Update: In an effort to make sure his campaign is a great as it can be he listened to some of the suggestions in our original review! Page 10 was fixed up which significantly increases the quality of the rulebook! We're happy to say that this rulebook would on the Susan Rating Scale Receive:
It's great to see someone so invested in their Kickstarter product and determined to provide a good product to their backers! There is a good lesson here about how much one thing can really improve a rulebook, so I've left the original review below so you can see all of the goods the rulebook already had and how important that one change was.
It's great to see someone so invested in their Kickstarter product and determined to provide a good product to their backers! There is a good lesson here about how much one thing can really improve a rulebook, so I've left the original review below so you can see all of the goods the rulebook already had and how important that one change was.
N30n City Rumble is a 2 player game in which both players control five fighters on a team battling against each other reminiscent of old school games. Did I mention all of the fighters were made super strong by radioactive waste? If this sounds cool check out the video above or click the picture to the side to learn more. But as we all know here the rulebook is king! So how was their rulebook? Feel free to pull it up as a .pdf and join us as we find out! | |
Organization and Layout: The first issue has to be mentioned right away. On page 10 we saw that it wasn't page 10 at all, it was page 8 number and all all over again. This made things confusing. We weren't sure if it was an accident or if they just wanted to show that part of the rules again but it made for a very bad first impression. If it was on purpose having the exact same page over again will confuse people and make them wonder if it's a misprint, and if it was on accident we may have missed important information on how to play the game. Either way it was a HUGE mistake.
Despite this the rest of the rulebook looked really nice. It was easy to find what I was looking for and the general layout was really attractive and combined with the art added greatly to the theme of the game.
Clarity: The rules seemed pretty clear though sometimes long-winded in the explanation. I'm not sure how easy these would be to brand new gamers but for the average player they would probably be okay.
Graphics: The art itself was seriously cool, it got us into the game and theme before we even sat down to play which was awesome. Having a small comic for explaining the storyline really fit in and was an excellent idea as well. Plus the pictures in the rulebook used to explain various parts of the rules worked very well to explain how the game was played. All it all the entire art department on this rulebook was spot on.
Depth: I hate to say that I found issues here as well. There was no section of the rulebook that actually described how to pick who got what characters to start which was a huge issue as it seemed figuring out teams that worked together could be really cool, but we didn't know if part of the strategy was trying to make a randomly selected team work. It definitely stalled the game up as we had to figure out how we wanted to do it, though we managed to agree to try it with several different methods, We also don't know if we missed anything we have may needed on the "missing" page 10 which was annoying.
Minus these major issues everything else seemed to be covered quite nicely.
Writing: The writing itself had a good professional feel that didn't let the theme get in the way of explaining the rules. We obviously excused N30N in our look for misspelled words and typos, and by doing so we found nothing bad on that front. Overall a well written rulebook.
Despite this the rest of the rulebook looked really nice. It was easy to find what I was looking for and the general layout was really attractive and combined with the art added greatly to the theme of the game.
Clarity: The rules seemed pretty clear though sometimes long-winded in the explanation. I'm not sure how easy these would be to brand new gamers but for the average player they would probably be okay.
Graphics: The art itself was seriously cool, it got us into the game and theme before we even sat down to play which was awesome. Having a small comic for explaining the storyline really fit in and was an excellent idea as well. Plus the pictures in the rulebook used to explain various parts of the rules worked very well to explain how the game was played. All it all the entire art department on this rulebook was spot on.
Depth: I hate to say that I found issues here as well. There was no section of the rulebook that actually described how to pick who got what characters to start which was a huge issue as it seemed figuring out teams that worked together could be really cool, but we didn't know if part of the strategy was trying to make a randomly selected team work. It definitely stalled the game up as we had to figure out how we wanted to do it, though we managed to agree to try it with several different methods, We also don't know if we missed anything we have may needed on the "missing" page 10 which was annoying.
Minus these major issues everything else seemed to be covered quite nicely.
Writing: The writing itself had a good professional feel that didn't let the theme get in the way of explaining the rules. We obviously excused N30N in our look for misspelled words and typos, and by doing so we found nothing bad on that front. Overall a well written rulebook.
Now Susan has been part of some good rumbles in the past but as far as I know isn't radioactive in any way. But I do know for sure he has a great taste in rulebooks! On the Susan Rating Scale this rulebook gets:
Susan's Explanation: I was INCREDIBLY tempted to give this two curls down due to the confusion about page 10 and some parts of the rules being lacking, but since other parts of the rulebook were so well done and the game seemed playable with the current rules I had a little mercy. Still it should be a high priority to fix those rules up before the final release of the game if it gets funded as in its current form the rules have some severe issues.
Susan's Explanation: I was INCREDIBLY tempted to give this two curls down due to the confusion about page 10 and some parts of the rules being lacking, but since other parts of the rulebook were so well done and the game seemed playable with the current rules I had a little mercy. Still it should be a high priority to fix those rules up before the final release of the game if it gets funded as in its current form the rules have some severe issues.
Well we came back with quite a bang didn't we? But maybe I'm still a little sluggish and I missed something, if so let me know in the comments below! Until next time: Every Game Deserves A Good Rulebook.