Daytime Minutes Review: Hello Moto
Transcript
Hey there everybody. I'm Mike Delisio.
And I'm Chris Ye.
And today we're gonna be taking a look at a little smallbox card game called Daytime Minutes. And this is one that I first heard about at a indie game market. Uh I can't remember which one. I can't remember where it was, but I I heard rumblings of this trick taking game.
Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. I know it was definitely available by the Gen Con indie market. It's available [clears throat] on the uh Odd Candy Games website.
Correct. That's where I got this actually. I bought it directly from them. Yeah.
Yeah. But it also has been kind of making a little buzz in in like the indie market scene.
It has been making a little bit of buzz and it's one
it's a cell phone joke.
That's Yeah, I was going to say it's one with a very unique theme. Uh you'll see that in the overview and we'll certainly be talking about it when we do our review proper. So why don't we head down to the table? I'll show you how the game plays. Then we'll come back here and let you know what we think. Here are the components for daytime minutes. You got a deck of cards which is broken up into three suits that go from 1 to 15 in each suit. Friends, family, and work. You've got a little breakdown for each player that shows you both the talk value, which is the main number on the uh cards, and the minutes value, which is the smaller number underneath it. So, it just gives you a breakdown of that. You've got four plan cards, which have different values on them. We'll talk about in a moment.
You've got a phase card here or a time card and a time tracker for it. You've got a first player marker. You got a bunch of little SIM cards here. To play the game, each player is going to be dealt nine cards and they're going to get three SIM cards. This means that there's a maximum of nine tricks that will play be played each round, although it could end earlier than that, and I'll explain how in a moment. one of the players will be the active player and on their turn they can play if they're the first uh player they can play any card that they want into a trick. So let's say for example this first player decided that they're going to play this eight of work. Now the next player in clockwise order and I guess theoretically here this would be the next player um would be able to play either a card of this suit or of any other suit. So, this is what I would call somewhere between a mayfall trick-taking game and a mustfollow trick-or-treating game. And again, I'll explain that more in a second. So, they could decide to play one of their three blue cards if they wanted to, but they could also play any of the other cards because there's only been one card played into a suit. Let's say that they decide they want to stay with that blue suit and so they play the blue 11 into their player area. The next player still has the same option. and they can choose a blue card, which they have several of, or maybe they decide they want to play a different suit. So, they go ahead and they play the orange 11. Now, this player is now in a mustfollow situation.
They have to play either a blue or an orange card, unless they only had suits, only had cards with a pink suit, which is very unlikely, and then they could play a pink. But here, they definitely have an option. They can play an orange or they can play a blue. Let's say that they decide that they're going to go ahead and play this 12 orange into the trick. Now, we're going to have the resolution. What happens during the resolution is that the highest card of each suit that's played is going to take the trick. And by taking the trick, that means they're going to take all the cards of that color. So, in this case, this player had the highest card in orange. They're going to take both of these and they're going to keep these cards somewhere in their player area with the minutes on the card being visible. In this case, this player had the highest card of the blue suit. So, they would collect those cards into their player area. The next trick will be led by the person who played the highest card of the lead suit. The lead suit was blue. This player played the highest card. So, they would lead out into the next trick. Why are you keeping these cards face up in front of you in your player area? because you're going to be accumulating minutes on the cards that you take as tricks. So, in this case, this player has 45 minutes in their player area, as does this player.
The first round is at least in your first few games suggested to be at the 180 minute plan, meaning that this is the threshold that you can reach without going over. Because if you go over, you don't want to in a in a cell phone plan because you're going to pay a bunch of penalties. So, you want to be as close to 180 as possible without going over. After the trick had been played out, you would then go into the afternoon, which is another daytime round. Daytime rounds mean that you're going to be collecting the cards that you won in front of you and accumulating those minutes towards this total. In the evening, those are free calls. So, every third trick is going to be one that's played, but all the cards that are played are going to just be discarded. So they don't count towards your minutes. The way scoring works is if at at the end of any trick any player has gone over what the current plan value is, the trick or excuse me, the hand ends immediately and all players who had gone over would have to turn in one of their si SIM cards into the uh back to the supply and also the person who had uh used the least amount of minutes, let's say it was this player, would also have to turn in one of their SIM cards. These are basically think of them as life points. Whenever any one player loses their last SIM token, the game is going to end and whoever has the most SIM cards will be the winner at that point. How can you get more SIM cards? Can you get more SIM cards? Yes, you can. If you play through
um a round and you hit exactly the number of minutes that is on that current plan, you're going to actually get an extra SIM uh card into your supply to set up for the next round. This start player marker is being given to the player who collected the least minutes in the last round. If there's a tie, there's a way to break that. You're going to shuffle up and rede nine cards to each player. The player who, if any, who had incurred overage charges, who had gone over this uh amount will have a chance to choose the next plan card for the next round. So you can see there are four different plans and they all give you different amounts of minutes that are your threshold value for that. The game is going to continue to progress this way going hand by hand and keeping track of it on this marker collecting up the minutes gaining or losing SIM cards until one player as I said runs out of their SIM cards. And then the player who has the most remaining SIM cards wins the game. All right, that is daytime minutes. Let's head back up and talk about it.
Okay. So, there you have it. A um I would say on the more I I don't want to say simple, but it's an approachable enough trick taking game. Um, it uses what I would call a kind of a a mixture between may follow and must follow depending upon the situation at hand.
Yeah. Always allowing up to two suits is interesting because this game uses that pushpull of
you don't want to bust like there's that busting value, but also
having the fewest minutes collected is also, you know, misusing your phone plan. So, so it kind of straddles that line. It reminds me a little bit of the scoring in uh a very popular trick taking game that's getting a wider release and a shot in Frea.
Yeah.
Uh that idea like don't bust, but also you want to be kind of close to, you know, close to that limit. And so I think those two things work very well together. The the
the soft may follow thing that you're talking about. And this game uh also evokes those feelings of Shod and Freuda much like that game which was so aptly named in that there's a lot of opportunities to potentially negatively affect your opponents and I think that's something to know going in is that this is a game that can be a little bit mean. Um and uh yeah some people will not like that as much in a game of this length and this type. I have absolutely no issue with it and I will absolutely make you go over your minutes plan if I can.
So, one thing I noticed when I played it with people is uh there's such this excitement to stick people with like, oh yeah, you're going to collect like three hours in this one trick.
Yeah.
And then as soon as they go to lay that card down, they realize, wait a minute, I have the fewest collected at the table. And so it does this nice self-balancing where you need to be intentional about how you're sticking stuff to people
because you need to also not be in a position where you're going to lose a SIM card, lose one of your points.
Yeah.
And and when we all kind of had that dawn of realization, the game like really came alive at that point.
I agree. I think that's a a crucial element to it is that you can't just indiscriminately make people bust because you have to evaluate where you are at that point in the hand to be able to determine whether you're going to do that. We've talked about the theme a little bit and I want to go a little bit more into that because please yeah oftentimes one of the things that is mentioned about trick- taking games in general uh or shedding games or climbing games kind of this whole family of card games is that themes are very often negligible. You know, it usually will just only relate to the art in the game. And I really feel like this is one of the more thematic trick-taking games. Not only in the sense that the theme ev, you know, the gameplay kind of evokes what's happening, but it's also really better to internalize the rules. The theme makes sense in this game. Now, your age may have a little bit of a determining factor on whether that really hits home to you, but the idea of having a a a limit, a minute's limit, makes sense in here. And also, this every third trick being free essentially, it's a sloughing round is brilliant. I think it's great. it. It's so good mechanically because sometimes you're dealt a handy and you go, "Good heavens, I'm I'm absolutely going to bust,
but then you realize, oh, every third trick, I can just get rid of that really high value, high minute card." I think that works really well mechanically because thematically it also fits right in. If you if you remember having to worry about minutes, if you uh if you remember having to worry when text messages were a minute each and you had a buddy text you and say, "Hey, send
you free send."
Mhm.
Friday. Like, stop it.
Yeah. No. Yeah. No. No. You're killing me here. Right.
Yeah. If you remember, uh was this the it's 2003.
Mhm.
Man, it leans into that aesthetic. Like this box is almost playing Sther and Limp Biscuit out of there right now.
Limp Biscuit. Let's Let's maybe let
Yeah, let's choose a different one.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, um yeah, the theme works for this. And it's also a game where um the retail cost is low and I think the packaging being a tuckbox, right, kind of helps for that. But it's a nice little package, right? you you you saw in the overview. I love these little SIM cards. It's a great touch.
Some of the best use of gold stamping I've ever seen in a game.
Yeah. And and the the nice screen printed wood pieces. Is that necessary? No. But it really does make this a nice little package where they're selling it at a reasonable cost, but you're getting a nice production out of it. Um, and the artwork, you know, it's kind of minimal min minimalistic, but it also kind of evokes that theme of of, you know, early 2000s and and um I I just I'm kind of charmed by this game. And in addition, it has really solid trick-taking mechanisms to underm underpin the whole thing. Not undermine it, underpin the whole thing. Yeah.
Yeah. It's it's uh not a thing I'm nostalgic for necessarily, but it having lived and experienced that, it is something fun to kind of
take that and make that the mechanical underpinings of a game.
Underpinnings of a game.
Underpinnings of a game. Yeah, I'm probably not using that word very well.
No, I'm very impressed. It's uh I believe the designers are are Cardner and Alex Babakitus. If I'm pronouncing that, I believe it's a Greek last name.
Yes, I think so. I think that they did something really really impressive with this one all around.
I agree. If if they if they so chose if they were interested, they being the the uh designer, artist, publisher uh kind of triumvirant there, I think this could get a wider release and I think it would do uh pretty darn well. It's also, I'm sure, doing well uh on its own. But um I want to mention one thing. If there's anything that I would put, I don't even necessarily want to call it a negative, but it's something I think you should know as a viewer if you're interested in this game is that it is uh sold as a three to five player game. And I've played it across all those player counts. Uh with a three-player game, you are playing with uh kind of a uh whatever cards were not dealt out, they're going to be a deck known as the unknown caller. And at one point in every trick, and it's going to change trick by trick, there will be a random card thrown into the mix. Um, it works mechanically.
Mhm.
It it works. Um, but I really think that this is truly a four to five player game. If I'm being honest, that's really I think where you're going to get the best experience.
I think if you if you buy it to say I'll play it at three players sometimes, it's not bad. It's okay.
But yeah, I agree. I I'm going to choose personally not to play it at three player because I think that the experience is much better and just
just it's more playerdriven than kind of random interaction. Yeah.
When you get to the four uh four and five player count. So yeah, I think it's clearly much better at that player count.
Yeah. I'm just going to go into final thoughts if that's okay. Um you know I I'm going to I'm going to give this a score based on the four to five player game. Okay. and just have a caveat that maybe it would be a half point down uh or so if if it was being, you know, a three-player game. So, I like I said, I'm charmed by the game. I think uh the theme is great and it actually fits. It helps you internalize things. Uh and the the game play is rock solid. It allows for some very clever plays. I think that uh the the point you brought up, it was crucial uh mechanically that you can't just indiscriminately stick people. Uh you do have to also consider where you are. Um the idea that if you hit the numbers exactly, you actually gain a life token or a SIM token, I think, is is smart. It's something to shoot for.
It's not going to happen very often. I've seen it happen a couple maybe a few times, but it's more often not going to happen. Uh, but it does give you this feeling of I'm not completely out of it if I'm down to one SIM token. Maybe you can pull off a great round and get right back in it. So, uh, I'm giving this an eight. I think it's something that is, um, we in a time where trick ticking games are really coming out like crazy. Um, it this one does stand apart. I do think this is one that is unique within the sphere both mechanically and thematically. So, an eight out of 10 for me. an easy seal of approval on my end.
Yeah, this is this is one that it's hard because I don't have a lot of complaints about it necessarily, but uh what I will say I do love I love that it has this strange cadence and this is maybe kind of a little drawback for some people too
in that
it's some strange rules. You can have up to two uh suits represented per trick,
but also sometimes three if you can't, you know, kind of follow this and that and the other. Uh, but outside of those couple of wrinkles, there's not too much that holds it back. Also, the fact that the round could end.
Yes.
Uh, I've seen it literally end in one trick.
Yes.
But that's when people realized, oh, I'm hurting myself as much. So, anyway, um,
uh, I'm going to give this an 8.5. Really
of excellence. Here we go.
I think that this I think this is excellent all around. uh the the font choices, the humor, the touch, the the three suits, one of them being business and having seen all that clip art used in presentation, business presentations.
Unfortunately, true. Yes.
O yeah, just all those touches like really come together to make this a great package and just the more that I play it, the more I see that it does that uh it does that push your luck collection part of trick taking incredibly well. Uh, and so yeah, causing someone to bust so much joy ends the round right then and there. And I think for me, that's one of the things that really pushes it over the edge of just like a really solid into I think a great trick taker is that
it's so player driven. The it might a whole hand might end very quickly and then you're shuffling and you're playing the next round again. Uh, and it it doesn't outlast it doesn't outstate its welcome or anything and has a very satisfying ending as you're just kind of
gleefully laughing at the person who goes out. So,
yeah. Yep. I think it's great.
All right. Well, there you go. A seal of excellence from the Dice Tower for Daytime Minutes and publisher Odd Candy Games. Until next time, I'm Mike Delisio.
And I'm Chris Ye.
And I was a Motorola Razor guy. Yeah, I uh had whatever free flip phone came with the plan. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this video. If you like this review or whatever you just watched, wasn't it amazing? Uh check out our channel, Dice Tower. We have all kinds of things. We review games, we do top 10s, we play games live. It's all about board games, but especially the people who play them. Check out Dice Tower YouTube channel.