Adam got a new game, which is incredibly complicated. Caverna is the big, more complicated brother of Agricola. This is especially the case since all the upgrades were available at all times. There were so many options, and it was hard to make any decisions. On top of that there was a battle mechanic that lets the player choose from a list of options, making more decision points. This is a good game, but way too complicated.
June 25, 2014 at 3:48 PM
Aside from my Social Media Marketing business I also work in a Comic book/Gaming store and just sold our last copy of Caverna the other day! I haven’t played it myself yet, but it seemed interesting. Any thoughts on how they could make it less complicated?
June 25, 2014 at 4:14 PM
Some better restrictions on the number of options at any given time would be best. This could be done via a couple different methods. The rewards for the fights could have been structured in a less fluid manor, with the reward being a certain number or rubies, or a more limited set of options. The second is having a smaller supply available for the buildings. The open supply is one of the big differences from Agricola, but I’d say it was just too much to consider. The game got stalled at several points on our play through due to action spaces being taken the turn before, causing players to have to traverse the decision tree from the beginning. I also didn’t see much of a point to the uncertainty around if the round would end with a feeding stage or one of the random other stages. That could have been set into the board with little lost, but a reduction in complexity. The A/B side of the “Wish for Children” action space was also overly complicated for what seemed like no good reason.