Fortunately, being somewhat prescient to the possibility of a complete fuck-up on the gaming front, I have factored in a number of back-up plans whereby, in dire emergency, I can implement a game of something quick and easy to fill the gap (as it were). However, on this occasion the urgency of the situation was such that I had neither the time nor inclination to arrive at a suitable game-related onanist innuendo as this week's sub-title...
So with only a few hours to spare before the end week's end, I managed to knock out a few hands of Onirim by Z-Man Games. This is a solitaire/collaborative card game based on the conceit that you are trapped in some kind of dream labyrinth, and need to wend your way through the oneiric maze whilst acquiring keys to 8 doorways that will allow you to escape.
Onirim consists of a deck of 76 cards made up of 6 variants: 4 different location cards each marked with one of three symbols (sun, moon or key) and keyed to a particular colour; doorway cards; and nightmare cards. In order to win Onirim, you must acquire 8 doorway cards from the deck before the final card is drawn. You start with a hand of five cards, and have to draw up to this amount at the end of each turn. At the start of your turn, you can play a location card which can be of any colour, but must display a symbol different to the previous card played. If you are able to play three cards of the same colour consecutively, you can search the game deck and acquire a doorway of that same colour. If you ever draw a doorway and you have a card of the same colour with a key symbol in your hand, you can discard the key card to acquire that doorway (otherwise place it in a 'limbo' pile, after which it is reshuffled into the deck at the end of each turn). If you draw a Nightmare card, various bad things can happen, such as placing an acquired doorway into the limbo pile, discarding a card with a key symbol from your hand, or discarding a number of cards from the top of the deck (thus cycling through the deck more quickly). The game is incredibly quick to pick up (I learnt the rules in less than 5 minutes), but is quite challenging. That said, Onirim seems fairly reliant on random factors, such that opportunities for player strategy can be somewhat limited.
Top to bottom from Left to Right: the game box, a nightmare card and one each of the coloured locations (I forgot to include an example of a doorway card).
I terms of production values, the cards are illustrated in an interesting manner (although they do have a somewhat childish quality to the design aesthetic which may not be to everyone's taste), but in limited variation (there are only 6 different card designs). On the plus side, Onirim does play very quickly (a solitaire game takes about 20 minutes), and is quite addictive. It also has a very small footprint, so is ideal as a travel game.
For me, the initial appeal of the game (outside of its solitaire playability) was that it seemed to be about cats in a dreamworld (well, the cover illustration looks like a black cat to me - though it is in fact a Nightmare from the in-game world). As a big Lovecraft fan, this struck me as having a certain resonance with some of HPL's 'Dreamlands' stories. Sadly, this is not quite the case, though I do enjoy the game enough to have considered producing, via Artscow, my own thematic variant based on The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.
On the Gaming Self-Abuse scale (tm), this scores a 6.5. Overall, a fast and fun game, but lacking in depth and with some visual/aesthetic limitations.
Next up: Yggdrasil (hopefully!).
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