When you think of a digital board game you probably instinctively think of ports of existing cardboard masterpieces. Monopoly, Catan, Carcasonne, you know, that sort of thing. While the industry does periodically see original titles as well, they oftentimes aren’t worth the brain cells necessary to keep them in memory (think Mario Party). If an original digital board game that you haven’t already played a thousand times in a physical format sounds appealing to you, then let me introduce you to Armello.
Armello is a digital board/card game created by Australia-based developer: League of Geeks. It was originally released on Steam early access back in January, but I had a chance to check out the upcoming PS4 edition of the game at E3 this year. The game tells a story of a world slowly being corrupted by a mysterious illness known as rot. Rot causes enemies to spawn throughout the world, and it’s also infected the king himself, eating away at both his health and sanity as the game progresses.
The overall goal in a game of Armello is to make your way onto the throne that rests in the center of the game map. Unfortunately before you can get there you’ll have to do something about the pesky king already sitting on it. There’s a lot of ways to win the game. A player may choose to work on their combat attributes, amassing weapons and cards to burn in order to defeat the king in combat; similarly you can also defeat the king by banishing him with “spirit stones” collected from the board, or by succumbing to the rot and “out-eviling” him; players can also go for a less aggressive victory condition by staying back and building up their reputation (or prestige) by raiding dungeons and clearing enemies from the map. After the king dies a natural death the person with the most prestige will ascend to the throne.
At the start of each day cycle the prestige leader can offer the King some of their excellent advice.
So first you must choose your character. Each of the different characters in Armello come from different clans of animals. The game has an art style very similar to the Redwall series and the influence is immediately apparent as you gaze upon your anthropomorphic avatars. If combat is your aim you can choose Thane from the Wolf Clan, aspiring mages would do wise to select Sana from the Bear Clan, Mercurio of the Rat Clan relies primarily on trickery, and Amber of the Rabbit Clan serves as the all rounder with a bit more gold in her pockets. Originally there were four more characters that were to be offered as DLC, but the developers have had a change of heart and will instead be including those characters in the game’s final release.
As you begin the game each player will draw a handful of cards. Cards arrive as either equipment, spells, or trickery. These can be used to augment your character, trip up opponents, and they can even be burned during combat sessions to improve your dice rolls. A lot of the nuance of the game rests in its cards, and it’s something that players will want to pick up quickly in order to start playing competitively.
Many of the game’s cards can be played at any time, which helps keep you busy even when you’re not in complete control. Aside from a few scenarios you can watch other players take their turns, and really sly players can predict where they’re headed and lay traps or reinforce the many different obstacles out to kill them.
On average games seem to range between a half hour to an hour. Playing online is of course ideal, but quite a bit of work has been put into the AI of the game. Opposing CPU players can be just as sneaky or vengeful as real players. In fact they have something of a memory to them, recalling when you’ve been good or bad to them and treating you with the appropriate amount of disdain. In one of my recent games I repeatedly attacked “Sana” the bear NPC, and she continued to hunt me relentlessly for the remainder of the session.
I was told that League of Geeks does intend to add a ranking system or some sort to online play, but it sounded like they weren’t quite sure yet just what that system would actually look like.
I really enjoyed my time with Armello, both at the show and after sinking a few hours into the early access version at home. The multiple victory conditions can have a pretty heavy effect on the game. I would usually get a prestige victory, just waiting for the king to die and hoping I have enough points. But when you watch another player take a stab at killing the king and failing your plans can change very quickly. Armello keeps you on your toes, even during off turns when in any other game there would be nothing for you to do.
And of course we should talk about that Playstation. First and foremost, the nature of how Armello plays prohibits them from including local multiplayer. It’s somewhat disappointing, but also very understandable after you sit through a few games. There’s definitely a lot to wrap your head around with Armello, and I found that while the Playstation interface felt good, it still wasn’t as easy to use as a traditional mouse. Despite these slight control learning curve difficulties the differences between versions is likely indiscernible, the game ran smooth as butter on the PS4 and I’m sure either platform will satisfy players.
Armello will be release on PS4 at the same time as the game’s full 1.0 version comes out on Steam. There’s no hard date yet, but you can expect to see the game sometime during September.
