Gremlins, Inc. – Review

Board games are a rather weird subject when it comes to gaming, since a lot of people immediately think about playing real life tabletop games instead of a digital board games. However, digital board games are out there! Gremlins, Inc. is a board game that has been out for a while now, it features intense strategy and both multiplayer and singleplayer play for the competitive gamers out there.

Story

Gremlins, Inc. doesn’t really feature any story elements at all. It’s designed to be a strategic board game in a steampunk world, but of course it’s hard to put a story into a board game. On the Steam page, there is a little bit of background about the Gremlins. Basically they’re microscopic creatures that inhabit anything they can infiltrate. They value money, political power and prestige, and won’t hesitate to go to the dark side in order to achieve their goals.

Graphics

The graphics in Gremlins, Inc. look simply great. The game is set in a steampunk world and the graphics reflect this greatly. Everything looks mechanical and the animations reflect this as well, which makes for a much nicer experience when playing the game. All of the items in the game are very well detailed, like the game board, the cards, player avatars, even the dialogues and menus look very nice. It’s also extremely easy to run this game on any PC, since it’s “just” a board game after all.

Sound

Gremlins, Inc. doesn’t only look great, but it also sounds great. The main menu music is simply awesome and the in-game atmospheric music also provides a nice setting for playing the game. Sound effects are also great, they emphasize the actions everyone is undertaking quite well, however they can be quite loud and there can be a lot of them which makes it very busy when a lot of things are happening. Luckily the game has individual volume sliders which allows you to turn things down if they’re too loud.

Gameplay

As told before, Gremlins, Inc. is an intense strategy board game set in a steampunk world. Players will have to compete against each other in order to come out triumphant, but that requires both short and long term thinking as the game can take huge twists in a single round.

Gremlins, Inc. was made for two to six players in mind with a big focus on multiplayer, but some singleplayer challenges are available against AI, there is no local co-op. Apart from being a board game, it’s also card based. These cards will be used to move around but can also be interacted with under the right circumstances. The game has a couple of different win conditions, some games might be based on score limit, others on round limit, time limit and even more are available in custom games.

The game gets started by handing out six cards to all the players in the game, where you can choose to discard certain cards to allow redrawing. These cards can be used to move according to the number in the top left corner, but can also be activated when on the right tile on the board which is indicated in the bottom left. Cards can have all sorts of stuff attached to them, certain cards can have negative effects when using them for moving, but better effects when used as an action for example. A round is composed of a movement and an action phase. First you have to use a card in order to move to a different tile, and then you can perform an action if you have a card that allows you to. Of course there are some exceptions because there are cards that give you an extra turn.

Cards have widespread effects when used for actions. Some of them give money, others give political power, corruption, score or they could do something else entirely like allow you to look into an opponent his hand, switch places with an opponent and many many more. Managing your cards well is the key to success in the later stages of the game.

There are quite a bit of different tiles on the board. For example there’s a money tile which gives cash when you pass by it or gives double cash when you stop on it for a turn. On another tile you’ll have to pay money when passing through it, other tiles include police searches, gambling, misfortune and more. Planning out your moves while going around the board will give the best chance of success.

Elections also take place every twenty rounds, or when someone triggers them with an action card. Elections allow a governor to be chosen, and a governor can’t be stopped by the police, doesn’t have to pay bribes and some more advantages.

As said, there is both a singleplayer and multiplayer mode in the game. The singleplayer mode poses some challenges which the player has to complete as best as he can. This can include getting 20 points before 20 rounds for example. There are leaderboards for all of these challenges so this makes it extremely interesting for people who like to measure themselves against other players in strategic games.

Multiplayer mode features a lobby system where you can join any game you want, but there is also a ranked system which allows for high-level strategic gaming against up to six other players. This will allow you to climb the tournament ladder and have bragging rights, of course.

Conclusion

All in all, Gremlins, Inc. is a great board game that will appeal gamers that don’t usually play these kind of games. The game looks great, it’s fun to play and you can easily go on for hours trying to beat your competition. It features a great online mode and fun singleplayer challenges, but things can sometimes get a little bit hard to follow as the animations are quite fast, but the game features a pretty good history timeline at the bottom of the screen which helps to catch up on things.

Subsonic

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