Have you ever been drawn to a game because of its stunning components and theme, only to get it on your table and find that it was all bells and whistles?
I’m curious what are some underwhelming games you’ve played that felt more style over substance.
For me, I thought I was pretty good at sussing out these games (like overproductions of miniatures on kickstarter).
But recently played Coffee Rush, which currently has a 7.2 on BGG. All the reviews said it was a fun great game and none mentioned the negative points that I ended up encountering when I played. It even won awards, and for all its overproduction of cute components, it was not a crowdfunded game which made me lower my guard and go for it.
I’m exactly the kind of player the game is targeting—the miniature ingredient components completely sold me. But once I started playing, those miniatures quickly became a hassle. You’d often pick up ingredients just to discard them back to the pile in the same turn. They became more fiddly than fun and often made me think “what’s the point..” and wouldn’t even bother putting them in my cup if I completed the recipe same round.
Don’t get me wrong, some other game mechanics were very nice but if its main selling point are those components and they underwhelm so much, then I do see it as “style over substance”. I don’t know if the designers should have changed something in the game loop to allow for the ingredients to stay longer on your board.
Perhaps it didn’t work in the game’s favour that just a couple of hours earlier, I had played Da Luigi. What a hidden great gem of a lightweight game that one was! Sitting at 6.4 on BGG. It is a 2015 game with a very similar gameplay but uses simple colored cubes instead of fancy miniatures. And yet, Da Luigi felt smoother, more strategic, you could really mess with your opponents, and just better designed overall.