Me and my buddy Mike have spent years as armchair game devs. Years ago we spent maybe a month talking about actually making a game together. But it didn't get very far. No, most of our dev talk over the past decade-plus has all been hypothetical. We just shoot cool ideas at each other, talk about the possibilities and move on. Because neither of us really has the time, attention span or skill to put these ideas to good use.
But I remember very specifically back in 2018 that I was hyped on an idea. I shot Mike an email. My dude! I have the best idea for a video game ever! It combines two things I love so much. Imagine if there was a football game, but it was completely turn based? It'd be like Madden, but on a grid, and everything you did utilized action points. Imagine Madden by way of XCOM. I am a genius, and this is the game of the future. And then Mike - who is an avid tabletop game player - wrote back simply, "that's already a game. it's called Blood Bowl." I've paid very little to tabletop gaming in my lifetime. I've never had a big group of IRL friends to play games with. I used to do a lot of meetups online. But I haven't had a chance to really play pen and paper games since like junior high. As such, I've completely overlooked the world of Warhammer. And so Blood Bowl completely went unnoticed. Until Mike mentioned it. I downloaded Blood Bowl II on my Xbox almost immediately. The craziest thing is that I started Blood Bowl II on May 5th, 2018 and thought it looked cool and got sidetracked, only to fire it up again almost five years to the day later. I had re-added it to my "to play" list after reading HG101's Epopee book, which is composed of interviews with French video game developers. Admittedly, the learning curve is slow. There's a fairly long tutorial built in to the campaign, which means it's some hours before everything opens up to you and the game stops holding your hand and limiting your options. But by the time the game did that for me, its hooks were in me pretty deep. The thing that works to Blood Bowl II's advantage is that it's simple at first. If you understand American Football, and you understand XCOM, then this is easy to get into. But on the flip, it's also pretty damn deep. There's so much to learn and wrap your head around, so every match feels like an actual learning experience. The progression goes a long way as well, as your players level up via playing well, and you have the ability to upgrade your team between matches. Oh, and sometimes your players die on the field. Permadeath, baby. Blood Bowl II is a nail-biting experience. Each match is just sixteen turns. Each turn is just four minutes. And there is some incredible drama that takes place in that time. I also appreciate the single player campaign in this game. There's not a lot of digital board games with a really solid single player campaign. Never mind ones based on football. As I said before, the early matches of the campaign amount to a tutorial. But later scripted events deliver referees with death-grudges, retired players hopping in to join you, and all other kinds of crazy shenanigans. I find it interesting that a French developer tackled the sport of American football, as I'd assume that soccer (as we call it) would be far more popular in France. And it is jarring to hear the field referred to as the pitch, or a game called a match. Though this turn-based bloodbath is anything but a true simulation. And certainly the cutscenes involving commentators Bob and Jim have a rather French ashetic to them. Though, I'm not familiar enough with the Warhammer universe to know if these were pre-existing designs, or creations of Cyanide. As a side-note, it's hard for me to type "American Football" without the song "Never Meant" getting stuck in my head. I'm just saying. Now one thing I don't care for in this game is that unlike in a traditional football game, you can't just play through a season taking the wins or losses that you get. Each match is essentially a "level" that you must beat. That means that every match is potentially an hour that you might lose and have to replay. Take for example my match against the Warhammerers that I had to replay multiple times. That can feel like a total drag, and I guess in that sense the game comes closer to XCOM than Madden. At fifteen matches, the single player campaign isn't particularly long. Heck, it's shorter than an actual season of football, never mind the playoffs and Super Bowl. But it was fun the whole time. And because you need to win every match to proceed, it wasn't a breeze. There's some challenges like "complete three passes in a game" that must be met even with the win to continue the campaign, and that keeps things interesting. I had an odd glitch where no matter how much I played, the playtime clock just said zero. But I'd estimate I put in around twenty hours over two weeks. And I had fun the entire time. To me, that speaks volumes to a good game of this ilk. As far as turn based games about football with permadeath go, I don't think you could do much better than Blood Bowl II.
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