Another #$%&ing Fetch Quest?!? is a quirky and self-aware game of wits and wagers from Rockwall Games (formally a developer of software games, now joining the tabletop world). Well, to be clear, the 2-7 players will be doing the waging whilst the game itself is providing all the wit in the form of wry humour and the smart cultural references found throughout.
Each player takes the role of a fantasy adventurer (eg: Jackaval Trayds), and starts by filling their sack with some loot (such as ‘Absurdly Large Sword’). In each round the active player will draw three Quest cards, discard one, and place the remaining two facedown (perhaps ‘Beat the dwarf at a drinking contest’ and ‘Find a shrubbery’) onto the Notice Board whilst announcing 'I’m going on a fetch quest!'. The player on the left then becomes active and the process repeats until any player announces, 'Challenge Accepted!' after the laying of quest cards.
At the accepting of a challenge, the active player flips all the cards on the Notice Board and the challenger must succeed or fail in all the quests. Each Adventurer card has three numbered skill types (Combat, Negotiate and Hustle) and players' loot cards will add value to their corresponding categories. Success is determined by whether your combined totals are higher in each and every category than the totals accumulated on the quest cards on the Notice Board’. Succeed three times and you win the game; fail three times and you’re out (players may also win by being the last adventurer not out).
AFFQ is a mixture of bluffing, memory, spiking the deck, shouting loudest and luck (plus back-stabbing if you play one of the three official variants). Whilst the win conditions are simple, the path to success is fraught with attempts to game-the-gamer on all sides, further confounded by the asymmetric skill values and unique special abilities of each adventurer. As if all that wasn’t enough, some of the values on the quests and loot cards are variable according to the roll of a die – so one begins to understand why the adventurers might be swearing about their latest fetch quest!
There is a strong temptation to attempt to play the probabilities but with such a large deck and no sense of the value distributions, this is a fool’s errand fetchquest. On that point, they are generous deck sizes with a multitude of entertainingly unique quests and loot, and very little repetition.
The artwork is fun (though it wasn't yet complete in the preview version played and shown here on Board's Eye View). It's reminiscent of contemporary cartoon shows (particularly Rick and Morty – known for its offbeat humour). This, combined with the general thematic riff on the pointless errands of sandbox video games, probably reveals a target audience of teenagers and young adults, but there is plenty of game here for all.
It’ll be interesting to see if the title survives further development and refinement. Not to appear prudish (I love a well-placed swear as much as the next person) but I’m just not sure how publishers will list this game, and searching for it online will be a difficult typing task. It would be the greatest of ironies if people were then unable to fetch themselves this particular treasure!
Another #$%&ing Fetch Quest?!? is live now on Kickstarter. Click here to check it out.
(Review by Michael Harrowing)