SeaFall is receiving very mellow reactions

Shut Up and Sit Down only lasted six games before they just decided to open everything because it was not fun enough for the amount of time invested. Dice Tower is very meh after four games. Other personal opinions posted on BGG and reddit share a similar view.

I'm slightly shocked but has anyone here played one of the rare Gen Con copies yet?

Also curious what Dave's reaction to the first wave of public opinion is. Not sure how many plays you were involved in during playtesting, but I sensed that you really enjoyed it. Do you think anyone's missing the point?

It felt a bit procedural and heavy when I read the rules, but I've got an open mind. I love the basic idea of revealing a world over multiple games, much more interesting to me than marking up an already existing world.

The SUSD review and the general tone of people who got it at Gencon are seriously making me think about cancelling my preorder. I'm getting the vibe that this is like one of those video games where its hardcore fans tell you "Man, just keep playing. After about 10-15 hours, you get a few new abilities that really make the game open up and get good." I'm sure that's cool, but I want to be having fun from the start, not start having fun after investing a bunch of time. Even less when I have to convince a bunch of people to muscle through things with me.

It went through at least one more round of editing and changes after I playtested, so I don't know how much changed at that point. I liked it (and pre-ordered) but didn't love it, but I also discovered I don't like playtesting and shouldn't do it.

Then again, I'm also currently playing and enjoying the hell out of a video game that everyone else is mad at because it doesn't give them a feeling of overwhelming domination, so I'm not really the one to ask.

The Shut up and sit down review is quite good, imho. But I like them, so I'm biased.

It sounds like there was too much focus on the suspenseful unveiling of mechanisms and not enough focus on immediately satisfying campaign permanence and game systems. It's kind of like the "what's in the envelope" gimmick took over and overshadowed the other aspects of legacy and the gameplay itself. That imbalance might have been in some of the prior legacy games but at least their play times were shorter, especially with Pandemic. I know that part of the slow unveil was also intended to function as a tutorial system, so perhaps drama wasn't the sole aim of the pacing. Either way, it's really unfortunate.

This is what very mellow reaction made me think of.

I canceled my pre-order. Sounds like I have better ways to spend that much time.

You guys think those reviews are that bad? All I got from it is you need a dedicated crew and it starts slowly? I have enough disagreements with eurogamer types about game length and repeated plays to be a tiny bit skeptical about any negative hub bub. Kind of makes me more intrigued if it's a heavier, slower game... depends just how big a dud those first few games are, I suppose.

But then there's an unplayed copy of Archipelago on my shelf, so...

I think its one thing to say play an 12 hour game knowing that it starts slowly and then gets more interesting. Someone willing to spend 12 hours will accept this. I think its another thing to ask someone willing to play a 4 hour game to play it 3 times before it gets interesting. That seems to be the gist of what I am hearing.

I was never really interested in this (or any of the legacy stuff) to begin with.

But yeah...I think that's a pretty astute observation about a 12 hour game versus three four hour games.

I can't imagine how hard it is to figure out the pacing for a Legacy-style game.

Comics and TV have been struggling with how to make it make serialized story telling work with varying degrees of success since the late Seventies and the late Nineties, respectively.

And you still have comic series that feel like they were meant to be all read at once and TV shows that seem to have weird mid-act slumps (Netflix I am looking at you here).

For a board game where no two groups are likely to play it the same speed or with the same regularity it must be nearly impossible to find the right balance. My guess is that is is less a problem with Pandemic Legacy because that game isn't really one ongoing narrative more like a series of "threats of the week" with their own rising and falling actions whose consequences carry over, more like Battlestar Galactica than Stranger Things.

But I hope this style continues because I think when designers nail it, it will be great but my guess is it's going to take some trial and error to get there.

^good point/post

Vibe I got from the reviews is that there's still some interesting things going on, but the core game itself is somewhat boring. Given the previous legacy games were tacking on to existing rulesets (Risk, Pandemic), it doesn't surprise me that it stumbled a bit when applied to a game from the ground up.

The first SeaFall review I saw was from this guy and that pretty much convinced me not to get this game. Btw, I've been liking this guy's reviews quite a bit: