You Have Died of Dysentery.

Title: The Oregon Trail Card Game

Type of Media: Card Game

Release Date: 2015?

Source Material: The (in)famous Oregon Trail for computers, specifically the original version known for its incredible difficulty and death by dysentery. Only those who played the original game can truly know the struggle, but it's not necessary to enjoy (?) the card game.

Basic Summary:Hop in your Conestoga and relive the excitement that is travelling thousands of miles across some of the most difficult terrain in US history! Now in co-operative card game form!

Characters: You and up to 5 of your friends, family, acquaintances, and random strangers! Give yourself funny names to write on your tombstones!

Plot: As in the original game, you choose a party of passengers and travel across the US to the promised land of Oregon. Along the way, you'll encounter such exciting things like dying of dysentery, dying of starvation, dying of thirst, dying of cold, dying of various diseases, dead oxen, dead wagons, dead grass, dead water, and many more! Also trading, hunting, and fording rivers. There's that to look forward to, I guess.

Accessibility: Can you read? Do you like pixels? You're good to go. Unless you have trouble with words like cholera, dysentery, and typhoid. Then maybe not.

Controls/UI: The game consists of three elements - trail cards, supply cards, and calamity cards.
Play begins with each player getting a hand of 5 trail cards and a number of supply cards (it changes slightly depending on how many players you have).

 My actual beginning hand on my most recent playthrough,

On your turn, you must play a trail card unless other circumstances prevent you from doing so. Some cards are rivers, some are plain, some cards require you to draw a calamity card, and then there are towns and forts which count as re-fueling stations of sorts. Eventually your table will look like this:

Inevitably you have to draw a calamity card, which look like these:

Some of them are nonfatal, some of them are instant death, some of them can be resolved with supply cards. The possible supply cards are as follows: spare parts, clothes, clean water, medicine, 200 pounds of food, oxen, and 100 bullets.

You may have to combine cards or trade them in to solve your problems, assuming you don't lose them while fording rivers, have them stolen, or you run out. Expect to die a lot. The game is rather short and easy to play so you can get through several rounds in the time it takes to play one round of a normal board game. Good luck getting to Oregon!

Thoughts: This game is ROUGH. Not just in emotional terms (prepare for frustration), but in the actual structure of the game. It feels like a very bare bones game compared to its source material, which has a surprising amount of depth. The original game is a based around resource management that involves buying supplies, trading and talking with NPCs, and surviving whatever disasters will come your way. This game takes out about forty percent of the gameplay (hunting and dealing with NPCs) to focus more on throwing random garbage at you. Which would be fine if the rules of the game were more fleshed out. Basically as soon as you start playing you will be required to make house rules because the cards have contradictory text compared to the rule book. For instance, the rulebook states that cards must be laid both edge to edge and have matching trail pieces that create an unbroken green line. This is pretty much impossible because the cards aren't really made to match up very well. At the beginning of the game, you can "plan" out your trail cards to follow the rulebook, but after you use up your five trail cards, you must draw the first card off the deck of remaining trail cards. Ergo it's impossible to fit the cards together edge to edge AND keeping the trail unbroken. It's more fun than it sounds though. The calamity cards also get extremely repetitive and the game is definitely unbalanced in how many of each type of supply you will need. 

The biggest flaw of the game is the inability to go hunting. Hunting in the original Oregon Trail saved many a player more than once. It was also one of the more fun parts of the game as it functioned like a shooting gallery. In the card game, hunting is reduced to a simple card that says you get a food card if you have bullets. Hunting should have been a mini-game (my thoughts are a yahtzee style game that involves rolling dice where certain numbers net you more food). 

Overall though the game goes quickly enough that you won't be too upset at losing a round because you can get through several in one sitting. 

Final Review: This game costs about twenty bucks at Target. I wouldn't say that regretted buying it (we were honestly surprised at how fun it was), but I probably wouldn't waste my money on it. This game is more of a weird novelty than a good game and there are really good games (video games, card games, and board games) that cost the same amount or less. I can really only recommend this game to people who like the idea of weird novelty games and people who are interested in building a card game of their own. It serves as good case study for what NOT to do. Just get like three other people to go in on it with you and then you feel like you only wasted five bucks as opposed to a full twenty because I can't really say you get what you pay for on this one.

My Korean Boyfriends

Title: Mystic Messenger

Type of Media: iPhone/Android App

Release Date: August 18, 2016 (iOS version)

Source Material: None specifically although if you know how dating sims/visual novels work, that's a plus.

Basic Summary: Have you ever wanted to have 4 eligible bachelors fight over you? What about exchanging emails with the rich and famous? Hosting parties? Listening to sweet nothings in Korean after a chatroom exchange? YOU REALLY CAN HAVE IT ALL.
















Characters: (from left to right)

Yoosung Kim - The youngest male bachelor, Yoosung is a 21-year-old college student who's a champion LOLOL (this game's replacement for League of Legends) player. He'll win you over with his adorable innocence and passion for young love despite some tragic emotional baggage.

Zen - An up-and-coming singer, actor, and model. Zen is suave as they come: sending pictures and flirting with the best of them. He can be a little arrogant, but he's mostly harmless.

707 - The mysterious and awkward hacker. 707 is definitely not the easiest guy to win over, but his zany sense of humor is sure to get at least a chuckle out of you.

Jumin Han - The cool and confident business man. Jumin acts as the most paternal and mature character, but his obsession with his cat Elizabeth III is sure to make you smile.

Jaehee Kang - Jumin's loyal, if overworked, assistant. Jaehee is the only female route in the game, but instead of romancing her you become her trusted friend and confidant. She may seem cold and uncaring on the surface, but it's easy to see that she deeply cares about the other characters and deals out her form of motherly advice to help them realize what's best for them.

There are also 3 secondary characters: V, one of the founding members of the chatroom you stumble into who will probably give you mixed feelings; Rika, the driving spirit of the group whose absence affects everyone in more ways than one; and Unknown (yes, that is really how he is referred to throughout the game).

Plot: You, a hapless helpful girl, stumble into an empty apartment at the behest of a stranger. What begins as an attempt to return a lost phone quickly evolves into taking over an organization that hosts lavish parties for charitable causes. The 5 main characters will do their best to assist you in finding guests and making you feel (relatively) welcome, but it's up to you to assemble the attendees. In the process, you'll end up choosing one of the main characters as a boyfriend (or a best friend in Jaehee's case).

Accessibility: This game is not the easiest to learn how to play. The controls aren't really explained and the story is implied more than straight out told. In order to access the full story, you'll need to play 707's route. The game's pacing also makes it difficult to fully participate in the conversation as the chat windows open and close on a very erratic schedule. The game also does not make the affection-leveling system immediately obvious.

Controls/UI: The main game play screen allows for easy access to the main elements of the game. Three large buttons are used for texting (the game's term for PMs), phone calls, and chat rooms. Tapping the chat room button takes you to the day select screen and from there you can either replay conversations that have passed their active state or participate in the currently open chat. This is where the bulk of the game play takes place. In chats you can play the conversation, auto-pausing at different points to allow for several potential dialogue choices. Choosing the "correct"  choice will net you hearts in different colors - green for Yoosung, silver for Zen, yellow for Jaehee, purple for Jumin, and red for 707. Occasionally a bright white heart might appear which I personally suspect may represent Rika (there's no confirmed explanation for what these white hearts symbolize as far as I know right now). If an animation of a broken heart plays after you respond, this means you have lost an affection point with the character who responded when the animation plays. The total number of hearts for each character up to Day 5 will determine which you will be put on. The other main goal is to collect party guests through emails. Responding to an email requires a choice between two options: one will result in a positive response and one will anger the potential guest. Enough correct responses will ensure the guest arrives at the party on the final day. If you miss a chat room, you can pay hourglasses to participate in it.

Thoughts: Mystic Messenger is, in my experience, the best free-to-play dating sim app available. I've attempted to play other games of this type that were available on the app store and most of them were nigh-impossible to play without spending money. I still struggled through without paying anything, but the process was frustrating. While Mystic Messenger isn't the easiest game to figure out on a first play through, it is definitely worth the time spent on it. Cheritz obviously put a lot of detail, love, and hard work into this game. The story is intriguing and the characters are well-written. It's easy to suspend your disbelief and talk to the characters. The dialogue options can be, at times, extremely clunky and not always pan out the way you expect, but this is a flaw of many games that are localized into English. Ultimately it's a small flaw that doesn't impact the game play too much. I often don't spend money on apps, but this game is one of the few that makes me consider dropping a few bucks on hourglasses (the paid currency) to experience all of the content.

Final Review: For fans of dating sims, Mystic Messenger is a diamond in the rough. It's an extremely well-crafted game that never feels like you're being robbed of content. I cannot recommend this game to people enough. Even if you've never played a dating sim, the game is straightforward enough to make for a nice introduction to the nuances of the genre. I would also recommend this game to people interested in writing visual novels, crafting great UI for apps, and experiencing niche interactive fiction.