I think it's undeniable that Ryan Laukat is a name that has left its mark in the play world in recent years, standing out both for issues of mechanics (especially for his hybridisation of the German genre with the narrative one) and for an absolutely original and recognizable aesthetic that connects all his productions, thanks to the fact that he follows in first person the development of his games and in terms of mechanics and graphics.
This would already be an extremely rare fact (at the moment it's a record that only Laukat and Menzel can boast), made even more special by having adopted a common aesthetic line for all his titles, which are sometimes even set in the same narrative universe (such as Near and Far, Above and Below and Islebound). Moreover, they always have some frequent elements in common, such as the "skyline" given by the buildings next to each other that we find in the three titles above, but also in the one I'm talking about today.
Today's title is Megaland (2-5 players, 20 minutes) and is precisely designed and illustrated by Ryan Laukat and basically self-produced through his publishing house Red Raven.
In this case we are far from the usual management (more or less light) to which we are accustomed and we are faced with a mechanical push your luck, however moderate by some strategic choices and tactics.
Are you ready to run? Test your luck in the videogame style world of Megaland: face (or jump) the monsters, explore the levels, get resources to improve your village and collect valuable coins!
IN THE BOX
As the author has already accustomed us, the aesthetic component and the quality of the materials are both at the highest levels, with shades that here tend clearly towards orange. Opening the box we find 5 player boards, a deck of 96 booty cards, 40 coin tokens, about 40 tokens between hearts and jumps, almost 100 building cards divided into 23 types (6 basic and 17 advanced), 10 level cards in XL format, 4 character tokens with their stand-ups and a handful of other materials.
All the tokens come already equipped with a dispenser, which serves both to press them and to keep them on the table during the game, while inside the box there is a divider to keep all the other components in place and organized, especially the various bundles (even if the structure does not hold well the transport and the box is somehow kept firmly closed if transported vertically).
HOW TO PLAY
During the initial preparation each receives a character (they are all equal except the aesthetics) with a character platform and 4 lives. In the center of the table are placed the dispender with tokens and two rows of buildings that can be purchased, usually with 4 cards for each type of building. In the first row there are always the 6 basic buildings while in the second there are 7 other buildings randomly chosen among the 17 types present.
The game takes place in a series of turns and continues until a player reaches or exceeds 20 coins (which here have more of the meaning of "tokens" to remain in the theme of video games). Each turn is divided into three phases: level exploration, purchase and night.
Exploration phase
Players go through a series of rounds until they are knocked out of action by the monsters in the level OR they choose to retire and explore no further. For each turn they choose to continue exploring they receive a resource card from the booty deck and then a card is turned over that applies to all players in the level.
The level deck always contains the same 10 cards divided as follows: 4 harmless cards (one of which even has an extra reward resource) and 6 enemy cards that deal variable damage (3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1). Four of these enemies are saltible, in the literal sense of Super Mario, spending a jump token in advance.
If a player reduces himself to zero life points, he goes back with his tail between his legs, losing the resources collected during the exploration. If you retire first, you go home with all your cards collected.
Purchase step
In this part you can buy as many cards as you want from the center of the table and / or buy extra hearts to become more and more resistant. The peculiarity is that extra hearts are purchased paying the cost progressively more expensive with equal sets of resources, while buildings are built paying the cost indicated (in the hexagon) with different sets of resources. The buildings built, as in all its titles, are placed in front of us to create our village more and more prosperous.
Night phase
At this stage the first player changes and you can store unspent resource cards, placing one under each building of your village and discarding any excess. In addition, in this phase, the night effects of the buildings are activated and the characters rest, returning to their current maximum of hearts.
BUILDING PAPERS
I think it's useless to say that the 13 different buildings in each setup are the strategic heart of the game: each building provides coins and / or rents and / or special effects (most). Some of these effects make it easier for us to explore (for example, the soap factory that allows us to "saponify" the enemy card "gelatinous monster", the gym that gives us token jump or the herbalist's hut that allows us to keep a loot card even if we fail, etc.).), others give us situational bonuses (for example the hospital that gives us two tokens every time that a neighbor of ours is defeated by the level, the temple similar-aztec that gives us 2 tokens each time we encounter the dragon snake during a level, etc..) and others that provide various types of fixed rents or that allow us to transform and manage resources differently.
BOTTOM CARDS
To make it all more interesting, the resources are 6 types, but distributed in very variable quantities, from common carrots (30 cards out of 96) to the very rare gears (only 6 cards out of 96). This gives us another factor to take into account during the exploration phase.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
Megaland is a very nice push your luck, which adds to the typical dynamics you all the exponents of the genre also a part of resource management and creation of a structure of bonuses and rents modeled on our medium and long term strategy. We therefore have a game in which a tactical phase (risk assessment "step by step") is merged with a more purely strategic phase.
The tactical part is made interesting both by the presence of modifiers linked to the cards and by the fact that we fish from a limited deck, so we have the certainty of non-repeatability of the result unlike other push your luck based on the dice (where the random factor is less controllable). Another factor that enters the analysis is the different rarity of resources, which pushes us to make different assessments, at the same level, even based on the rarity of the current booty and what we want to get in the purchase phase.
The startegic part is given instead by the choice of which and how many buildings to build (you can have more copies of the same, cumulating the effects), whether to go on many cheap buildings, but that guarantee us more storage space, or on a few large, the type of effects and combos to aim for, etc..
The result is something quite interesting and fun, although certainly much less than breaking with other existing titles than the most famous creations of Laukat, which certainly manages to entertain, but does not scream at the miracle.
At the level of complexity of the rules we are faced with a title simple enough to explain, but not immediate and with a game setup of medium weight: this puts it at fault compared to other exponents of the genre, which are often titles explainable in two minutes and ready almost at zero time. It must be said that its target audience is probably that of the most scaped players and not the most "mass" to which these games usually point.
The duration is quite short, even if the 20 minutes bodied from the box are not very credible and on average a game is more about 30-35 minutes (not counting 15 minutes only between setup and tidying up).
The replayability is quite high due to the fact that we will only use 7 of the 17 special buildings available at each game and this always makes the possible strategies different, forcing us to re-analyze things at each game. In this sense I would have liked the level deck to have a minimum of variability between one game and another.
The dependence on the language is present, because the 23 buildings have written in English, but it must be said that they are the only writings of the game (manual aside) and is therefore easily approached even with a low to medium knowledge of the language of Albion. At the moment there are no localizations planned.
The scalability is excellent and the game works well in 2 as well as in 5 players, the advantage is that its duration is almost not affected by the number of players, being largely played simultaneously.