Plague is in the air...
Destinies
Designer: Michal Golab Golebiowski, Filip Milunski
Artist: Karolina Jedrzejak, Mateusz Komada, Katarzyna Kosobucka, Magdalena Leszcynska
Published: 2021
Players: 1-3
Playing Time: 90-150 Mins
BGG Rating: 7.8
BGG Ranking: 336
Publisher: Lucky Duck Games
Mechanics: Storytelling, Dice Rolling, Map Addition,
Sleeves: STN 57,5x89mm
Game Description:
The Destinies system offers a fully story-driven, app-supported, RPG-like board game experience, without the need for a game master. Each scenario depicts a part of a vivid world, full of dark stories, epic NPCs and mysteries to solve. Each player takes the role of a hero on a quest to fulfill their destiny. Each destiny is a final goal of the character and has at least two, completely different paths to victory, composed of branching series of quests. Players compete with each other to push the world towards their own destiny.
The game uses an app and the Scan&Play technology to offer players a unique story-driven experience full of dynamic events, epic adventures, and an ever-changing game world. Each turn players discover new parts of the world presented on tiles, explore them and pick one point of interest to visit. There they learn more about the story and make crucial choices of how they want to interact with people, creatures or situations faced there. The consequences of each choice are meaningful and often change the state of the world forever.
Quick play overview:
Players choose one of the characters available for the specific scenario and try to reach one of the two destinies available to that character.
On your turn, you will refresh one »effort die« (you can have up to 3 ready effort dice) and then you can move up to 2 tiles away and interact with one of the POI at that location.
Once you start the interaction you are entering into the last part of your turn.
The app will give you some options to choose from like:
- read some info about the story,
- scan some cards to get more info on the item or your destiny
- if it's a merchant, you can sell or buy items from this location
- do a test (like fight, run, talk…)
Doing the tests is the main (and only?) game-y part of Destinies. Each character has 3 skill tracks (INTELLIGENCE, DEXTERITY and STRENGHT) that vary depending on the character you start with. During the game you will earn XP points that will be used to improve these 3 stats and thus improve your chance to pass the tests.
When you have to do a test, you always use 2 main dice + you can add up to 3 ready effort dice to improve your chances to pass the test. Once you make the roll, you can get some bonuses from items and then you insert the number of successes into the APP to see if you passed and what happens next.
Doing the above you will slowly reach your destiny which will open the option to start your last test to fulfill your destiny (which is another series of tests).
Final thoughts:
The difference between the weak character that started a scenario and the strong, smart & full-bag-of-items/weapons-carrying-destiny-fulfilling hero is noticable. The skill tracks system is interesting and XP rewards are very welcome during the game.
SCORE:
Gameplay: 7/10
XP system is very rewarding and gives you a good feeling of progress. Moving around the map and interacting with object is not the most interesting part but the story is nice and the gameflow is quick.
Art & Graphic Design: 6/10
The art is nice but very gloomy as it's the story. We stopped using the minis. Due to their small size it's just to hard to find the right one.
Graphic design is good. There are no questions to what each item does even at a quick glance.
Rules & Complexity: 6/10
Rules are very easy to learn and easy to remember.
There is no complexity to this game. It's like reading a choose your adventure book.. where you only need to turn the pages.
Theme: 10/10
The gloomy story is very interesting and I'm coming back to this game because of it. The fact that your characters can represent both good and evil is a nice twist.
Fun & Replayability: 6/10
Like reading a book… the fun comes from the story and not from turning the pages.
This game has no replayability but I will probably keep it in hopes that maybe after a few years I will forget the details and I will be able to play it with my kids.