Well, I guess, it's not for me. I might just not have enough patience to "get it", but anyways, the results are still the same - me being frustrated, questioning time spent and all the praise. I've learned about the game from Bob the World Builder, and am immensely disappointed by that recommendation. Maybe this feedback will save someone's time.
- First of all, there's more lore on this itch.io page (that lore is still vague, there's not much to it except "yeah, it's Polish"), than in the game itself.
Like, who am I? What goal do I pursue, except "crafting six special abilities"? Consequences of what events pushed me into this endeavor of getting killed in the mountains?
There's no fluff, no narrative value, no cultural value. I've learned nothing about "Polish mountains" and "culture and art" of highlanders, except several Polish words - and even those have no transcription, so I can't even read them properly. Futile effort.
- Second main issue is, the roll values and difficulty ratings are broken, and not supported by any thought or game sense. To unlock even a possibility of beating the game, one needs to roll 12 on 2d6, which is a 2.7% chance to start with. Hell, that's half of the chance of rolling natural 20 on d20!
Rolling 2d6 also gives not a linear chance, but a Bell's curve, meaning that most of the time new locations would be either Deep Woods, or a Meadow, with these two locations having almost 65% chance of all possible rolls (values of 6 to 9). And these two give us just an Encounter, and three out of six Encounters are the ones that deal damage either by the trap or by the combat, even if choose to avoid the combat (yeah, Meadow lets escape with no damage taken, that's not the point). Forth option is a riddler, who, if you decide to play, with 50% chance will smack you in the face too! That's like 66% chance of getting punched in an Encounter!
In other words, rolling for a new location has a ~33% chance that the player just gets punched in the face (~45% if you try to solve the riddles, too), with nothing to it. No progression, no choices, no gains, nothing!!!
- Not to mention that the combat itself is described as vaguely as it can be. It is implied to have rounds (named turns), and it's kinda implied that the enemy does no actions, only reactions as a consequence of bad rolls, or... start of a new turn (Undine).
To quote ("Enemies", page 11): "Failure means that the Enemy deals damage to you – subtract the points from your HP."
So does "Hajduk (court guard). 3 points, deals d4 damage" deals 3 points of damage, fixed? Or does it rolls d4?
Everything else doesn't matter, at this point. After giving it a good hour, I give up. I've gained nothing, I've learned nothing, and get quite the opposite result from the expectation of "exploring mountain wilderness and weirdness... [with] ...the atmosphere of folk tales about outlaws and knaves from Polish mountains, their culture and art".
It definitely doesn't help that I must constantly turn the pages from locations to encounters, to enemies, to items and prices, back and forth. The rare case of printed booklet being less satisfying and useful, than the digital version opened on the phone.
Honestly, one simple rule could make this experience so much better - ability to see what lies ahead by rolling locations right after rolling for available paths, with maybe exception of Deep Woods. I might give this game a second chance with this ruling, but considering everything, I doubt it, honestly.
My honest opinion - this game should be coded into a simple single-page app, with all its binary logic "if this then that" fitting perfectly for the medium, having no variability or narrative choices in it. Yeah, me too enjoy myself some fiddling with pen and paper, rolling physical dice - but not to the extent of doing it just for the sake of doing it, which this game mostly is about. I guess, it's not for me at all.
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With all the best regards to the author and the team. This feedback is not a personal attack, it's a critique of form and rules of the game. I appreciate the people, the effort, the goal, and the craft of this game, and am only unsatisfied with the game itself, as a final product that I've experienced. <3