Tag Archives: fantasy flight games

XCOM: The Board Game Is A Partially Digitized And More Complex Pandemic

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Pandemic is a great game. It’s a co-op game that forces players to really work together, and gives a collective sense of impending disaster. It’s such a good formula that it’s quickly turning into a genre, spawning games like Forbidden Island, and the god-awful World War Z game that was obviously never, ever play-tested. Now it seems like this brilliant new formula has been expanded upon quite a bit by Fantasy Flight Games with some additional mechanics and an app that manages some of the more complex functions of the game.

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It also doesn’t hurt that this new game is using the XCOM license, because XCOM is awesome. Each player is a member of the XCOM team, running around the world, keeping the population from panicking, and fighting aliens. To that degree, it sounds a lot like Pandemic, but with aliens, but that’s where the differences start. You also need to defend the XCOM headquarters from attack, complete missions to discover weaknesses in the enemy invasion plan, and manage the team’s income. With no base, no intel, or no money, you’re doomed.

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We’re also interested to see exactly how the companion app works, as it’s not just an aid or calculator, it’s an integral part of the game. The app will perform some of the more complicated calculations and act as AI, and will be free for download with purchase of the game on iOS, Android, or on an actual computer. XCOM: The Board Game is coming out in “Q4 2014,” so it should be hitting shelves soon.

[via Fantasy Flight Games]

The End of the World: An Apocalyptic Tabletop RPG Where Your Character Is Based on You

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In pencil and paper RPGs, players are usually playing as character that are much, much cooler than themselves. It’s usually a sorcerer with some demonic heritage, a 200-year-old vampire with the ability to manipulate darkness, or a genetically altered super soldier with a gun that fires .75 caliber rockets. In Fantasy Flight Games’ new RPG, The End of the World, you play as yourself.

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That’s right, if you’re lazy, your character is lazy. If you’re out of shape, your character is out of shape. If you majored in Art History, your character majored in Art History. That said, if you spend hours a day practicing Krav Maga and went to West Point, your character is going to be a total badass. Worse still, your starting equipment is based on what you can find while filling out your character sheet, so you’re very likely to be fighting off the apocalypse with nothing more than a 14″ wok and a chef’s knife.

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Fantasy Flight Games is releasing four books, each with five different variations on a theme and the same set of rules. First up is the obligatory Zombie Apocalypse, which will be followed by Wrath of the Gods, in which everything from the Mayan pantheon to Cthulu begins to wreak havok on the Earth. After that, the world will be subjected to Alien Invasion and Revolt of the Machines. In preparation, we suggest you start taking some martial arts, and file for a Class 3 license with the ATF.

[via Fantasy Flight Games]