Events happen on the map, you’re constantly in pursuit of quests, and you’re tasked with managing four different “currencies” to help you play cards, perform well in combat, and screw the other players over. You’ll encounter Banes if you’re taking one of the more noble of the four possible win conditions, and if you’re a bad boy, you’ll be fighting the King’s Guards and, possibly, the King. The game takes place on a hexagonal grid with several non-player characters of various alignments and purpose. There are four players, three being AI in most cases, who each take on the role of one of four humanoid mammal kaiju thing. How is that possible? Well, Armello isn’t exactly a video game in the typical sense, it is, like I said, a virtual tabletop. Okay, so let’s start off with a disclaimer: I’ve only played this game for 3-4 hours, but I feel complete justified in reviewing the game at this point because I did, in fact, explore every aspect and feature of this game. Different environment types mean different risks, rewards, and strategies. No, seriously though, I’m going to tell you what I think now. Do I think you should get into the early access? Do I think this game is for everyone? Do I think that Armello is currently worth the price of admission? Find out the answers to all of these questions and more in the thrilling conclusion of this review. This is still an early access, and we all know how I feel about those, but despite being somewhat lacking in content, Armello is an incredibly solid and polished core experience of a game.

We talk about a lot of crowdfunded games here but, in my experience at least, something that’s as high-quality as Armello is somewhat hard to come by.

Free download armello board game