Nightlancer

Game: Nightlancer
Manufacturer: Adversity Games
Year: 2016

Special Note:
Nightlancer is a game that is currently in a pre-production phase as of the writing of this review. I was fortunate enough to be given a copy for review purposes as the game was being prepared for its Kickstarter campaign. It's important to note that all of the photos below are of this prototype copy, and most of the artwork and design elements are missing. There are also some changes which have been or are being made to a few gameplay elements for the final version.

Because this review is for a version of a game printed before most of its artwork has been finalized and some of its rules are still being tinkered with, I don't necessarily feel its appropriate to give it a numerical grade at the end as I usually do. I've done some reviews of pre-production games on here before  where the art was not completed, but this is the first which is also undergoing some mechanical work as well. So, while I'll still explain it and tell you what I think about it, I'll hold off giving it a grade until such time as I've played a finished version.

Personal History:
When I was in college I was introduced to the world of "Shadowrun" through an emulated copy of the Sega Genesis game on my roommate's computer, and ever since then I've had this weird general interest in the Cyberpunk genre without ever "really" spending a lot of time with it.

So anyway, fast forward to about a month ago or so when I discovered that the creator of "Nightlancer", a game which seems to exist within that genre, was looking for reviewers in advance of its upcoming Kickstarter campaign. I was happy to give it a shot.

Condition:
As mentioned above the copy I received is certainly a prototype, and it appears to have been a well played one at that. Still, the components seem to held up well to whatever use it's had so far. All components were of course included.

 
Gameplay:
Each player chooses a starting character and retrieves all of that character's starting items, including Health, Resolve and Money Tokens and the player's starting equipment and Agenda cards, player token, and one contract token. Each player also chooses a color, placing tokens of that color on the starting spaces for "Heat" and "Prospects" and in a position on the "Order" track. Each player also takes their color's plastic clip and places it on his character card to indicate their starting "Ideals" level as indicated.

The basic game takes place over the course of eight rounds or ten rounds for a two player game. All of the characters in the game are living a fairly awful life and are looking to find a way out. The ultimate goal of the game is to be the player at the end with the greatest "Prospects" value, or in other words be the player with the best chance of getting out of his or her current predicament. To do this the players must work within the system they are trying to escape and basically commit some crimes to increase their resources and thereby improve their prospects. Doing this can increase a player's "Heat", a measurement of how much the police are onto them, and can decrease his or her "Ideals" which seems to be a measurement of how much a player has compromised his or her own sense of morality.

Each round follows a series of four phases with different actions to be taken in each. All actions in all phases are resolved according to the player turn order that day. The first Phase is the "Prep" phase in which the general circumstances of the day are presented. First an "Event" card is drawn from the event deck which helps to select which jobs or "Missions" will be available, what the day's price for Prospects will be, and then usually gives a stat check of sorts that players have to deal with or suffer a penalty. The "Black Market" is refreshed with a number of new cards determined by the number of players and each player also receives two "Contact Cards", one health, one resolve and one KC (the game's currency).

 

While most of what happens during the Prep Phase is just housekeeping this is also the time when players may elect to go on missions. Missions are the most direct way to gain money, and money is the most direct way to acquire nearly everything else. Missions cards detail the mission objectives, show what skills will be required to complete each step in the mission, and display the rewards for successful completion. Missions can be attempted solo or as part of a crew. Starting with player one on the order track each player may select one mission to attempt this round, placing his character token on the green "Stage 1" space. He may also play a "Contract" token if he has one on the red Stage 1 space preventing any other player from attempting that mission. If he doesn't play a contract then a subsequent player may choose to also attempt the same mission, placing his marker on the red Stage 1 space. If two players would like to attempt a mission together they may stack their tokens. Attempting a mission as a crew improves the chances of success.

After the Prep Phase is the "Streets Phase" during which the players may take one of four possible actions. The first and usually the most immediately helpful is to purchase something from the Black Market. In order to successfully complete a mission the player is going to have to pass three different stat checks, and one of the most straightforward ways to increase stats is to purchase some type of equipment. Armor, Gear, and Weapon cards are all items that you may choose to take into a mission. Cyberware and Cyberweapons become grafted onto a player and are taken by default into every mission. Cyberware and Cyberweapons also cause a loss of health along with the monetary cost (presumably because they're surgically implanted).

The second possible action is to complete an Agenda card. Agenda cards are tasks that the player wants to accomplish, and are usually completed by gathering or expending a certain amount of something, be it money or cyberware or stat points. Completing an agenda is rewarded with either Ideal points or Prospect points.

The third possible action is to take out a loan. When doing so the player receives a loan token and ten KC. Players may have out a maximum of two loans at any given time, and may pay them off in full at the beginning of the next prep turn or else pay one KC for each loan token they have. Holding unpaid loan tokens at the end of the game results in a significant penalty. If the player chooses not to take out a loan he may purchase Prospects at the going rate noted on that day's Event card. He may also pass and do none of those four things. Players continue to take an action in turn order until all players have passed.

The third phase is the Missions Phase. During this phase all of the missions that players have chosen are resolve, again in turn order. Each mission is composed of three stages, and at each stage the player must choose one of two stat checks. The stats in the game are "Covert", "Street", "Technical", "Close", "Gunfighter", and "Marksman". Players begin with a base number in each and can add to those through the use of purchased items and by playing contact cards. Each mission has different requirements as well as mission specific limitations. For instance some missions need to be done quietly, so items which are considered loud cannot be used. Some missions require explosives or a distraction, in which case the proper Gear or Contact will need to be brought along.

The first step in the Missions Phase is for each player to choose what gear he plans on taking, and place that chosen gear in his three "Loadout" spaces above his character card. Each piece of gear can only be used once during the course of the mission. As previously mentioned Cyberware and Cyberweapons are automatically brought along and do not count against a player's loadout. Contact cards are always available to a player and also do not count against a player's loadout.

At each stage of the mission the player is given two options as to how to get past a specific obstacle. The symbol at each option indicates the character stat that will be used along with the number that a player must meet or exceed using that stat. The player's total value for each stat check is their base stat plus any modifiers from used gear or cybernetic upgrades, plus effects from contacts, plus the roll of the game die. The die has faces reading 0, 1, 2, 3. Once those numbers are added together they are compared to the number on the mission card. Meeting or exceeding that number means success and the player moves his token to the next stage of the mission, completing that check the same way until all three stages are passed.

If a player fails at any stage of the mission he must suffer a penalty, indicated by a red box in the middle of the mission card. Penalties range from an immediate loss of the mission to increased heat or a physical attack. If a player's health or resolve ever run out they are immediately tossed from the mission. To that end a player may also choose to abort a mission at the beginning of any stage. 

If the player took on and completed the mission unopposed he collects a prize indicated by the chart on the mission card. If two players complete the first two stages of a mission they must confront each other in combat to determine which player can attempt the third and final stage. The initial player on the mission chooses one of the three combat types, Close, Gunfighter or Marksman, and after all bonuses are counted the player with the higher total for the chosen stat is allowed to continue on. Close, Gunfighter and Marksman stat checks also cost health to participate in, so it's possible a player without enough health remaining can be eliminated from a mission simply by being challenged.

Once the Missions are over and the players have collected whatever rewards they are due the "End Phase" of the round begins. If there are no more Event cards to be flipped then the game is over. Otherwise players discard their hand of Contacts cards down to three, determine turn order, and begin the next round. If the Game has ended players may fulfill any lingering Agenda cards, sell item cards, purchase prospect points, pay off outstanding loans and make payments to reduce heat. Players with loans or heat remaining that they cannot pay off receive a deduction of prospect points. The player with the best Prospects at the end of the game is the winner, with ties going to the tied player with the most ideals, and additionally the most KC if necessary. There are a few other little rules and game bits here and there that I've glossed over, but this is the general run of it.

So How Is It?:
First, while the copy I have includes almost no art, the little bits I am able to see are promising. The cover features scenes with two characters doing their thing and the artwork definitely has the dark, dirty future feel to it that fits with the genre. The art also reminds me of the sort of style used in a lot of late 80's comics made outside of the Marvel/DC books. It's less realism and more stylized grittiness with bright pops of color. If more art like that which is shown now is used to fill out the game I'm sure I'll be pretty pleased with the final product. It should also be noted that some examples of the new card layouts are shown on the Kickstarter campaign page and they are so much nicer than the prototype cards.

As for the game itself I will say that I liked it, but not everyone in my play group did. This game has a lot of little fiddly things to pay attention to, and while all of them make perfect sense in terms of creating a narrative and really do help to build a sort of immersive experience, they can also sometimes get in the way of what should be at times a simple transaction. For example, it's difficult enough to find a mission that you can complete without much trouble for much of the game since they often require the player to have equipment and stat boosts in multiple categories. Add to that the randomness of a die roll to help you out, the ability of opponents to hinder you with Contact card effects, and an often unforgiving series of penalties for missing the mark on each stage. At this point doing well is tricky, but the game's not meant to just hand you a win so I understand. It's beyond this point that things border on aggravating.

Some missions require specific item cards or contact cards to complete. It's not enough, for example, to have built a character whose Covert skill is so high that he doesn't even notice himself when he enters a room. No, sometimes a specific mission requires a contact card who can act as a distraction while you simultaneously pass a Covert stat check. It's just creating another barrier to the use of a skill that you've probably spent a lot of time trying to build up to the detriment of other skills. Logically it might make sense that you'd need to take a bomb with you if you plan on detonating a bomb as part of your mission, but I don't think game benefits much from including the detail of "how my super technical character hacked a computer" or "exactly how my master of covert techniques distracted the guard", and at the end of the day it's hard enough to complete many of the missions anyway.

We all also took issue with the way direct combat is handled in the game. It's of course likely true that if I choose to get involved in some close-quarters combat with someone I'll probably come out of that situation with some amount of injury. The way the game approaches combat, however, is to immediately assign damage to the participants before any kind of stat check occurs. This means that you might create a character who is a beast of a close combat fighter with really great stats and bonuses to that effect, and enter him into a Mission where he has to fight, say, a reasonably healthy baby. Unfortunately the mere thought of having to fight the baby costs your character three health, and because he wasn't fully rested you character suffers a devastating loss and has to abort the mission, all without even getting to the stat check for which you had so prepared. Of course there's no evil babies in this game (Yet. Who knows what expansions are planned), so I'm being a little absurd but the point remains, and I honestly think that the characters who skew in their opening stats towards combat are not great choices unless you can convince other characters to always partner with you, or you always compete with other players on missions and can get through the first two stages without taking so much damage that the deciding combat with the other player kills you before you can capitalize on your stats. That was a long sentence but go ahead and diagram it if you want.

The other thing we didn't really like was the difficulty of completing the Agenda cards. these seem like the fast track to Prospects at first but we found them very hard to complete until right at the end, and since you can just throw money at the problem by purchasing Prospects there really seemed to be little point. A vast majority of our Prospect points, truth be told, were gained after the game was over and we sold our equipment cards to pay for them. The equipment you buy from the black market is so necessary to ensure success in the missions, and completing missions is really the only way to acquire money. You often find yourself trapped in a loop of spending all of your mission money to purchase cards from the market which are used in turn to attempt more lucrative missions which require more expensive equipment. The necessity of occasionally healing a character will mean a turn lost without taking a mission at all, meaning no additional funds that turn, and a lost mission often means no funds this turn or next turn since several mission failures are the result of combat challenges which as stated above greatly reduce your health. And all of that is fine and part of the game's world and strategy, however the Agenda cards also being so difficult to achieve mean that purchasing Prospects is often the only way to get prospects, and that means not buying the equipment you will need to make the money to buy the prospects.

Prior to writing this review I asked the game's developer what changes could be expected moving from this prototype to the final game and one of the main things he mentioned was doing something to make Agenda cards more reasonable to complete. I applaud that notion and hopefully this change will make acquiring both Prospects and Ideals (which can only be increased by completing some Agenda cards) much easier.

So that's five long paragraphs describing what I didn't like about a game I said I enjoyed, and I don't want all of that to overpower the positives.  This game is like a Hitchcock movie. Every little thing has been thought about and meticulously placed and rationalized, and because every element exists to form a cohesive whole you get something which plays like a living choose your own adventure novel. Every character has a fairly thorough back story written on the back of its card. All of the stories are depressing and reveal the background and motivation of the character. As you assume the character's mantle you are guided through their attempt to escape from their awful life. There is flavor text on everything in this game, from full descriptions of every mission and rationales for each stage of every mission, to the agendas the players take on, to the events the players must contend with each round, the equipment they buy, the contacts they make, etc. The rule book contains descriptions of the world in which this game is set, referencing things that are sometimes never mentioned on any other part of the game. It all works to build a game atmosphere you can almost smell.

This attention to detail is the game's greatest asset, while at the same time creating some of the issues I had with it. I love how immersive it is, and I appreciate that the difficulty of gaining ground mirrors the reality in which each character lives. There was never a turn where I felt as though I was wasting an action or doing something that didn't need to be done. Absolutely every choice a player makes has real consequences, and a few poor decisions can lead to a very poor end for his character. At the same time success in a mission actually feels like real success, and since money is so precious all purchases must be heavily weighed. This is a long game to play because so many factors have to be considered and almost nothing can be decided lightly. Players looking for a game with very black and white decisions are going to probably hate Nightlancer, as are players who completely ignore the narrative qualities of it.

I'd also like to add that I love the idea of the "Ideals" scoring track. Having your character grapple with his or her morality throughout the course of the game is very interesting concept, and one that I've not really seen before in a board game. Since each character is basically starting the game in awful circumstances and just struggling to get by, it's interesting character-wise to consider that obtaining financial freedom might come at the cost of compromising your own morality and losing your sense of self. In game terms a character who has lost all of their ideals becomes "Technoshocked" and cannot win the game unless all other players are also technoshocked. Basically if you've engaging in morally damaging missions so often that you've become a self-loathing cretin who no longer has any regard for what's right and wrong, then the only way to win becomes to try and force the other players into sinking down to your level. It's sort of diabolical, and while none of us ever went that far down the Ideals track during our play the lack of easy ways to restore your ideals makes it a real threat.

At the end of our four-hour-long, four-player session I know two of us would definitely give it another play even in this state with the issues discussed above, and oddly enough we were the two who did the worst. One of my playgroup definitely disliked it, and I feel that was in part because she didn't really like the theme and ignored that aspect of it, making it then just seem like a slow and complex game of arbitrary numbers. The fourth player, the winner of our session (It wasn't even really close), also seemed to enjoy himself. I will say though, especially since he's one of my most faithful readers, that upon review of the rulebook I think we let him get away with a few things regarding his equipment that wasn't technically allowed. So while at the time and with our flawed understanding of a couple of rules you may have won, in the grand scheme of things you're a big cheater. So there.

Final Verdict:
This is a long, heavy, theme-y game. It's really not for everybody and it does have some issues which can suck some of the fun out of it. At the end of the day though I definitely enjoyed fighting for my character and I thought a majority of the elements in it were extremely well executed. The longer I've thought about it the more of a fan I've actually become. I look forward to seeing the finished product and would love to try it out once the last bits of adjusting have been completed.

The campaign to fund Nightlancer on Kickstarter is currently active as of this writing, so go check it out!