Ambitious doesn’t even begin to describe Vast: The Crystal Caverns, a five-player, highly asymmetric take on the well-worn “Knight vs. Dragon vs. Goblins vs. Thief vs. Sentient Cave” theme. The workmanship here is plain as day, as evidenced by an impressive slew of mechanics and ideas that connect through an enticing narrative core that keeps the action centralized and on track. It’s no wonder that upon release the game garnered acclaim for its unorthodox approach to the traditional dungeon crawl and for aggressively pushing the boundaries of asymmetric game design. It is quite unfortunate then that, despite its ambition and creativity, the experience of Vast: The Crystal Caverns amounts to little more than dealing with an unwieldy mess of overly specific rules and player interactions. Even more, Vast‘s problems run so far and deep that it calls into question whether asymmetry on this scale is even desirable in a tabletop game. Leder Games seems to think it is, as they have since doubled down on the concept with the highly praised 2018 title Root. But alas, that is another game for another review, and currently we must get back to the disappointment at hand that is Vast.
Let’s start with something (relatively) positive for once: the art. Vast is colorfully illustrated in a charming comic-fantasy style that personally calls to memory the Spaceman Spiff strips from Calvin & Hobbes. Judging by the art alone, you might think the game is a simplified miniature tactics game such as Arcadia Quest. It isn’t. Not at all. So there’s a bit of a mismatch between the complexity of the mechanics and Kyle Ferrin’s whimsical art, but no big deal, the game’s not ugly and that’s more than can be said about a fair amount of others. What is ugly, however, is Vast‘s crowded, lop-sided table presence. The most incriminating constituent therein being the unfathomably huge reference sheets each player needs to figure out how the heck to take their turn. One of my game design red flags is an over-reliance on reference material, and Vast takes this issue to another level. I kid you not, the sheets are practically the entire rulebook, only split into separate documents for each of the playable characters. Absurd. It is obvious just from looking at the table that this is a game that asks a lot of its players. Just look at the way Vast‘s commitment to asymmetry extends to its component usage — the cave player must sit by all the cave components, the knight player by all the knight components, and so on and so forth — which creates quite a lop-sided and confusing play area. This is heavily exacerbated by the fact that this component usage changes depending on player count and which characters are in or out of any given game. You see, though there are five playable characters in Vast, you can still play the game with only four of them, or three, or two, or even just ONE. So what this means is, in effect, the set up of a game of Vast: The Crystal Caverns will likely be different every single time you play it. It’s all a bit much, but unfortunately it doesn’t end there. Because not only does the set up completely change, so does the game itself. Its winning conditions, turn order, available player actions, everything. All in an attempt to bend and flex its system to accommodate every possible combination of player count and chosen characters. I am exhausted just thinking about it. How did the designers adequately play test this? They couldn’t have. There’s no way to properly develop a system’s core mechanics if it doesn’t have any. Seems obvious to me, but here we are.
We’ve briefly touched on what a mechanical mess Vast is already, but maybe that’s okay because in its heart of hearts this is a thematic game in which the narrative comes first, right? Listen to this pitch: a sleeping dragon is slowly stirring awake in the darkest corner of an immense, goblin-infested, sentient cave. A brave knight and a cunning thief show up, the former to slay the dragon, the latter to lift a curse of immortality that’s been placed on him while he still has the chance. These five roles — dragon, goblins, cave, knight, thief — are taken by the players and each have a different goal. The dragon’s goal is to wake up and escape the cave, the knight’s to slay the dragon, the goblins’ to slay the knight, the thief’s to break his curse, and the cave’s to collapse and trap everyone inside it for all eternity. On paper, this sounds like exciting stuff! In practice, it is total drudgery. The game’s mechanics are so precariously balanced between these five roles that problems immediately arise as soon as a role is removed. For example, let’s say there’s a four-player game without the dragon. What’s the knight’s objective? In this particular case, it’s the absolutely themeless winning condition of smashing a certain amount of cave crystals (which is reused as a default winning condition in other configurations as well). Playing Vast with less than five players, then, feels like you’re playing an incomplete game. Cave tiles must be laid out by the other players if there’s no cave player, the dragon can’t eat goblins if there’s no goblins player, if there’s no knight the goblins get special rules that allow them to attack the dragon even though they normally can’t, collecting treasure means something completely different depending on which role your playing as, and so on and on and on. It’s utterly out of control, like a game built entirely out of fringe rules and edge cases. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the Board Game Geek forum for the game. Over HALF of the threads are rules questions. I have yet to find a single other game that the same holds true, not even Advanced Squad Leader!
Normally, at some point in a review I’d go over the game’s core system and structure, but the idea of trying to map this game out for y’all seems seriously impossible. Here are some scattered musings, instead: the knight has stats and special equipment and can gain experience points based on their actions (here called “Grit”, as if we also need to memorize this game’s ultra-specific terminology on top of everything else), the dragon has this complicated mana system for determining which actions it can take, the goblins play more like a tactics game where you have several units that you are managing via three(!) separate decks of cards, the cave is just confusing because apparently you are supposed to play it competitively but your ability to do so is severely limited by contextual mandates (play one of the three tiles in your hand, BUT if you have any tiles that have THIS on them you MUST play them first!), and the thief is just totally irrelevant to the core action of the game and is basically running around doing their own thing the entire time. Gah! Even the movement rules differ for every role! It is complete insanity. The designers’ dedication to absolute asymmetry at any cost is bewildering, to say the least. Why the heck does EVERY rule have to be different for EVERY role? Proper asymmetric design plays on interesting player dynamics: balance of power, control of information, risk vs. reward, not by inventing an entire new ruleset for every player. Gah, once again!
Look at Android: Netrunner, an excellent example of how intriguing proper asymmetry can be. Yeah, both sides play differently, but there is a core set of mechanics and resources (Clicks, Credits, Agendas) that are the same for both players. Not to mention there are only TWO roles and not FIVE. Furthermore, Android: Netrunner is primarily a game of information, so the mechanical asymmetry isn’t as important as the asymmetry of player knowledge, something that you don’t have to memorize a zillion different rules to wrap your head around. Lastly, the depth of interaction between players in Android: Netrunner puts Vast to absolute shame. In Vast, there is basically only a single way for any particular player to interact with another, which is usually just attacking them. This makes the entire game feel extremely scripted and restrictive. It’s the goblins turns, they’ll try to attack the knight if they can. It’s the knight’s turn, they’ll try to attack the dragon if they can. Ugh. Of course, attacking is a weird mess of role-specific rules as well, some of which are just flat-out obnoxious. The majority are just simple stat comparisons, fine, but man that Dragon Die is just shameful. Determining area of effect by rolling a single die you cannot influence in any way apart from a re-roll is borderline sadistic. I once watched a dragon player attempt to breathe fire on a knight standing one tile in front of them only to miss three times in a row. This got through play testing? Play testers liked this? I sure don’t.
Could this travesty be fixed? Let’s try. For starters, how about a drastic reduction in rules overhead. Make core movement and action selection systems that are universal across roles. Remove the Cave and Thief roles entirely (let’s get THREE player asymmetry figured out before we try FIVE, yeah?). Make the game more about information by introducing hidden movement, secret action selection, or other mechanics of that nature. Focus on mechanically simple but powerful ways of differentiating the roles. The goblins have three units instead of one, for example. All three roles have the same winning condition but very different ways of approaching it. Maybe they’re ALL trapped in the cave and the first to escape wins! Who knows? I’m obviously just spitballing ideas here, but I feel inclined to do so because the creative vision that fueled Vast‘s development is plain to see despite the ultimately misguided product it resulted in. Do not think for a second that I accuse Vast‘s creators of being lazy or opportunistic. Vast is a failure that took a LOT of time, talent, and ambition to create.
To sum this review up, I feel no urge whatsoever to wrestle with Vast‘s obtuseness ever again. For those interested, I’ve played it at three, which felt like we were playing three-fifths of a game (we were), and at the full five, which was a seriously chaotic and slow couple of hours. Teaching the game is hilarious; you basically can’t. Every player will have questions on every one of their turns, almost guaranteed. Hey, that’s why the reference materials are the entire rulebook, problem solved! Jokes aside, I do respect the attempt here by Leder Games to push the boundaries of game design into new and exciting territory. Prior to the rules explanation, the game sounds quite appealing! But, in the end, the experience of playing Vast: The Crystal Caverns amounts to little more than trying to keep track of a hundred little finicky rules in a possibility space so cramped by them there’s no room left for player agency, meaningful decisions, or tactical depth. I mentioned before that Vast asks a lot of its players. That’s not the problem — a lot of great games do — but that Vast gives back so little in return, that definitely is.
Vast: The Crystal Caverns gets a rating of TWO out of FIVE, indicating it is NOT RECOMMENDED.