Scraps is an extremely well-written RPG. It is intuitive, simple to follow, and a pleasure to read; it flows logically and introduces information at the right points to make it very easy for readers to understand its world. The Battleship/Tetris mechanic is fresh and interesting—it invites an interaction with space, paper, and pen that feels tinkery and true to the tone and themes of the game. The mechanic offers a meditative, quiet space to contemplate the personal and community projects that occupy a Scrapper’s life.
I played this as a group RPG with three other people and found that some changes helped to make the game work better for a group rather than as a solo journalling game. For example, I had the group members answer some character questions to form quick inter-party relationships to help build more collaborative narratives, and we spent some time world-building before setting out on our journey so that we could imagine the settlement we wanted to help with our project.
We also ended up choosing one party member to roll for things like Opportunities or for skill checks such as Discern to resolve these tensions more smoothly. Because my party members had picked different skills to excel in, this generally guaranteed success, because we were well shielded from roll contingency; as a group, we rarely "failed" (i'm not sure if the mechanics could account for this aspect of group play to more fairly distribute success and failure).
On the other hand, at the end, when we were coming together to put our scraps together into a community project, there was a feeling of tactile completion and satisfaction, of “making” something material and tangible, which we enjoyed much more than we anticipated. It really appealed to the parts of our brain that enjoy playing with space and spatial orientation, and it felt genuinely collaborative.
The question of genre also kept coming up. We ended up telling a story that felt more fairytale than solarpunk in terms of genre. Our group of players reflected that the ingredient names we generated (ice sap, quivering bark) were evocative but tended to lead our imagination towards nature as a magical force, e.g. we created candy aphids which lived in scraps of cloud and shy flocks of moving trees. Because the game is open-ended in terms of the social and cultural life of the collective we lived in, we also tended to make a world that was more akin to fantasy than to solarpunk because of our familiarity with the former genre. If this game were ever to be revised or expanded, I think clearer direction in terms of the solarpunk genre would have been helpful (e.g. more detail on what the genre would entail, such as the relationship between technology and nature, or maybe more flavour text that detailed settlements and characters who might exist in this world). So, for example, we had to agree on what level of technological sophistication existed in this world and what kind of projects our community needed. Did communicative devices exist? What about hearing aids? We wanted to make a giant bionic turtle to carry our settlement to warmer climates—did that seem feasible or too “fairytale”?
TL;DR: Really liked the Battleship/Tetris-ish mechanic and felt it was in line with the game’s ethos. Excellently written and easy to follow. Might need the lead of someone experienced with RPGs to help shape this for group play. Due to the imagery evoked by the random tables, the story told might lean more fairytale/fantasy than solarpunk.