Well, I got to finally see what all the censorship clusterfuck (of which more later in case anyone hasn't heard about it) was about as my box full of [strike]tentacles[/strike] pledge reward goodness made it to my backwater.

I had pledged 50 bucks (fanservice level) so this is what I got:

The card game, first of all, 108 cards in total, though it only says the number of cards in the rules booklet, not on the box so I had to correctly guess I needed to buy two packs of sleeves

A set of holofoil extra promo cards, I think 17 to get the total to 125 (either that or I lost one in the club =/ ).

Two miniatures, the mascot duo Candy & Cola and extra tentacled Marie Claude Bourbonwhatever. Not sure what to do with them yet though they are about in scale for Anima Tactics so maybe stand-ins for some characters.

The poster which I'm not sure what to do with yet because it is not quite something I'm comfortable displaying in public. It is however printed on rather sturdy paper which is nice (I didn't bother with extra shipping option that would send it rolled in a paper tube in extra mint condition).

The bento box which looks rather usable - I haven't had one before so I don't know what the good ones look like but it seems well designed and relatively durable.

Finally, the T-shirt (default male L option which is a tad too big for me but it's always a gamble between M and L for my tall, skinny self). It's made of good fabric and is dark grey with black printing; looks readable and pretty different from all T-shirts I have. Also, totally SFW.


To reiterate what the sane/honest minority of people on the internet was well aware of from the start: THERE IS NO RAPE IN THE GAME. It is never mentioned anywhere. Actually, the rules booklet is so small - it's more like a rules flyer - that there is very little background about the game. It does explain the rules, such as they are, pretty well although there are a couple points that will hopefully be clarified in the future.

Actually there is no nudity either. I mean much of the artwork is meant to get as close to the edge as possible but it's all clean. The game box clearly says 16 and above.

Innuendo abounds in the description quotes (one of the cards portrays a girl on the ladder next to a bookshelf, and the card quote goes "nice beaver, did you recently have it stuffed?" There's a beaver sitting on top of the shelf.) but it is mixed with other silly and whimsical stuff - one of the "smart" type girls is noted as having invented the internet, while another "breaks hearts and joysticks".

So, there are four types of students denoted with color borders - smart (grey), cute (pink), sporty (green) and sexy (purple) - and appropriate "locations" (dodgeball court - "someone is always taking one for the team") and "captures"/situations (cosplay! spontaneous dancing! oral exam - "remember to maintain eye contact") for each color.

The essence of the game is to play combinations of location/student/capture which form "scoring piles" and all captured students minus the number of cards you hold in your hand is your final score when the game inevitably ends. They can either be "sloppy" captures of nonmatching combinations, or a "noble" capture that includes up to three students or one "all star student" and an additional immediate effect such as reversing the order of play or every player passing one card to one on his left.

End of the game is random and sudden - upon drawing the fourth Event card in a row (there are four in the standard deck and 2 more among the promo cards) the game immediately ends and points are counted as above. So the game doesn't drag (our two first games took less than half an hour each), the combinations are a bit different every time and not every card shows up.

There is an element of luck but also decisions what to discard, what cards to hold on to waiting for a good combo and whether to risk picking up a lot of stuff from the discard pile - you can take as many as you want from the top instead of drawing, but you have to take all of them and immediately play the bottom one in a noble capture).

So all in all I think money well spent, not only to make fun of the haters and wannabe censors but also as a nice casual game with well drawn and, yeah, fanservice-y art. I don't know what the MSRP is going to be but if it's not that much then I can quite recommend it.

Not for the squeamish, though

Bento! Bento! Jesus Christ, Bento!

I'm sorry, that went over my head.

Quote from: vytzka;594529A set of holofoil extra promo cards, I think 17 to get the total to 125 (either that or I lost one in the club =/ ).

Actually, that promo pack should include 19 foil cards: 4 Cute Girls, 3 Smart Girls, 2 Sexy Girls, 1 Sporty Girl, 2 Events, 2 Characters, an All-Star for each suit, and another Candy & Cola as a "wild card" All-Star which can be captured to remove the other C&C version from the basic deck. My own copy (at the "Grabby Hands" pledge level for the game, the poster, and the promo cards) arrived yesterday.

The rules definitely need errata. Soda Pop's already confirmed that the players are meant to draw a new full hand after playing or discarding their last cards. However, that still doesn't solve the problem with being unable to build a hand over time except by hogging the field pile or by spending turn after turn doing nothing but swapping one card for another until you can actually play something.

My tentative idea for a quick fix is that at the end of the turn players may discard one card when they have seven or less, and must discard down to seven if they have more.

Yep, I just counted 19 promo cards so all is well. I was a bit baffled by the differing numbers of promo girls.

There were definitely episodes of a player waiting with two cards in their hand to get a drop in the field pile for a card that would complete a noble capture for them. I thought it was intended to encourage dumpster diving in the field pile but I guess is a little grating and it will be interesting to see fixes (such as one you suggested).

Adding the two promo events actually makes the game shorter. Do you think that's intended? Though I guess playing to 3/4/5/6 events are easy house rules for adjusting play time.

Quote from: vytzka;594557Adding the two promo events actually makes the game shorter. Do you think that's intended? Though I guess playing to 3/4/5/6 events are easy house rules for adjusting play time.

That could well work, but personally I'll probably go with the four basic Events (Culture Festival, Final Exam, Sports Fest, and Talent Show) as the "timer" for ending the game and not count the promo cards for that purpose. The reshuffling if any player ends up with an Event in their initial hand feels a little clumsy, too. I might instead use a slightly different set-up which also spreads them more evenly:

1. Separate the Events and shuffle the rest of the deck.
2. Deal the initial hands to each player and flip one card into the field.
3. Divide the deck into five piles and mix an Event into each except one.
4. Stack the piles back together, leaving the one without an Event on top.

Quote from: vytzka;594550I'm sorry, that went over my head.

it's a youtube meme.

Couldn't care less about the subject matter, but from what's being said here it doesn't sound like a very good game.

Quote from: chaosvoyager;594804Couldn't care less about the subject matter, but from what's being said here it doesn't sound like a very good game.

Well, it's intended to be an ultralight party game, perhaps comparable to the likes of Kittens in a Blender. Unfortunately, the rules as written do suffer from a couple of potentially crippling mechanical issues, which weirdly enough would have been rather easy to fix but still require some more work. Not enough rigorous playtesting by neutral parties?

Quote from: chaosvoyager;594804Couldn't care less about the subject matter, but from what's being said here it doesn't sound like a very good game.

I've thought that about everything I have seen from Soda Pop. Pretty but vacuous.

OMG.

I just noticed one of the promo cards is named Sgt. Richard Wulf.

Referred to as Sgt. D. Wulf in the card text for the especially slow.

BWAHAHA

Quote from: vytzka;595085OMG.

I just noticed one of the promo cards is named Sgt. Richard Wulf.

Referred to as Sgt. D. Wulf in the card text for the especially slow.

BWAHAHA

Yeah, that one's a very obvious Penny Arcade reference, especially when you consider the flavour text and that the effect only lets you remove a single student from a capture. ("Sorry ladies, I only have one shoulder... don't make this weird.")

Another promo card which riffs on the earlier controversy is Milk & Cookies. ("What did you think they were doing?")

Quote from: Ladybird;594832I've thought that about everything I have seen from Soda Pop. Pretty but vacuous.

To be fair, Soda Pop hasn't really published enough games to compare them properly, only miniatures. Since Relic Knights is still at the beta stage and won't be out for quite a while (despite the exceedingly successful Kickstarter), negative comparisons will pretty much have to boil down to "Yeah, I wasn't keen on Super Dungeon Explore, either".

Quote from: vytzka;594529To reiterate what the sane/honest minority of people on the internet was well aware of from the start: THERE IS NO RAPE IN THE GAME. It is never mentioned anywhere. Actually, the rules booklet is so small - it's more like a rules flyer - that there is very little background about the game. It does explain the rules, such as they are, pretty well although there are a couple points that will hopefully be clarified in the future.

Actually there is no nudity either. I mean much of the artwork is meant to get as close to the edge as possible but it's all clean.

So some questions.  What is the action of the game actually supposed to represent?  You don't seem to mention this at all in your description other than the reference to "capture".  Who is capturing and why?  Are there tentacles at all other than on the Marie Claude Bourbonwhatever miniature?

Quote from: jhkim;631012So some questions.  What is the action of the game actually supposed to represent?  You don't seem to mention this at all in your description other than the reference to "capture".  Who is capturing and why?  Are there tentacles at all other than on the Marie Claude Bourbonwhatever miniature?

From the back cover: "It is your first day of school. A Tokyo spring warms the sunny grounds at Takoashi University for Girls. Your clever disguise won't hold out for long, you flex your tentacles in anticipation for the mayhem to come! The invasion is coming, and you need to snatch up as many school girls as you possibly can."

From the rules leaflet: "Take on the role of a squiggly alien disguised as a new student, doing what aliens do best, collecting pretty school girls! (This is Tokyo after all.) The alien who captures the most students before the end of the school year, wins!"

Tentacles appear in some of the card illustrations, mostly sneaking up behind unsuspecting students, but at least as often the invaders show up in their human disguises, mingling with everyone else. The box art presents the aliens on the left and the all-star students on the right. From top to bottom, the pairs represent the Smart, Cute, Sporty, and Sexy "essence types" or suits of cards. Note that the "sporty alien" is modelled after Marie-Claude Bourbonnais, and the all-stars (Fin, Nixxie, Mylphee, and Kitti Von Braune) are based on various "Soda Pop Girls".

The original Kickstarter project implied that the aliens capture the students for their "girlish essence", but the game unfortunately doesn't elaborate on it at all. Personally, I'm fond of the idea that the harvested essence is needed to fuel the disguises for the invasion, which would also explain why the aliens seem to go after their own type in the artwork. I even based a house rule on that: whenever an Event card turns up, each player must discard a capture or else lose the next turn (as the alien has to go into hiding while scrounging up enough essence to pass for human again). That gives the players a reason to make disposable sloppy captures in addition to the mechanically superior noble captures.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;594804Couldn't care less about the subject matter, but from what's being said here it doesn't sound like a very good game.

Dull game.

Amazing rorschach test.