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Tag: Michael Menzel

**** Legends of Andor (2012) – Michael Menzel

Co-operative games are prone to a number of design issues that competitive games easily side-step: over-reliance on RNG, inert economies, tension through attrition, ease of min/maxing, etc.  The flavorful chaos wrought by player opponents is not easily replicable by cards and cubes, which is why many co-operative games tend to feel more like complicated jigsaw puzzles rather than organic, mutable systems.  That isn’t to say there aren’t riveting co-op experiences to be had around the table; in fact, there are plenty.  Space Alert is a boisterous, real-time programming game that really gets your  blood pumping.  Descent and Fury Of Dracula have all but one player co-operating against a mastermind or villain, so the narrative tension is still player-derived.  Kingdom Death: Monster has a surplus of agonizing group decisions that affect the way the story plays out in dramatic and unpredictable ways.  I bring up these examples because Legends Of Andor has nothing so fancy.  In fact, it is very much in the vein of the social puzzle co-operative games that are prone to all the issues I just listed off.  And yet it is great.  Not due to massive groundbreaking innovations or game-changing gimmicks that flip established mechanics on their head, no, Legends Of Andor is great through sheer artfulness, which is not something that can be said about very many games. Legends Of Andor is a fantasy adventure game somewhere between tower defense and dungeon crawl.  Each game, players take on the roles of heroes and make their way through a different “Legend,”…