A downloadable game.
Unfortunately, I felt like this game could have stood some more playtesting. My group ran into numerous issues including:
- The rules don't tell you your starting stats, you just need to notice them in the corner of your playbook
- Fear mechanics seem strangely implemented -- you can encounter the Fear you wrote down on your character sheet and never be at risk for actually gaining any Fear?
- The character sheet was frustrating to use -- it was very hard to fit a description of Hope and Fear into the space provided, there's no way to indicate a Special Item or a Catchphrase at all and there wasn't much room to record answers to the questions
- The lack of any sort of move to use for "Can I convince this person to help me" was a constant source of friction. While I understand the idea of consciously choosing what spaces are covered by Moves, this particular sticking point kept coming up in our game. "Make A Friend" is an odd stand in that doesn't really answer the same questions.
- The "Talk It Out" move produced weird play experiences where players didn't WANT to roll a 10+ because they wanted one of the 7-9 effects, while the 10+ result is only usable if you have Harm. Very strange. Ended up houseruling this to allow choosing one of the 7-9 results even on a 10+
- The non-inclusion of the Fiend Moves in the Basic Moves handout was confusing, because it meant we just didn't realize we were able to do things like "Wish to summon the fiend" so these moves got very little play.
Overall, I found playing Babes to be a frustrating experience in spite of our GM's best efforts; The aesthetic of the game is very nice, but mechanically there seem to be a number of problems, big and small which resulted in an awkward game experience.