Kryptothera
Publishers NoctiLux Games describe Kryptothera as a 'pick up & deliver' game. It is, but we think that undersells this 2–6 player monster-hunting game. It's designed by David Pecorini Cancellario D'Alena, Sara Parsi di Landrone, Vangelis Matthaiopoulos and Stefanos Pagonidis, and it's played on a map of North America, spanning locations in the USA, Canada and Mexico.
The quasi-Lovecraftian, albeit madness-free, theme may be dark but the gameplay is reassuringly light and accessible; players don't have to assimilate a heavy rules overhead so this is a game that's easy to teach and learn. Over 10 rounds, players will be moving their standee from city to city to try to capture cryptids (monsters) - both standard and the 'legendary' cryptids that are tougher to nab but which are worth more victory points. An event card is revealed each turn, which may affect everyone or just the active player, and which may be beneficial or which may make things more challenging. And it's the event deck where the legendary cryptids are lurking...
Ether is the currency of the game, used to buy equipment cards and to keep your character functioning (you need to pay an ether each turn for your character's upkeep) but there's a slightly fiddly two-stage process to obtaining ether: income needs to be transferred to your wallet before you can actually spend it. That takes some advance planning because if you find yourself without the funds in your wallet to pay for upkeep, you lose any cryptids you've captured but not yet returned to base, which can be a punishing penalty.
Capturing cryptids involves moving to their location and passing all the requisite skill checks by rolling the chunky six-sided dice. You can buy equipment to enhance your character's skills (the number you add to a die roll) to help you pass a skill test. Pass some but not all the skill checks and you're awarded a consolation 'clue' but, of course, you really want to capture the cryptid. And not just capture it but get it back to your base - hence the 'pick up & deliver'. There's a distinct push-your-luck element to the game too: it's tempting t0 continue on to hunt more cryptids rather than run straight back to base with what you've got, but until you bank a capture by delivering it it's vulnerable to being stolen from you by other players or being lost due to a damaging event card or because you run out of ether in your wallet...
Krptothera's cryptid monsters may be the stuff of horror stories but this isn't a game that will give players nightmares. Its black and gold colourways palette gives Kryptothera a commanding table presence that's sure to entice players in. The standees for the player characters and legendary cryptids are similarly striking but their large bases can make the board seem cluttered and hard to read in regions where the cities are packed close together: the bases are wider than the gap between some of the East Coast cities. Conversely, the numerals on the ether currency tokens are unnecessarily tiny and hard to make out, tho' the different units are also colour coded.
With its die rolling and some seemingly arbitrary event cards, there's inevitably a high luck factor in Kryptothera, although there's scope for mitigation. Players can be crestfallen if they're caught out by a negative event card that costs them their hard-caught but not yet banked cryptids but equally it's exhilarating when you successfully manage to pull off a push-your-luck gamble.
