All's Well That Ends
- Board's Eye View
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Designed by Nick Fletcher and published by 11:44 Games, All's Well That Ends (AWTE) is a fully cooperative fantasy adventure game for 1–4 players. It's designed primarily to be played as a campaign game but it comes with a batch of individual scenarios that can be played standalone. It's always good when that's an option in a campaign game because it affords prospective players an opportunity to sample the gameplay before committing to a longer multi-game campaign.
The characters in AWTE are obviously adapted from recognisable fantasy adventure classes but they aren't just adventurers wandering about on the lookout for loot; they're on a collective mission to catch up with a band of murdering slavers, so the campaign involves them trying to track them across the wilderness Wildlands looking for clues as to the villains' whereabouts. It means that AWTE is very much a story-driven campaign game. The strong narrative is built within a richly constructed world with a mythos and 'history' that is internally consistent and believable. If you're playing a campaign game, you should be looking for an immersive experience, and Nick Fletcher's world-building achieves that in AWTE and without bogging players down with a lot of quasi-mythological mumbo jumbo. Exploration uses a ring-bound book of maps, which makes for quick and convenient set up and tear down.
Unlike the majority of other adventure games, AWTE isn't a dice chucker. Indeed, there are no dice at all in this game. Instead, players' actions are all determined by the cards they play, albeit read in conjunction with the 'impulses' they have chosen. These spell out what you do and, in combat, how you fight. And your choice of cards also determines the initiative order. That's something else you need to weigh up because you will pay the price of a powerful attack by dropping way down the turn order in the next round of combat. Players have the option too to chain cards together for even more powerful berserker-style attacks, especially as you level up and so add cards to your individual deck.
It was the card-driven adventuring that was at the heart of the appeal of Gloomhaven (Cephalofair). Tho' AWTE uses is own very different card system for determining actions, the game mechanic is bound to appeal to the same audience. We found the narrative structure in AWTE to be more coherent, however, and our campaign so far has felt much less repetitive than other adventure games. Shown here on Board's Eye View is a preview prototype of All's Well That Ends with just part of the campaign so we haven't yet been able to sample all of the chapters. We've come away from those we have played tho' with a sense of achievement and with levelling up modifiers that have always felt satisfying.
11:44 Games are bringing All's Well That Ends to Kickstarter later this year. Click here to check it out.
