Another solo journaling game, this one was recommended to me by an old work colleague when i told him during a twitter convo that I had bought (but at that time not yet played) English Eerie. It is by Chris Bisette who’s blog I’ve enjoyed since I discovered it (Loot the Room - he was doing a weekly post where he rolled up a character in a system he hadn’t played).
The Wretched is the name of a spaceship you are stranded on, this is basically Alien and its really good. You are advised to do the journaling as audio logs using a microphone. I did and actually decided to save after playing as they sounded pretty cool, but only really because I was playing the soundtrack that comes with the game and the jump cuts between each log create sudden mood changes and give the whole thing a great atmosphere.
I have to say I did not enjoy the actual journaling process as much as I did with English Eerie due to the performative nature of it - the fear of getting something wrong while recording and trying to make up details on the fly ‘in the sub station below engineering’ etc. I found that a bit stressful and not in a way that was germane to the game.
The game system however worked really well. It’s played with a Jenga set, a deck of cards, a d6, and 10 tokens. You roll a d6 at the start and remove that many blocks from Jenga tower - this is a representation of the damage to the ship (you were both hit by an asteroid and have a deadly xenomorph on board).
Each day you roll a d6 and draw that many cards. There is a look up table for each card, broadly Hearts concerns the ship systems, Diamonds its structures, Clubs the crew and Spades the alien. Each card presents the outline of a task or experience you have that day. Many stipulate removing a block from the Jenga tower, should the tower fall it's game over man!
The most exciting card result was one which told me I had got the distress beacon working; now I should place 10 tokens on the card. Each day roll a d6 and on a 6 remove one token. When there are no tokens remaining a rescue ship shows up, remove one final block from the tower and if you manage that, happy ending, hurrah!
On day 14 some other event demanded I remove a block and my tower came tumbling down. At that point I had not managed to remove a single token...
Yeah I really enjoyed it. It only took about an hour to play. I think next time I’d make more of an effort to set up the right atmosphere like i did with English Eerie. I think a map of the ship may have improved the experience for me, maybe given me a more concrete way to imagine it all and more confidence in making up details on the fly.
You can order a print + pdf copy from his website here.
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