ThreeTale – First Impressions
Prototype copy provided by the publisher
In a time of prophecies and heroes, time is fluid, and traveling between past, present, and future can take place in a moment. And as always, the world is in danger. Threats loom, ready to tear apart the peace and calm of land unused to adversities of magical or cataclysmic proportions.
But if you decide to venture into the dark and bring the light with you, don’t do it alone. Adventures like this aren’t for the faint of heart, but they’re especially not for those without companions to lean on. You can’t have just one friend either. You’ll need two. A trio of heroes. That’s what it will take.
Every successful fantasy story relies on that pillar of truth. Frodo, Sam, and… Gollum. Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and… Sean Bean’s character. Harry, Ron, and Hermione (hmmm, that one actually works).
So once three heroes are ready for the trouble brewing on the horizon, they can go forward in ThreeTale, the upcoming board game from designer Hristo Yordanov and publisher Boarderia.
It’s a cooperative adventure game for three players (though the solo play is incredibly accessible and possibly even better than the three-player games) who choose their fairytale heroes before embarking on an adventure to acquire rings of power, escape the unraveling of time and space, defeat the evil creatures of the forest, and also find their way out of the forest without dying.
This is an experience where growth in power is the name of the game. Well, it’s not really the name. ThreeTale is the name. But you get the idea. It’s important to the adventure…
I had the chance to play this game twice prior to the Kickstarter campaign that’s launching, and I’m excited to see how it continues to evolve because what I saw already has me engaged and ready for more narrative surprises!
What It Does
In a game of ThreeTale, players progress through three phases of Prophecy, Past, and Present before descending into the depths of the Future—a fourth and final phase that brings a terrible challenge for players to overcome as the world starts to break down. Either you triumph over the obstacles in your path or you stumble and fall, to be left and forgotten like heroes of old.
It’s a tile-laying, stat-boosting, character-leveling, dungeon-crawling, creature-battling, chest-opening, deer-flying adventure.
If those hyphenated descriptors aren’t doing it for you, though, let’s dive into what’s going on.
And the heroes try, oh my God, do they try
They try all the time, in this institution (of tile-laying cooperative adventures set in a high fantasy landscape)
And they pray, oh my God, do they pray
They pray every single round of play
For a revolution (that brings them untold amounts of Shevitsa and Virtue to level up their stats)
And so they cry sometimes
When they’re lying in bed (and thinking of the optimal path through the world)
Just to get it all out
What's in their head (like the eerie portents of the coming Information Flood or the Nine Rings of Creation)
And they’re feeling a little peculiar (due to an overwhelming sense of dread)
And so they wake in the morning
And they step outside (into a forested landscape full of treasures, fights, and opportunities for Virtue)
And they take a deep breath and get real high (in the hopes of retrieving artifacts and preparing for battle)
And they scream from the top of their lungs (about the need to work together to win)
That’s what's going on!
Thankfully, if you pick carefully, there are at least 4 Non Blondes to pick from to build the team. That should be enough to save the world. Whether you need to emerge victorious from an epic fight, collect the right knowledge necessary to survive, or simply weather the storm, you can do it in ThreeTale if you work together.
How It Does It
On the micro-level, players have relatively simple decisions to make on a turn-by-turn basis:
Place a tile on the table.
Connect it tiles already there.
If it’s a hero’s first tile, place them on the empty space.
Fill the tile with the appropriate Virtue, Shevitsa, Speed, and tokens.
Using the hero’s Speed value, move through the tiles and perform Actions up to the unlocked amount.
Increase Virtue, Shevitsa, and Speed values as needed and interact with Treasure, Battle, and Altar tokens as they are activated.
Continue this until there are no tiles left and the Present and Future phases have been triggered.
This is why the game plays so smoothly. This is what you’re doing for most of the game. And when the Future is revealed, players will still engage in that same pattern (minus the tile-laying part) of moving and performing actions.
The Prophecy and Present phases are very short bookends to the larger Past phase where most of the action occurs. The Prophecy phase sets up what might occur. The Present phase reveals what the Future will be. And then the Future phase is the scenario in which players will discover if their heroes are prepared for the challenge ahead.
Each path of character leveling has interesting ramifications in the game, though. Heroes heavy into combat can roll more dice than their opponents and create auto-successes (of their rolls) and auto-failures (of the enemy’s rolls). Heroes focused on Speed and Action cards can move through the map quickly and interact with much of the board. Increasing Endurance and Mercy will allow a hero and their companions to boost their stats faster. Higher Endeavor will provide additional Actions every turn. All of these are viable options, but a careful integration of all Virtues is valuable in building a balanced team of heroes.
Timing is key, as well. Heroes must know when to engage in Battles, when to seize Treasures, and what Artifacts should be used when. It’s all essential in navigating the scenario effectively. Choose something at the wrong time and you might waste a precious item or lose progress on your character leveling.
If you can get into a groove, though, there is joy in figuring out how to grow your heroes and equip them for the trials ahead.
Why You Might Like It
ThreeTale forces players to choose how they want their hero to progress. There is not enough time and space to effectively boost all of the stats or Shevitsa skills, so it’s a sometimes nail-biting debate as to what a hero should progress in. The endgame phase is a tough and unforgiving experience for heroes who are unprepared and it’s still difficult to even with a balanced team.
The layering of game phases in the game allows players to have a sense of what to expect but no certainty so there is a general goal for heroes in terms of how to best be equipped for the final challenges, but it’s enough variability that the puzzle of the spatial tiles and character leveling isn’t static for every game.
Why You Might Not
As of now, the prototype doesn’t fully demonstrate how characters can really differ from each other. The Shevitsa skills are the hardest to acquire in the game and the one way to boost your access to them is through the sacrifice of artifacts, which is the other avenue toward more customization or variability in hero design. These shouldn’t be exclusive of each other in building out a memorable character.
The terrain in the game does not create a visual or thematic connection to much beyond a green landscape. It’s all the same garden-esque tiles. Creating some unique tiles or spatial opportunities could give players a breath of fresh air each game rather than a return to the familiar.
Final Thoughts
ThreeTale is off to a great start! I’m satisfied by what’s there right now, but just a few improvements could really elevate the overall experience and leave players with a game that has a permanent place on the shelf and a frequent place on the table.
Hristo has got something special in the stat-boosting element of the game. It’s an intriguing puzzle that’s not always solvable with the same approach. The narrative conclusions that appear in the Future phase will require that players experiment with different combinations of Virtues, Shevitsas, and Artifacts before finding the right formula.
This is a superb solo gaming experience, as well. You don’t have to have three players. One player can easily manage all three heroes and still finish the game in the allotted time. So that’s something to consider for a game that currently advertises itself as a three-player game. That restriction may lose the campaign some backers, but it’s not really representative of what the game can be. It’s easy enough and fun enough that two players can also share the mechanical load of building three heroes from the ground up. The player count is not a static element as it initially seems.
I look forward to all of the revisions and gameplay enhancements that could come down the pipeline before the game could arrive on the doorsteps of gamers around the world. If enough is added on, I could see this being an evergreen game for players to bring out and puzzle out.
Also, the production level is something that I’m impressed by at the prototype level, so if the final version of the game is close to that, then I’ll be happy from an aesthetic point as well.
If you want to check out ThreeTale, you can learn more about Boarderia or read what the community thinks on BoardGameGeek.
ThreeTale poses a satisfying spatial and skill-based puzzle for players to solve and it does so with challenging scenarios that don’t guarantee player success. It’s something that could grow into a really special game as the design solidifies ahead of Kickstarter fulfillment.
Let us know in the comments and give a recommendation for other games of which to share our first impressions.