Nice review.

You might be also interested in K2, another game about climbing (a multiplayer one, but with a solo mode). An interesting feature of K2 is the possibility of fine-tuning the difficulty level.

Regards

Will it be a standalone or an expansion?

It will be standalone, but it will have rules so that a "campaign game" can be played with both.

Disaster on Everest by Tom Decker.
Victory Point Games
1 player
Age 10+
Time: 45'

Foreword: as much as I enjoy a nice evening playing board games with family and friends, I've always had a sweet spot for solo games and variants, from my own solo Monopoly childhood days (for some reason, nobody wanted to play that with me...), video games and Steve Jackson books, to Ambush, Ghost Stories, Agricola, le Havre, etc. Not always easy to find opponents on a monday morning or after 4am!

So, when I recently heard from Victory Point Games and their hand-made solo games, I knew I had to try some of these. I've bought Disaster on Everest, but also Levee en Masse, Toe-to-toe Nu'klr Combat with the Rooskies, Nemo's War and the Barbarossa Campaign. I hope to find the time to review all of these and compare them from my point of view.

If you never heard of VP games before, it is a tiny company coupled with a classroom where students learn all about game design, development, marketing, sales. I wish I had such a class to attend when I was younger!


Theme: in Disaster, you run a travel company trying to bring clients on top of the Everest and back safely. You have two guides and six clients, with various (dis)abilities, and obviously, you score massive positive points when they can reach the top of the world, and shameful negative points when clients die, get lost, or fail to reach any height. At some point, you'll encounter a terrible snow storm, forcing you to rush back home before every client freezes to death!


Components & rulebook clarity: you have to understand the philosophy behind VP games to accept the stuff you get for your 25 bucks (plus shipping). Inside a tedious Ziploc bag, you'll find this:



1. Rules leaflet (4 pages).
2. Travel company status card.
3. Tiniest d6 ever. I will swallow it inadvertently at some point.
4. Event tokens.
5. Blocked ridge tokens.
6. Summit / Hillary step tokens.
7. A nicely illustrated but thin game board. At the bottom, 2 guides and 6 clients ready to climb to their demise...
8. Some info sheet (think 'box cover', but there's no box here, just a transparent plastic bag).
9. Client tokens, oxygen tanks, prep token and storm token.
10. Player aid.
11 Car keys (deluxe version only)

So... The game board is just thick paper; the tokens don't "depunch" easily and are rather thin; you don't even have a box, and the bag is a bit too small when you have to put the game back in it. Well, I don't mind much, really. But I know players who really need mini-figs, vivid colors, thick and large game boards to reach Nirvana. Well, they might as well stop reading here and go back to the FFG main page. They won't like Disaster at all.

As for the rulebook, it is very concise (4 pages total, optional rules included) and clear. Nothing to argue about here.


Game Mechanics: Disaster on Everest is divided in two main phases: clear weather and storm. As long as the sky is blue, you keep traveling to the summit : your guides and your clients all have distinct movement points, guides can help clients move faster, but you have to choose wisely which ones to move. When the storm hits, you have 10 turns to rush back to the safety of your camp. Under storm, most guides lose their special skills and everybody moves much slower. In a word, panic!

At the beginning of every turn, you draw an event token. The event (positive or negative) resolves if you buy it (you have a total of 18 Prestige Points that you can spend on those). If you don't buy the event, nothing happens but then, the storm is now one step closer. On the sixth non-bought event, the storm phase occurs. This is a very clever mechanic: sometimes, you opt to buy very negative but cheap events, just to slow down the storm at a fair price!

At the end of the day, clients who haven't make it to the camp have to resolve a death check, with a probability depending on how far he is from safety. Clients who die cause a strong penalty, unless they made it to the summit: they had their 15 minutes of fame anyway, hadn't they? Finally, clients who didn't even made it halfway to the top are just as good as dead, score-wise.


Gameplay experience: I didn't know what to expect from Disaster, and frankly, upon reading the rules, I was a little afraid about the predominance of the luck factor. After a few games, though, I started to understand which events were must-buys, how to optimize movement, when to head back to the base, etc. The game is full of those small, interesting decisions, and I feel like I have control of the luck most of the time. Of course, when resolving the death checks at the end, really unlucky draws might transform a minor victory into a minor defeat, just as jacks might crush aces in a poker game. My point is that Disaster is not chess, but there is more than luck and random draws here, and it's very fine by me.

As for the replayability value, of utmost importance with solo games, you have optional client traits (some are cautious, lucky, strong, etc), optional travel agency characteristics, and you can always randomize the clients and guides, so there's enough to keep a soloist busy for a few games.

Finally, as a side note, I'm almost wondering why Disaster is a solo game. I'm pretty sure it could make a decent 2-4p game after a few obvious modifications... Worth a try if I find the time.


Pros & cons:

+ theme: not only is the theme quite unusual, the game mechanics are in complete adequation.
+ replayability and learning curve: after 6 games, I'm always getting better scores, and I want more of it!
+ a real solo game: as much as I like solo Agricola, le Havre and other solo variants, it's nice to have a game really designed for solo gamers.
+ passionate design: I do not work for Victory Point, nor am I in any way related to them, but I can't help feeling good when I buy stuff from people who really care about what they do and sell (as long as the product is any good).

- game components are very cheap
- no game box!
- the luck factor, not predominent, but still a little frustrating at times.

Overall:

8/10

One question ... can you buy this somewhere in Belgium or the UK?

Thanks,

Günter

Although it's not on there yet, you can buy other Victory Point games from Boardgameguru.co.uk in the UK. Their list is growing, so it wouldn't suprise me if it appears on there soon.

Pugh

You're very welcome friend

You're very welcome friend