The COVID-19 lockdown was truly the best of times and worst of times for the board game industry. Forced inside for months on end, consumer demand for board games skyrocketed while supply chain problems made getting those games harder and harder. The most popular games to come out of the pandemic are the roll-and-writes, a genre of game that lends itself well to socially distanced and even Zoom-based gameplay. That popularity was reflected at this year’s Gen Con, where the presence of these games at numerous companies’ booths suggested that we’re entering a new age of innovation for the genre.
Roll-and-writes represent a lot of opportunity for the designer since they can accommodate higher player counts, flexible asymmetry, and brand-new ways to approach co-op and competitive gameplay. Interestingly, the “writing” portion of these games has shifted from pad-and-paper setups (as in games like Cartographers) to laminated dry-erase mats (which most of the new games at Gen Con featured). With a few years since the craze kicked off, every aspect of these games have been tinkered with and improved over time. It sure ain’t Yahtzee anymore.
Designer James Kniffen came up with the idea for Twilight Inscription almost by accident — it came to him as part of a series of pitches he was working on for Fantasy Flight. The prospect of condensing Twilight Imperium, a game famous for its complexity and length of playtime, into something as compact as a roll-and-write was no easy task. It took over a year of work to get it to its final state, the key breakthrough being the decision to split the game into four separate sections: Warfare, Industry, Navigation, and Exploration.
What Kniffen ended up with is a perfect distillation of what people are looking for in a classic game of Twilight Imperium: important choices, space politics, and plenty of ways to build your civilization. All of the cultures of the original game are represented as well as much of the flavor and setting, all condensed down into about two hours of gameplay. The goal, Kniffen said, was to make it easier for new players to get excited about the setting while still letting longtime players get the experience they’ve grown to love.
Along the same lines is Zombicide: Gear Up, a flip-and-write from CMON and Guillotine Games that is meant to be a gateway to the bigger world of Zombicide. It’s a co-op variation, another new change to the genre we began to see this year, and it pits survivors against zombies in the standard Zombicide way. The Zombies are defeated by essentially coloring in their shapes, with each survivor’s abilities and weapons dictating how you fill out each zombie. Covering certain parts of the zombie can give you ammo, shields, or reduce damage. There are also boss zombies like the Zombie Cheer Squad who present unique challenges to deal with as the survivors complete their coverage.
