We originally featured Keen Bean Studio's Roll Camera! on Board's Eye View back in 2020. You can check out our review at https://www.boardseyeview.net/post/roll-camera. Roll Camera! is a worker/dice-placement co-operative game that gets regular re-runs at Board's Eye View, helped by its smooth gameplay and humorous touches. This B-Movie Expansion builds on the base game by introducing some extra elements that help to keep it fresh.
As you might expect, there's more of all the core elements of the base game: additional Problem, Idea and Production Company cards to throw into the mix. There are six new player boards representing more of the personnel involved in putting together a movie, and each player board has three unique dice placement abilities. Two tiles (or stickers for those who prefer to affix them to the board) give us two more actions that can be taken with your dice placement, and the expansion introduces single-use Equipment cards to help film-makers. However, the key change that designer Malachi Ray Rempen and John Velgus give us with this B-Movie Expansion is the addition of Genre tokens. There's a new middle script card that incorporates the requirement in your movie for a specific mix of Genre tokens. The expansion also comes with a thick wadge of new Scene cards and these indicate up to two Genre tokens. Players therefore have the added challenge of selecting and manipulating their Scene cards so that their completed movie fully satisfies the Genre requirements of the script...
As with the base game, players have to complete their movie within budget and the constraints of time, and to win you still need to ensure that your finished product avoids movie mediocrity. In our plays of the game with the B-Movie Expansion fully integrated we found the extra Genre requirements added to the fun but didn't necessarily make the game harder, but perhaps that's because we were relatively experienced players. In any event, one of the key features of Roll Camera! is its facility for making the difficulty level fully customisable, so if you do find the expansion raises the difficulty, you can readily adjust the game by increasing your budget and/or extending your schedule.
If you've enjoyed playing Roll Camera! then you'll certainly want to add this B-Movie Expansion. You'll love the way the expansion builds on the humour inherent in the core game: the B-Movie Expansion even comes with a sheet of cutout props that serve absolutely no gameplay purpose but are intended just to enliven your storyboards! If you've not yet discovered the original and you're looking for a sociable cooperative game, then you should definitely check out Roll Camera! and be sure to nab a copy of the expansion at the same time. Our only gripe is with the expansion's title because 'B-Movie' has a distinctly pejorative connotation. We'd have preferred to have called this a Genre Movie Expansion. And these days, aren't all movies Genre movies?