Disclaimer: The publisher provided the prototype copy of the game and the opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.
The components, rules and everything you see are all WIP at the time of writing.
Overview:
Neon Hope is a card based storytelling game set in a dystopian utopia. It can be played solo or as a cop-op game where you take on the roles of everyday people in the not so distant future, and where you stumble into situations that are much bigger than anything you have been prepared for.
The designers have stated that the game is meant to feel like you are playing through an episode of a tv show, where things that work against you and the encounters / people you deal with are represented by cards.
Rules & Setup:
In the copy I got to review, there are 2 characters for you to play, and a couple of difficulty levels for you to try, meaning that even with this slimmed down version there are a few different games / levels to experience.
The set-up took around 10-15 minutes as I had to re-read a couple of sections more than once to get the correct cards for the scenario / character I was playing correct, and maybe this needs a little bit better clarity in the final rule book.
Despite Neon Hope being a card game that was in a small box (less than A4 size) it did / will take up quite an area when setting up and during play to accommodate the cards and different areas you need to place them on your table.
There are quite a few pictures / diagrams in the Quickstart Rules guide that came with the game, and on the whole they are well done, and the sequence has been thought out to ensure they flow nicely, especially if like myself you haven’t played many games of this type.
Theme and Mechanics:
As mentioned earlier, the theme of Neon Hope is that of a near distant utopian world in which you play an everyday member of society, and you find your self having a series of encounters and have to navigate them in order to outwit and survive the forces that are seemingly working against you.
The mechanics play smoothly, and the best way for me to describe it is that it feels similar to the old Fighting Fantasy books from the 1980’s (which I loved) where the choices you made influenced the story and whether you survived the adventure or not, so for me that was a huge plus.
Gameplay:
Each player picks a character they will play in Neon Hope, and they then set up their hand of cards and anything else they are instructed to do before embarking on the story ‘episode’.
Each players turn consists of 3 actions, and these actions can be taken in any order, with other players taking an action in between yours if it is beneficial to do so, and all actions have to be taken by a player before that player can pass.
The players continue to take actions / turns until either the storyline objective has been met meaning they have completed and won this particular story, or they lose by either taking too much stress or the Surveillance has been increased / met the highest threshold level.
There are several Actions a player can take during their turn, and they are;
Change Location – Simply move your characters standee to another location that is in play, which can be at any setting.
Activate – To use certain abilities on cards you need to take the Activate action which is indicated by the ACTION icon.
Perform a Task – This particular action is the main way in which you will be interacting with the game, and there are 4 possible TASK actions you can do, which are;-
· Investigate
· Get Support
· Fight
· Hack
To perform a task, which are found on LEADS, ENEMEIES, STATES & TOOLS cards, you must first determine the type, attribute and difficulty level of the task.
Your base value will be equal to your attribute matching the attribute of the task, namely;
· PERCEPTION
· COURAGE
· CHARISMA
· TECHNOLOGY
You can optionally modify your attribute by either playing an ACTION card matching the type of the task, or by spending a charge of the attribute support marker, again matching the attribute of the task. This adds a +2 modifier, and can be played by either yourself or other players at your setting.
However, when you perform a task you will need to reveal a random modifier from the grid of hidden modifier tokens, which will also modify your attribute, either positively or negatively. These modifier tokens stay revealed until the grid is reset, which is done when all the tokens have been revealed during the game. The only ones that aren’t counted for reset purposes are the three in / on the archive card, although these are included and replaced during any reset.
You can Investigate LEADS, which are double sided cards that represent places you visit, and people you talk to during your game.
You can Get Support from LEADS as an Investigate action, and if you do you gain a support marker of your choice for doing so, which is placed in your playing area. There are different types of Support Markers, which are:
Attribute – which enter play with 2 ‘charges’, and you can spend 1 charge during a task matching the support marker to add a +2 modifier to your task.
Hope – which can be spent to prevent Stress.
Resources – which can be spent to purchase tools at specific points during the game.
You can FIGHT an enemy, and each successful fight deals 1 damage to it, and once an enemy reaches damage equal to or greater than it’s health it is defeated and removed to the encounter discard pile.
The last task on the list is HACK, in which you attempt to successfully hack a State, and if you do then you place a hacking cube on one of the empty cube slots, and if all of these are covered then the State is defeated and is again placed in the encounter discard pile.
Some tasks may also have a THREAT value, which is resolved if your modified value of the task is lower than the threat value of the task being attempted.
When you perform any TASK you must play a card from your hand, and the action type of that card MUST match the type of action you wish to perform. The played card is placed in your discard pile.
If you complete a task then you gain 1 resource as a reward for doing so, and a task is completed if you remove the last ‘secret’ from a card, or obtain the last Attribute Support Marker from it, deal the last point of damage to it or by placing the final HACK token on it.
If you have no cards left then you need to FOCUS. You then perform these steps;
Recover all cards
Lower your ENDURANCE by 1
Yake a number of ACTION cards back into your hand based on your new Endurance level.
You can also at this point purchase a tool or tools from your tool kit, as long as you have the resources to do so, and place them in your play area.
Artwork and Components:
For a prototype / review copy the quality of the components in Neon Hope were top notch, right down to properly printed dice (not just blanks with stickers as with some I’ve seen), and the cards were also thick enough to take several handlings without becoming flimsy.
The artwork really does convey that feeling of a dystopian era / setting.
Check out the Zatu Kickstarter page here!
