A new type of adventure.
Awaken Realms have been creating story-driven adventure games for a while now, but they’ve gone almost full RPG with their newest game, Lands of Evershade. And considering the huge success of their campaign, this RPG/board game hybrid with modular adventures is just what the punters have been looking for.
Yes, the adventures are, as always, elaborate Choose Your Own Adventure branching paragraphs (is there any other way to control the rhythm of a story in RPG-like boardgames, I wonder?), but Awaken have reached a new a level of elegance here. Their games tend to be very rules-heavy, with an emphasis on following complex turn structures that can sometimes feel a bit like ticking off items on a spreadsheet (I’m looking at you ISS Vanguard). Which can work fine because they do demand a level of deep involvement and commitment unlike most casual games, and are often weighted towards playing solo as a result. But Lands of Evershade takes things to a smarter level by combining a simple skill check dice mechanic with detailed player-created characters, and then only layering on bits of complexity for the particular scenario set-piece your characters are involved in.
They’ve also hit that sweet spot, in my opinion, that makes the game something you want to keep taking off the shelf – it’s a campaign, but each full adventure demands a manageable commitment of time and is broken into bite-sized chunks of an evening’s play each. And the tactical combat system is just complex enough to be interesting, without getting bogged down in fiddly rules for things like line of sight, range, and too many special rules.
I’ve only completed the starter adventure, Into the Whitewell, and just started on the advanced adventure, but so far I’m really enjoying this relatively light and fun fantasy game, and I’m very much looking forward to continuing my adventures in this interesting world. The game definitely rests on the quality of its modular adventures, so here’s hoping the high bar set by the introductory one is maintained.
The rules are in the main easy to remember, but here’s my summary, along with a reference sheet that handily replaces the multiple reference cards in the game with one small sheet. The summary is of course also in my app, Tabletop Codex).
