The Hungry Gamer's Aberration Mini-Review
Transcript
Ooh, that looks tasty. Welcome folks to the Hungry Gamers back with another mini review and today we are talking about Aberration. Now, this is a game that I backed on Kickstarter I don't know a year or two ago and I've had it for around a year and they are currently back on Gamefound, I believe, with a new edition and a couple of new expansions. And for full disclosure, they were kind enough to send me the one expansion that I did not have. I had purchased the core game and the Spellcasters expansion. I had not purchased the Honk of Doom expansion. They were kind enough to send me that. So, thank you to them for sending me that so it would help inform this video. So, what this game is is this is a tower defense game with some hints of crisis management kind of mixed into it and some hints of worker placement also kind of mixed into all of it.
And what's going to be happening is you're going to have a scenario and you'll have X amount of time to accomplish a bunch of different little mini quests and gain enough survival to win the game before the terror level gets too high or the number of great beast cards runs out. So, that's kind of your game timer. It'll be anywhere between, you know, three and six of those that you're going to have each game. The core game play loop is each player will draw tokens out of a bag and they will use these tokens to activate their abilities and what abilities that they have will be solely based on the combination of character and class that they pick at the beginning of the game. Each color of token they pull out of the bag will do different things. So, everyone does have one ability that they can just use no matter what they pulled out of the bag. And at the beginning of each turn also, everyone will get to take one token off their board and throw that into their bag, increasing the amount of things that they have in their bag, but also powering themselves up. It might power up one of the abilities that they have, it might give them more items, things like that.
Then on your turn, you'll simply use your tokens. And you'll use those tokens to move around the board, fight monsters, and discover monsters because kind of the key stick of this game is you don't know what's out there because it's so dark. They only come at night and they're shadows kind of getting closer and closer and until they hit the torch light or a character steps into them, you don't know what is actually there. Then when it flips over, you see which monsters there are. And then you got to fight the monsters, you use your abilities, you hurt them, you might do dice, you might do static damage, etc., etc. The other thing you'll be doing is you'll be going around the board and there's a whole bunch of different locations that are locked. But if you spend the right tokens on that space, it'll flip over, it becomes kind of like a worker placement spot, and it's going to give you that survival that you need to win the game. Then at the end of the round, after everyone's gone, all the bad guys and shadows are going to move, they might attack, they might reveal, whatever, and then you're going to flip over a great beast card. Something bad is going to happen to you. Then a whole bunch more monsters are going to show up and rinse and repeat. If you're able to get your survival level high enough before the game ends, you win. If you get too much terror or you wind up having a character's die, then you will lose. Really, that's it. That's how this game works. So with that being said, what do I like about this game? First thing is I really do like the bag building element of it. It's really fun that it's just every turn you're going to take one, you're going to throw it in there. And you are building up to what you want to do, but also what you need to do as you play. I also really like
that every time you take one of those tokens off, you're getting some kind of benefit. Either your abilities are getting stronger or you're getting an item. These item cards are also a lot of fun. They are very simple, they do lots of different things, but it's really cool that they have abilities you can use on someone else's turn as well as doing the main ability that's on the card during your turn. Very, very clean, very, very clever. I really like the way that works. Bag building is very, very satisfying in this game. Next thing I'll say is there's lots of options for each character even though it's relatively simple what they can do. Some of the different modules you can add like the relics module adds a few more things that you can do. All the items as I said, but you have lots of stuff that you can do. None of it is complicated and more importantly you feel powerful from the jump. You feel like you are a hero and you're only going to get stronger and stronger as you go and that is really fun and really satisfying. Next thing I'll say is the more you get hurt the more powerful you become because as you get damaged you start to get corrupted and so you might grow another arm. Well, that's terrifying. So the terror level's going to go up, but at the same time now you have another arm that you can use and you can do things.
Really clever the way that that works as the you take more damage you get stronger. So you kind of want to get hurt a little bit as you go through because you will become more powerful. Next thing I'll say is I like that there is the way to use the villagers. The different characters have different facility with using them, but you pull out the right kind of token and then you can activate these workers. You can send them to shoot arrows out there. You can send one to toss a torch out so things will be lit up. You can send them out and have them be militia or whatever as you're unlocking different spaces around the board. It's very clever the way that works and if you do it right you can become very powerful sending these workers all over the place. Next thing I'll say is I mentioned that the shadows and the bad guys are unknown. That's the core of the game and that is the best part of the game. It really is fun trying to figure out how do we send people to the right places? What's going to show up? What might be out there? Do we want to send this guy over there?
Well, maybe not cuz that's unknown and that's a bunch of flyers it's going to be really hard for them to fight the flyers, but at the same time the other side where we're sending the person who can deal with the flyers if the big mutated bear shows up maybe they're not as good at fighting with that. So really like the way that works. And as with all these kind of games I like that you constantly feel like the pressure is on. Constant pressure and there's almost always that vibe of am I going to be able to win this? I don't know and that's always fun to me. The last thing I'll say is the very simple way that you build your character, you take a actual character that will have a single power and then you take a class. That's it. That's how you build them, but because of those character and class you'll have different amount of health, you'll have different abilities. They all have very different abilities even though they operate the same way, they're all very different with how they and I really like that and there's so many different options just by having the big kind of ogre guy as a monster hunter versus big ogre guy as a duelist crazy different things can go on and I would be remiss if I did not say how much I like the spellcasters expansion gives you two new characters and these spells that you can do which is basically just another way that you're able to use your tokens and the relic expansion is just awesome as well. Just another way you're able to use tokens and kind of build out your character.
And so all of those things I think really work well. It is a really fun game especially when you have at least three people around the table. More the more the better with this game and I often don't feel that way with this kind of game, but the table discussion is so satisfying in this game and no one's ever lost because nothing is complicated. It's just hard and because of that the table discussion that you have is just awesome and you really feel like you're working together and you're struggling together and it's really really satisfying. So with that being said, what are my quibbles with the game? First thing is it's not as good an experience solo. I got this initially cuz I thought I'm going to play this solo a lot and I played it quite a bit and I was like it's fine.
But then I started playing it with other people and introducing other people to it and just every time it's been a huge [snorts] blast. But if you are like me, you are in this game for the solo more often than not and it didn't hit nearly as hard as I thought it was going to in the solo. But, still fun. Just not a hit like it is when you're playing with multiple players. Next thing, even though there's a lot of different maps that you can build and you get six tiles you can use four of them each game and they're all double-sided. The difference is not huge. It's still just kind of a variance on the theme. You're going to flip over some of the buildings each time. Again, variance on the theme. So, there's not a huge difference from one scenario to the next and that also applies to the monsters.
They are all different and they have different powers and some are harder than others, but the range on the bad guys is like this. And you would expect it to be a huge range of what's going on and you're not going to get that here. You're always going to have a challenging game and to be clear, bad guys are all different and each scenario is very different and the evil geese that you get from the Hawk of Doom are delightfully weird and I love them. But, the variance in the game doesn't really come from the bad guys. The variance is going to come from how you're building your characters and it's going to come from the great beast cards. That's where the most variety comes and it's always going to be something bad, but how that hits you is what's going to be the biggest surprise and then what kind of mutations you get as you are getting hurt through the game. That's where I think the big difference comes.
And then the last thing I'll say is I like the work replacement elements here, but you have to pursue that. You have to make a choice to go down a path that's going to have you activating workers and sending the villagers out. You can absolutely play through the game and just not touch that at all and I wish maybe that was a little bit more baked in. And the only other thing I'm going to say is the art on the monsters. Now, I have the standee edition which I stand by. It has minis for the heroes and standees for all the bad guys and it fits in one box right here, everything. I love it, but the art on the standees it's just it's just dark. And I can get it, it's a dark world, everything's dark. I painted everything dark, but I want to see it pop a little bit more. So, there you have it, folks. That is Aberration, the first edition. Now, currently on crowdfunding right now, there is a new version that I believe is all minis, so it's only miniatures that you're going to be able to So, no more standee version. So, it's going to be bigger and it has more of a campaign that just kind of continues on. It's more of a well, an actual campaign. This game has scenarios, but each scenario you kind of reboot like you're in a different village or something like that. This one's going to carry through. It has some rule fixes and some errata and some card changes and all that kind of stuff that they're upgrading.
I am pretty high on this game. I think it is a great one like to take to a convention. I've run it at a couple conventions and it's been a hit every single time. And if you're into that tower defense or crisis management style game, this is really a good one to grab because that bag building and that tableau is really, really satisfying. So, anybody that's into that kind of game, I highly recommend you check out the campaign. It is already funded. It is live right now. It's been going for I think a week at the time of the publishing of this video. So, there you have it, folks. As always, if you found this video useful, please like, subscribe, share, maybe become a channel member. As always, thank you so much for watching. Have a wonderful, wonderful day.