Earthborne Rangers: A World That Does Not Hate You

I think that Earthborne Rangers accomplishes its core objective of...

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Cool. Will likely not be my type of game as the AH game didn't really work for me, either, but it's good to see indie efforts take on a sizable challenge like this (regular releases for an ongoing game) and try to do so with our actual environment in mind.

On the "need gamerz!" thing, were they marketing this as a "game for everyone"? I'm asking with a complete lack of knowledge, as I only know the game by name. But I'm wondering if the concern for you is because it was presented as a thing for families and, instead, you've found that it would be only for families of people like you, me, and Tom Vasel or something like that.

I think this thing, in difficulty, tone, and theme, is really compatible with light gamers and non-gamers. I don't think the company pushes that too hard, but some of the coverage has been pretty glowing about being for less intense gamers.

I think a better way to put that is that it's a less intense game for intense gamers. To make the thing work ruleswise, you really need someone who has at least played a good amount of magic the gathering (or probably pokemon or yugi-oh but I've never played those) and thought about how different keywords work together in a pretty intricate way. It's a lot. I played it with two light gamers because they thought it looked pretty and cool and while we ended up in an ok place, that was with me and my partner running the systems and even then they ended a little frazzled and we haven't played after that.

OK. It is a tough line to walk sometimes. To take another recent review, Magical Athlete is a perfect example. It seems like it couldn't be more simple: Roll the die, Move your piece and then do what your piece and/or an opponent's piece and/or the space you land on says to do. In some ways, it's no more complicated than Sorry! (Slide forward if you land on that space; knock your opponent back to home if you land on them; etc.) But it's the fact that the various athletes all do TOTALLY DIFFERENT things that some people just can't/don't want to keep up with. Having to learn a bunch of keywords and what looks like a small symbolic language is definitely not in the broader realm of "less intense gamers."