simply just doing top 10 F Matic games cuz it certainly is a very different list to the one I did before with Paul Grogan although some of that is because of new releases but even then there has been some Cho and changing between the two list because fmatic and immersive are still two different things at the end of the day but by all means let me know your thoughts next top 10 that I'll be doing will be top 10 nature themed games yes we've had the release of Earth go check out my review for that but I feel it's time for me to do my top 10 nature games which was harder than I thought because um there's a lot of nature games I've not played but there's still enough to do a 10 and also I wanted to do it because very conveniently it wasn't planned and but very conveniently Earth Day is on the 23rd of April this year I believe Saturday the 23rd of April so I figured it'd be good to release a nature theme top 10 on Earth day so I'm certainly going to aim for that for a 23rd of April release so that's it for me on this episode of the broken mle if you like what you see please remember you can thumb it up on YouTube consider subscribing to the patreon to help fund the channel and support it but also get your comments down below as I've explained if you want to check out more content on the broken Meb and by all means check out the top 10 series I did for casual uh Advanced and intermediate two-player games and of course the recent full review that I have done for Earth the new Kickstarter that is certainly making a buzz in the board gaming World take care and remember as always regardless of what kind of world you'd find yourself immersed in remember

42:10 to come back to reality at some point and still remember it's only a game bye for now everybody