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Going it alone into the dark Tanglewoods of twisted fairy tales.
The Twenty Strong system of solo games has released another wave of offerings and is taking the player deep into Manny Trembley's twisted artistic take on Grimm's fairy tales....or is it his grim take on twisted fairy tales? The Tanglewoods Core set includes the components and instructions for the Twenty Strong system along with the Tanglewoods Red game deck, which is based on the classic tale of Little Red Riding Hood.
If you are familiar with the 20 strong system, you won't need both instruction manuals that are included in this release. But if this your first step into the system, it can be a bit annoying flipping between the “Here is how to play 20 Strong” Manual and the “Here is how to play Tanglewoods Red” Manual.
You only set the difficulty at the beginning of the game. I started at Level 0 in my first game since this was my first 20 strong experience. The game also uses a secondary difficulty adjustment (even in the game doesn't specifically state that is what it is) that determines your starting gold based on the power of the character you choose. And that gold is key to the game since it allows you to purchase/upgrade items and bribe monsters to “look the other way” as you progress towards Grandma's house and your ultimate showdown with the Big Bad Wolf. (Or, if you are feeling frisky, the Bigger, Badder Wolf).
The game begins with you starting at the trailhead and moving towards Grandma's house, with new trail cards being revealed and, depending on your luck, they will be either daytime or nighttime, with the darker being the more dangerous. My first few adventures as Little Red ended quickly and badly, with me entering the belly of the beast via those iconic big teeth. Actually, that's not even true, twas the minions that sent me shuffling off this mortal coil. But, my forays taught me the system and I decided to up the difficulty all the way to...Level 1. Yea, I'm a big risk taker.
The game allows you to visit the merchant after rolling up to three dice (and exhausting them) to reveal a new trail card. To skip ahead for a moment, one common question from players is “Can you choose to roll dice and exhaust them if there are no more trail cards that can be revealed?” I checked with Chip Theory Games and Yes, you can still choose to visit the merchant once the Grandma’s Cabin card has been placed. This is the Tanglewoods Red version of healing up and preparing for the final battle. But, sorry, no save points here. Visiting the Merchant is where you will (hopefully) be spending your gold on items that allow you to manipulate your dice and buff up your character.
The map/trail is going to get out of control quick. Each trail card is a poker sized and you will be putting out at least 10 of them if you make it to your final destination. Since you never actually go backwards on the trail and I have not encountered any effect that causes you to need the map cards after you progress off of them, I just collapse the trail down to a single deck once I have beaten that section of the map.
Every aspect of the game is controlled with dice and the challenge (besides rolling reasonably well) is balancing exhausting dice and recovering dice. Locations will hit you with various negative effects as you progress with the occasional campfire locations providing a chance to upgrade your stats (which will give you more dice recovery, health, or storage space). The game blitzes you with multiple minions as you move along the trail with these being broken up with Wolf Pack mini-boss encounters. You might be inclined to avoid the Wolf Pack spaces when you are able but, well, don't. Every mini-boss you defeat removes them/ their boss enhancement powers from the final battle.
After multiple forays into the forest, I was finally able to reach the final encounter. I went in loaded for bear (or loaded for Wolf, if you prefer) with four items (three of them upgraded) from the shop and Bo Peep/The Flock as my main character. I won't say it was the best possible set-up, I haven't scrutinized all the cards in the deck but it was a very, very good set-up. Yes, you can have more items than what I was packing but you will likely lose those items when you come across a weary location the temporary lowers the stat that allows you to carry more items. If anything is worse than losing said items, its that you paid hard earned gold for them and now have nothing to show for it.
The final battle comes down to this: Let me cut my own throat and hope I can defeat the Big Bad (Wolf...Literally) before I bleed out. The Big, Bad Wolf only allows you to use one of each color dice. Now, throw in a whole batch of minions who you have to defeat before you can even wound the boss. Happily, I had taken out all of the Wolf Pack members so they wouldn't boost Big Bad. The twist is that the Big, Bad Wolf allows you to -1 to any stat in order to roll +1 dice of each color for the rest of that round. Cue cutting your own throat, lowering your stats (which impacts the number of re-rolls you get and how many dice you can recover at the end of the round), and rolling the bones before the Big, Bad Wolf rolls all over your bones. This is a Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts 2 level of challenge: You need the right items, the right character and no small amount of luck. And I still only squeaked out a win by the the hair of my chinny chin chin.
While the Bigger, Badder wolf adds a bigger badder challenge, he is the only true boss in the game. Since his power is to basically reduce or take away almost every item and bonus you have earned throughout the game, repeated plays aren't that appealing, even using different characters.
The average play time has to have factored in games that ended in losses, because you have the same number of Trail cards every attempt and, even with having all the gameplay rules locked into your head, you are looking at least an hour and a half to reach Grandma's House.
I think the 20 strong system is a good single player system and I'm interested in see where they take it with the other Tanglewood releases. I just don't think Red's extremely steep difficulty combined with what feels like an overly long adventure will give most gamers what they are looking for in a solo experience.
A review copy of this release was provided by the publisher. Therewillbe.games would like to thank them for their support.
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