Having fun with boardgames despite the decree and the rage of the virus is not a utopia: also this week we offer you two reviews of titles to play alone, Lux Aeterna e Chronicles of Frost. If you missed your first date, get it back at this link!
Lux Aeterna
2019 title of Tony Boydell published by Frosted Games e Surprised Stare Games, Lux Aeterna is designed as a single player only game. We find ourselves alone, near a black hole, with our ship heavily damaged and ever closer to the event horizon. We have ten minutes to restore the systems and avert the danger. Lux Aeterna it is played with a timer (or with one of the soundtracks made available): once the available time is over we will be sucked into the black hole losing the game.
In a turn of Lux Aeterna we will draw 4 cards from the deck and we will have to quickly decide how to place them: two of them will be used for their negative effect (one of the systems is damaged, the ship approaches the event horizon by a certain distance), one for its positive effect , the last card is set aside for the next turn.
The setting of the game is beautiful and original, the pace is frenetic. The title punishes hesitation in making a decision: in moments of uncertainty, the anxiety caused by the timer will often lead us to make less than optimal choices. Replayability is guaranteed by the different "system" cards that offer a large number of combinations and by the different ways proposed to make the game more difficult.
We were sorry for the graphics of the game, almost never up to par: the illustrations are poorly maintained, the system cards instead have nothing but text on a colored background. For the proposed price, however, the game remains a good buy.
Rating: 6 / 10
Chronicles of frost
We conclude with Chronicles of Frost, which we had already told you about in our Essen Spiel 2018 report.
It is a deckbuilding of Błażej Kubacki published by NSKN Games and set in the fantasy world of the well-known Mistfall.
The main problem we encountered at the fair was the lack of interaction between players: what we hadn't guessed is that, in single player mode, the title was a real gem.
To the traditional dynamics of deckbuilding, the title combines a couple of mechanics that have pleasantly struck us: the first is made up of our character's skill, that is a token that can be spent once per turn to activate the lower (and more powerful) half of a played card. . This will make the cards available in the market more or less interesting based on the skill we have (and obviously during the game we will get new skills).
The second dynamic is that of the "destruction" of the cards: in Chronicles of Frost each card has two scores, the first applicable if it is still in our deck at the end of the game, the second if it has been eliminated. The problem is that, to offer so many points once they are eliminated, it is the strongest cards that we would like to keep in the deck. Unlike other deckbuilders, where it is always advisable to eliminate the initial cards to draw more often those purchased during the game, here the decision is not always taken for granted, indeed, it is often very painful.
We confirm our first impressions on the fights, which had appeared a bit subdued: the clashes, however, are only one aspect of the title, focused more on exploration, on the completion of quests and on the optimization of your deck.
In short, if in multiplayer we continue to prefer Clank! among the fantasy deckbuilding, in single player this title proved to be an excellent choice, for us even superior to the famous one Mage Knight.
Rating: 7/10
Our weekly appointment with single player reviews ends, which will be back next week with two new mini-reviews.
If you haven't done so yet, activate your browser notifications and like our facebook page to stay up to date.
