Escape the loop game4/15/2023 ![]() ![]() It can be particularly confusing to people who don’t play board games much. It’s an intricate game with a lot of moving parts and it’s hard to keep track of everything. The box has a stated playtime of about three hours, and it generally took about 3-4 hours just to get through one week.Ī lot of that time is going to be spent going to the rule book to look something up. ![]() While scenarios that limit you to only one week are technically harder, they can give you a better idea of the amount of time it will take you to play the game, especially on your first run when you aren’t as familiar with the rules. The Bot Amok scenario gives you both weeks instead of just one to complete the scenario. The two that I’ll mainly focus on are the amount of time commitment it requires and the amount of interaction you need to have with the bots. I tried it twice with two different groups of players and neither went well for a variety of reasons. The game recommends that you run Bot Amok as your first scenario. Most other games with dice-rolling don’t have something like this, and they were excited to see that there was something to help determine which tests would be worthwhile. ![]() It tells you how likely you are to succeed at a given task based on how many dice you’re rolling. I personally think the setting is still really neat and you can still enjoy the theme without knowing the full lore, but enough of my players brought it up that I felt I had to mention it.Ī minor detail that one of my players really loved was the dice probability of success table. The game does come with a booklet about the Loop universe but it’s a lot of text to get through and most people would rather get into playing the game than stop and go through it all. I was the only one in either group familiar with the art book, and I did my best to try and explain it but I don’t think I did a very good job. However, some of my players had a hard time grasping what Tales From the Loop was. ![]() Aside from my issues with the robot minis, I think the game captures the Tales From the Loop feel pretty well. Anyone who has more than 4 items has to discard down to 4, then check who was and wasn’t home for dinner, ground anyone who’s lost all parental favor, then heal injuries and resolve chores. When everyone is done then play moves to the end phase. Kids who get home in time for dinner maintain favor with their parents, which can be leveraged for car rides, and kids who aren’t home lose favor and risk getting grounded. Next is the adventure phase where each player has six time cubes to spend investigating rumors, hacking bots, doing chores, and trying to get home in time for dinner. Move the bots and resolve any firmware upgrades or state changes. Draw a school card and place the new rumors, then the first player resolves the school event. The dice and some of our favorite tokens. They all have really nice art and look very good. I really like some of the specialty tokens though. One of my players liked them because they looked like the erasers they used back in school, but I’ve never seen an eraser like that so I can’t relate. The robots are pretty iconic pieces in the Loop art, and I think they really lose something by not being painted.Īnd the deluxe edition minis are so pretty. While I do enjoy painting minis, I’m not super keen on this. In the standard edition the minis come unpainted. The minis go under the big machine cards. There is some empty space (some of which is reserved for expansion content) but I can’t figure out if we’ve mismanaged packing it up or if there is generally more space than necessary.Ĭharacter boards were removed to show the compartments underneath. I don’t think we figured out how everything is supposed to fit, but it does fit. Like another game I reviewed, Final Girl, the insert has so many compartments that I was a little confused at how everything is supposed to fit in the box. There are also various bits that go with other things, such as mounts for the standees, stickers to tell the machines apart, and stuff to attach the dials to the board. Of those, 7 are scenario cards, 38 are diary cards, 12 are machine response cards, 20 are school cards, 20 are chore cards, 20 are items, 20 are anomalies, and 111 are rumor cards. The games comes with 9 standees, 8 dice, 6 machine minis and sheets, 8 dice, 143 assorted tokens,45 time cubes, 5 favor cubes, 35 general counter cubes, 8 character boards and trait tiles, 9 event tiles, 2 dials, 2 summary sheets, a rulebook, a setting book, the game board, and 248 cards. Free League was kind enough to send me a free copy to review. In it, 2-5 players play a group of kids in the ‘80s solving various sci-fi mysteries. Tales From the Loop is a board game from Free League publishing based on the art book of the same title by Simon Stålenhag. ![]()
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