Etherfields

I have already played more hours of solo of this game than any other game. I think about my next dream goal all day at work. It has been a very long time since a game has drawn me in this much. I am looking forward to be able to rotate my friends into it on the weekend then continuing solo. What an incredible design.

Tras varias partidas, puedo decir que el juego es adictivo. Siempre me quedo con ganas de más. Al principio, la mecánica de "combates" me parecía muy light, pero cuando te acostumbras, es muy interesante.

It's pretty, but expensive and lacking in engaging gameplay.

It's surprising how empty this game feels. The gameplay is extremely simplistic, the miniatures are neat in concept but lacking in execution, and the puzzles are absurdly elementary. You're not really playing a detective game and solving a mystery. You're not playing a story. You're just looking at pretty pictures and following arbitrary rules.

The only thing the game has going for it is an engaging art style. If you've ever looked at your copy of Dixit and wished it had co-op versus a monster, this is the game for you. Otherwise, get it on sale.

Love: Card play, dreams, aesthetic. Don't love: Narrative is loose and vague, campaign is much longer than it needs to be thanks to repetitive slumbers. Some of the dreams are frustrating and seem like they weren't sufficiently playtested.

Update: The 2.0 changes fixed the issues I had with the slumbers and Dreamworld map. Now I have the option to take the long way around for sanctuaries and shops, or take on slumbers rapid-fire when I want to reach the Delta Phase. The web app is a game-changer as well; it saves tons of time flipping through the script book.

Replaying the core campaigns reminded me how frustrating this game can be. I still enjoy the card play, but the overall experience is weighed down by unavoidable time-wasting slumbers, vague narrative, clunky dream mechanics, and needless trial-and error. I briefly entertained the idea of quickly finishing the expansion campaigns before selling the whole lot, but then decided that life is too short to suffer through something I'm not thoroughly enjoying.

This is a difficult to define game. It is narrative, but there is not really a story here, but just pieces of memories from dreamers, who do not remember their real life, and strange thing happening in dreams. There are challenges to solve (e.g. rotate tiles to make a path) in the dreams, but most times the feeling is that you do not decide much, just you are driven by the game and read every entry in the tiles. Slumbers are repetitive and not very interesting. Dreams are fun, but become also repetitive and frustrating when you fail and have to repeat them. Good things are the change in mechanisms in every dream and the surprising new dreams. Also trying to know the story of the main characters is also fun, although I do not know yet if I will actually get to know anything or it will end as fuzzy as it has started. The board is just TERRIBLE, there is no way I can see the small picture and letters up there. The board should have been horizontal with the dream in the lower part. All together, today, in the middle of the core campaign, I fully recommend this game. Although I do not know what I will think when I go on. I will keep it posted. —- After the first campaign, I like the game even more than at the beginning.

Box 4

good idea, but most dreams don't offer puzzles

Dreams being unique is what makes this game interesting. The puzzles, however, are way too easy and the game is not challenging whatsoever. We have not died or lost a single dream in the base campaign