I only wanted to do one game today, but I would feel terrible about leaving you with an "it's broken" review after my little hiatus. So, I downloaded Twin Gates.
The biggest problem Twin Gates had is that it's not very good at grabbing the player's interest from the beginning. My first instinct when starting the game up was to alt+f4 away from it, because I was greeted by nothing but an empty board and cryptic descriptions on each of the cards in my hands. "Inverts mother, protects friend?" What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Through a bit of patient play, I figured out what's up. You try to fill up the board with tiles of your color before your opponent can. It's kind of like Go in that respect, but not nearly as strategic. There are 2 types of tiles: archetypes and spells. I might be getting those names wrong, but whatever. Archetypes take up 2 spaces and can "invert" certain adjacent enemy archetypes. If you've played Yu-Gi-Oh, imagine an monster with "change of heart" as its effect. In addition, archetypes can protect friendly archetypes from inversion. Spell tiles take up one space and have various effects.
This is a two-player only game, so again, I'm not going to be able to say much. I will say, though that my experience playing against myself and learning the mechanics was quite relaxing. It's an interesting game, and I certainly appreciate a design team trying to innovate in terms of mechanics rather than just in terms of aesthetic or narrative. Check this one out. It gets my seal of approval, but with a slap on the wrist for bad conveyance and for reminding me of my time learning Latin.
Links
The one that didn't work: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1421
The one that did: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26133
PS- it's been a while since I've edited a review after I'd published it, but I thought of a new criticism for Twin Gates. You know how if you construct your Yu-Gi-Oh deck poorly you never draw the card you need? This usually happens because you bog down your deck with too many cards so that the effects specific to other cards can never be triggered? Well this is a feeling that comes up a lot in Twin Gates, and it's not a good one.
PPS- I was wrong: there are 3 types of tiles, not 2...but it's like spell cards and trap cards in Yu-Gi-Oh. Yeah, they're different, but not really...
Well...now that I've enraged any Yu-Gi-Oh player worth their salt, I'll say good-bye for now.
