Always happy to see sports games getting coverage! This one is certainly a great game and quite an accomplishment to be able to play out a full tournament of 100 golfers in 2-3 hours. Glad this caught your attention and hope to see more!
I love the game of golf. I know all about it. But you have convinced me that this is the game I want to buy. Especially about eliminating all the boring stuff. Great job! Thanks
This video was a pleasant surprise. I need to take a closer look at this. I mentioned in a comment to an earlier video that my favorite sports game of all time is Breakaway Football, which shares some elements with this one (abstracted play, team abilities that feel like RPG skills). As far as narrative-style, roll-and-consult-chart wargames, look up designer Gregory M. Smith on BGG. He's the current king, with many games focused on running a sub or a plane, across various wars and theaters. I'm excited for his upcoming American Tank Ace, described as: "a solitaire, tactical game where the player is in control of a single tank fighting across Europe starting shortly after D-Day. Players start in tank school and buy skills for themselves and their crew members as they fight battles against randomly generated forces with the help of notional friendly units." I played Smith's Pacific Victory in a player-run tournament and it was a blast. I imagine this golf game would also lend itself to an online tournament format. The most narrative solo wargame in my collection is Codeword: Cromwell, a game that is unfortunately out of print. At its heart it's a tower defense game, with the tower being the church in the fictional town of Birkham Stokes, and the enemy being German troops who have invaded Britain during Operation Sea Lion. It's full of characters with back stories and friendships/feuds with others (e.g., the stuffy upper class lord may have had an affair with Daisy the dairy maid years ago), and they play out during the game. Well worth getting if you can ever find it at a good price. Now off to play another mission in the Mork Borg-inspired solo campaign game Forbidden Psalm, which just released in pdf format.
Wow!! It's so cool to see a non-sports board game channel cover this game!! I contributed to the development of HMG and am an active member of the PLAAY community. If you or anyone else has any question, please let me know!! Great video and thanks again!!
Excellent! I really like story-driven games like this, I just usually see them in the fantasy realms. :) I really think a lot of designers of fantasy and SF adventure games could learn a lot from games like this, by just focusing on the exciting moments, and abstracting away the boring stuff! Really neat design. Something totally new for me, so thank you!
I might actually pick this up. I'm a big fan of this idea about how it zooms in and pays attention to different aspects of what a game of golf actually looks like.
There seem to be a lot of sports simulations with few or no player choices, where the interest is in the narrative created more than trying to make good decisions.
I tried leaving my gaming comfort zone a few years ago and tried out some recommended solitaire wargames. As already mentioned in the video, many of them work on the same principle and deliver a kind of "narrated simulation", for the lack of better words to describe it. Personally not my cup of tea, neither the theme, nor the style of game -- but of course to each their own.
Thanks for showing off something a bit different! I'm a bit interested in these types of sports games although the last one I played was way back in the 80s as a kid (some football one from AH I believe). While it was interesting at first, that one became repetitive after awhile. These look a little better in that regard. I tend to just play various sports manager text games on the PC for this kind of fix since I most enjoy long-term 'career management' sports games that include player improvement/regression over time, drafts, and trading. That stuff would be an accounting nightmare in a tabletop unfortunately. I can still see one of the History Maker series as a possible purchase for a small-footprint recliner game, though. All that said, I do have some tabletop war-themed ones like this. Most are just going through missions, rolling on event charts and trying to get your men back alive. Such as with Target For Today, Silent Victory/The Hunters, and PIcket Duty. The most interesting one I have is probably 'Ranger' which is basically a choose-your-own-adventure style game but consists of planning out your squad's missions, in hostile territory, and managing it while things happen along the way via the CYOA style booklet. It does require some learning of the tactics beforehand, from the separate tactics booklet, in order to make informed decisions regarding events (it was created by an Army Ranger after all) but it's a unique tabletop experience if you're into that sort of thing.
@@TheDungeonDive I'd say 'Target For Today' is the most detailed. You're basically running your B-17 or B-24 bomber crew through their campaign of bombing Germany in WW2. There is a lot of tables and stuff happening, though, so it can look intimidating at first. Even though you generally proceed through them on each mission, I printed off a great user-made flow chart on BGG for it to make it easier to learn. It's basically an updated and expanded version of the old and much-loved 'B-17 Queen Of The Skies'. Some decisions to be made but mostly trying to get as much of your crew through it alive while all the bad things are happening. As mentioned, I like 'Ranger' for it's uniqueness but you'll have to learn the actual (included) tactics to play. It also utilizes dry erase maps for you to draw your line of march out for each mission so that one isn't completely text and CYOA style gaming. Less tables but more conceptual learning. Geek Gamers made a couple videos about it on her channel a few years ago. It's certainly unusual. The Silent Victory/Hunters/Etc series is simpler but are also less detailed. They're okay but I don't find myself playing them too long at once. If I'm going with a narrative game like this, I'd rather get deeper details than these provide. These games aren't for everyone, but if you enjoy a narrative experience on the respective subject, it can be a nice change of pace from most other games.
@@TheDungeonDive - If you want to check out a summary and walkthrough of 'Target For Today', I'd suggest checking out Tony Holt's series; it gives a good overview to see if you'd be interested. Link - > th-cam.com/video/K46sifmCnnE/w-d-xo.html
I like the idea of a 'simulation' of golf in a D&D-style world. Are you going to bribe the ent to give you your ball back, or just climb up and get it?
I was thinking how cool the attributes would be in a rpg. Instead of strength if 15 you have the attribute power! I am really looking into this feature
I used to be into game books a lot, but don't like many of them any more. The only ones I really enjoy any more are Fabled Lands, because of the grand sense of adventure. I would rather turn to games for my gaming, and novels for my reading. One of the main issues I have with game books is that, typically, the writing isn't very good at all, so it's hard for me to spend any amount of quality time with them. Also, the game parts aren't typically very good. So you're stuck with a mediocre novel and a mediocre game.
I agree with abstracting out granular movement in many games. Many times the simulated combat is not realistic, e.g. shock combat can be over in seconds with reflexes, split-second decisions, and luck deciding the contest. For the most part, the loser is either wounded or killed so is a casualty and functionally out of the fight. The intricacy of movement, health values, etc are often details that give a false authenticity to the representation of combat. However, these systems might be fun for a gameplayer because they are tangible and pleasing as a transactional metric. This is why I dont like squad based or small scale tactical wargames. I just don't find the manual execution of tactical doctrine to be very interesting. I'm interested in the challenges of command and the narrative scope of the battle. Let the soldiers do the soldiering. Hence why grand tactical scale is more pleasing to me. Also why I prefer over world adventure games to dungeon crawlers.
In combat, there are only two things that people remember - the first strike and the last one. Everything else should be abstracted away, unless you're making a super tactical detailed combat simulator.
Have you ever played Barbarian Prince from Dwarfstar? It is long out of print, but they have a free print and play option. What you are describing sounds a lot like how it works.
Is it wrong the whole time you were talking I was really, really hoping you were going to edit in *record scratch* a Dungeon Crawl theme using the mechanics of this golf game? Like I thought maybe you were setting us up for just that twist. ;) As always I enjoy your videos. Golf just isn't my jam.
I very much agree with your commentary on the dungeon crawler genre and would even go farther by saying that it is in a serious need for some overdue next evolutionary steps (plural) that questions its clichés. Clichés which are to most games of this genre real curses. Dungeon Crawlers are as a genre arguably the most stubborn and unwilling type of games when it comes to innovation and taking risks in design. When I see a game asking me to count squares on a board for moving characters from A to B, I can't help it but roll my eyes. It's not the '80s or '90s anymore, we did this back 30-40(!) years ago and are still doing it in many newly-released games today. When I, as a fan of dungeon crawlers, look at other game genres and how they evolved since then, it makes me cringe. On top of it, some dungeon crawlers are also asking the players to establish lines of sight in a clunky way -- and instead of counting squares on a board, we are often now counting inches along a ruler, ugh ... Shadows of Brimstone from 2014 has a roll-to-move element in its standard rules. I understand nostaglia, I'm in fact a nostalgic person myself, but many things just don't age well. It's like building new houses up to modern standards, except there are still coal furnaces and chamber pots. I again agree that moving around a map square by square is in the end in most dungeon crawlers just boring and a waste of time, a cliché that people expect, and most designers actually don't know what to do with and use its potential to deliver something of actual interest and relevance that justifies it all. If the game just delivers this element for eye candy and fulfillment of expectation without really adding anything, it should indeed just be streamlined out or abstracted. I played purely card-based games that gave me a way better sense and fun experience of exploring a dungeon than many other games that come with tons of plastic miniatures and cardboard map tiles (Warhammer Quest: The Card Game, Escape the Dark Castle, The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, ect.). I'm astonished that other designers did not take lessons from Claustrophobia, released in 2009, as it got rid of grid-based movement and lines of sight for ranged combat while also introducing many new interesting tactical elements, many which actually justified a tactical map on the table and it an integral part. Moving a character just one step (=entire map tile) more can have big consequences within the context of the other rules. I'm not saying it's the best dungeon crawler ever and for everyone, but I really wish other designers would have been taken inspiration from it and continued building on these rather bold new ideas to the genre. If anyone knows other good dungeon crawlers that brought something new and enjoyable to the table, please comment and let me know, thanks !
Wow! We are totally on the same page here. I think there are legacy elements that people expect from these games, and the designers are in a tough spot, because often it is the fans who clamor for these elements. But what the fans don't realize is that it is not exactly the elements they are craving, but it is instead the memories of what those things created.
LOS should be a thing of the past, unless it really, really matters to the tactics of the game play. Calculating LOS is NEVER fun, and it is NEVER something I remember fondly after playing a game!
Always happy to see sports games getting coverage! This one is certainly a great game and quite an accomplishment to be able to play out a full tournament of 100 golfers in 2-3 hours. Glad this caught your attention and hope to see more!
I love the game of golf. I know all about it. But you have convinced me that this is the game I want to buy. Especially about eliminating all the boring stuff. Great job! Thanks
Hope you enjoy it.
"I'm probably more of a fan of golf than I am war" is a very telling quote.
Sorry to get so political. :D
This video was a pleasant surprise. I need to take a closer look at this. I mentioned in a comment to an earlier video that my favorite sports game of all time is Breakaway Football, which shares some elements with this one (abstracted play, team abilities that feel like RPG skills). As far as narrative-style, roll-and-consult-chart wargames, look up designer Gregory M. Smith on BGG. He's the current king, with many games focused on running a sub or a plane, across various wars and theaters. I'm excited for his upcoming American Tank Ace, described as: "a solitaire, tactical game where the player is in control of a single tank fighting across Europe starting shortly after D-Day. Players start in tank school and buy skills for themselves and their crew members as they fight battles against randomly generated forces with the help of notional friendly units." I played Smith's Pacific Victory in a player-run tournament and it was a blast. I imagine this golf game would also lend itself to an online tournament format. The most narrative solo wargame in my collection is Codeword: Cromwell, a game that is unfortunately out of print. At its heart it's a tower defense game, with the tower being the church in the fictional town of Birkham Stokes, and the enemy being German troops who have invaded Britain during Operation Sea Lion. It's full of characters with back stories and friendships/feuds with others (e.g., the stuffy upper class lord may have had an affair with Daisy the dairy maid years ago), and they play out during the game. Well worth getting if you can ever find it at a good price. Now off to play another mission in the Mork Borg-inspired solo campaign game Forbidden Psalm, which just released in pdf format.
Wow!! It's so cool to see a non-sports board game channel cover this game!! I contributed to the development of HMG and am an active member of the PLAAY community. If you or anyone else has any question, please let me know!! Great video and thanks again!!
Excellent! I really like story-driven games like this, I just usually see them in the fantasy realms. :) I really think a lot of designers of fantasy and SF adventure games could learn a lot from games like this, by just focusing on the exciting moments, and abstracting away the boring stuff! Really neat design. Something totally new for me, so thank you!
I might actually pick this up. I'm a big fan of this idea about how it zooms in and pays attention to different aspects of what a game of golf actually looks like.
It’s totally worth it for something really different.
There seem to be a lot of sports simulations with few or no player choices, where the interest is in the narrative created more than trying to make good decisions.
yeah! I'm totally down with that.
I tried leaving my gaming comfort zone a few years ago and tried out some recommended solitaire wargames. As already mentioned in the video, many of them work on the same principle and deliver a kind of "narrated simulation", for the lack of better words to describe it. Personally not my cup of tea, neither the theme, nor the style of game -- but of course to each their own.
Thanks for showing off something a bit different! I'm a bit interested in these types of sports games although the last one I played was way back in the 80s as a kid (some football one from AH I believe). While it was interesting at first, that one became repetitive after awhile. These look a little better in that regard. I tend to just play various sports manager text games on the PC for this kind of fix since I most enjoy long-term 'career management' sports games that include player improvement/regression over time, drafts, and trading. That stuff would be an accounting nightmare in a tabletop unfortunately. I can still see one of the History Maker series as a possible purchase for a small-footprint recliner game, though.
All that said, I do have some tabletop war-themed ones like this. Most are just going through missions, rolling on event charts and trying to get your men back alive. Such as with Target For Today, Silent Victory/The Hunters, and PIcket Duty. The most interesting one I have is probably 'Ranger' which is basically a choose-your-own-adventure style game but consists of planning out your squad's missions, in hostile territory, and managing it while things happen along the way via the CYOA style booklet. It does require some learning of the tactics beforehand, from the separate tactics booklet, in order to make informed decisions regarding events (it was created by an Army Ranger after all) but it's a unique tabletop experience if you're into that sort of thing.
I really want to try the baseball one and the bowling one. If you could recommend one of the war games like this, what would it be?
@@TheDungeonDive I'd say 'Target For Today' is the most detailed. You're basically running your B-17 or B-24 bomber crew through their campaign of bombing Germany in WW2. There is a lot of tables and stuff happening, though, so it can look intimidating at first. Even though you generally proceed through them on each mission, I printed off a great user-made flow chart on BGG for it to make it easier to learn. It's basically an updated and expanded version of the old and much-loved 'B-17 Queen Of The Skies'. Some decisions to be made but mostly trying to get as much of your crew through it alive while all the bad things are happening.
As mentioned, I like 'Ranger' for it's uniqueness but you'll have to learn the actual (included) tactics to play. It also utilizes dry erase maps for you to draw your line of march out for each mission so that one isn't completely text and CYOA style gaming. Less tables but more conceptual learning. Geek Gamers made a couple videos about it on her channel a few years ago. It's certainly unusual.
The Silent Victory/Hunters/Etc series is simpler but are also less detailed. They're okay but I don't find myself playing them too long at once. If I'm going with a narrative game like this, I'd rather get deeper details than these provide.
These games aren't for everyone, but if you enjoy a narrative experience on the respective subject, it can be a nice change of pace from most other games.
@@TheDungeonDive - If you want to check out a summary and walkthrough of 'Target For Today', I'd suggest checking out Tony Holt's series; it gives a good overview to see if you'd be interested. Link - >
th-cam.com/video/K46sifmCnnE/w-d-xo.html
I like the idea of a 'simulation' of golf in a D&D-style world. Are you going to bribe the ent to give you your ball back, or just climb up and get it?
I'm surprised there aren't more FANTASY sports games. Seems to be really only American football style games.
I was thinking how cool the attributes would be in a rpg. Instead of strength if 15 you have the attribute power! I am really looking into this feature
Totally agree. More narrative attributes.
Different but still presented in your pleasant style. Good video.
If you like the idea of abstracting out movement, positioning etc., you might like gamebooks.
I used to be into game books a lot, but don't like many of them any more. The only ones I really enjoy any more are Fabled Lands, because of the grand sense of adventure. I would rather turn to games for my gaming, and novels for my reading. One of the main issues I have with game books is that, typically, the writing isn't very good at all, so it's hard for me to spend any amount of quality time with them. Also, the game parts aren't typically very good. So you're stuck with a mediocre novel and a mediocre game.
I agree with abstracting out granular movement in many games. Many times the simulated combat is not realistic, e.g. shock combat can be over in seconds with reflexes, split-second decisions, and luck deciding the contest. For the most part, the loser is either wounded or killed so is a casualty and functionally out of the fight. The intricacy of movement, health values, etc are often details that give a false authenticity to the representation of combat. However, these systems might be fun for a gameplayer because they are tangible and pleasing as a transactional metric.
This is why I dont like squad based or small scale tactical wargames. I just don't find the manual execution of tactical doctrine to be very interesting. I'm interested in the challenges of command and the narrative scope of the battle. Let the soldiers do the soldiering. Hence why grand tactical scale is more pleasing to me. Also why I prefer over world adventure games to dungeon crawlers.
In combat, there are only two things that people remember - the first strike and the last one. Everything else should be abstracted away, unless you're making a super tactical detailed combat simulator.
Top 10 adventure game of the year? XD
Have you ever played Barbarian Prince from Dwarfstar? It is long out of print, but they have a free print and play option. What you are describing sounds a lot like how it works.
I have, yes! It’s a bit like this.
Is there a game that focuses on the minutia and gets it right? Like makes the minutia a lot of fun?
I think maybe Advanced HeroQuest. It’s a pretty detailed dungeon crawl simulator.
Is it wrong the whole time you were talking I was really, really hoping you were going to edit in *record scratch* a Dungeon Crawl theme using the mechanics of this golf game? Like I thought maybe you were setting us up for just that twist. ;)
As always I enjoy your videos. Golf just isn't my jam.
Nope. Just love this game and it has a lot to offer designers of dungeon crawls and adventure games. :)
I very much agree with your commentary on the dungeon crawler genre and would even go farther by saying that it is in a serious need for some overdue next evolutionary steps (plural) that questions its clichés. Clichés which are to most games of this genre real curses. Dungeon Crawlers are as a genre arguably the most stubborn and unwilling type of games when it comes to innovation and taking risks in design.
When I see a game asking me to count squares on a board for moving characters from A to B, I can't help it but roll my eyes. It's not the '80s or '90s anymore, we did this back 30-40(!) years ago and are still doing it in many newly-released games today. When I, as a fan of dungeon crawlers, look at other game genres and how they evolved since then, it makes me cringe. On top of it, some dungeon crawlers are also asking the players to establish lines of sight in a clunky way -- and instead of counting squares on a board, we are often now counting inches along a ruler, ugh ... Shadows of Brimstone from 2014 has a roll-to-move element in its standard rules. I understand nostaglia, I'm in fact a nostalgic person myself, but many things just don't age well. It's like building new houses up to modern standards, except there are still coal furnaces and chamber pots.
I again agree that moving around a map square by square is in the end in most dungeon crawlers just boring and a waste of time, a cliché that people expect, and most designers actually don't know what to do with and use its potential to deliver something of actual interest and relevance that justifies it all. If the game just delivers this element for eye candy and fulfillment of expectation without really adding anything, it should indeed just be streamlined out or abstracted.
I played purely card-based games that gave me a way better sense and fun experience of exploring a dungeon than many other games that come with tons of plastic miniatures and cardboard map tiles (Warhammer Quest: The Card Game, Escape the Dark Castle, The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, ect.). I'm astonished that other designers did not take lessons from Claustrophobia, released in 2009, as it got rid of grid-based movement and lines of sight for ranged combat while also introducing many new interesting tactical elements, many which actually justified a tactical map on the table and it an integral part. Moving a character just one step (=entire map tile) more can have big consequences within the context of the other rules. I'm not saying it's the best dungeon crawler ever and for everyone, but I really wish other designers would have been taken inspiration from it and continued building on these rather bold new ideas to the genre.
If anyone knows other good dungeon crawlers that brought something new and enjoyable to the table, please comment and let me know, thanks !
Wow! We are totally on the same page here. I think there are legacy elements that people expect from these games, and the designers are in a tough spot, because often it is the fans who clamor for these elements. But what the fans don't realize is that it is not exactly the elements they are craving, but it is instead the memories of what those things created.
LOS should be a thing of the past, unless it really, really matters to the tactics of the game play. Calculating LOS is NEVER fun, and it is NEVER something I remember fondly after playing a game!
Is April 1st 🤪
Nope! There is a lot for designers of dungeon crawls and adventure games to learn from this game!