Breaking down Brink the Board Game from IV Studios

[@BillyIndiana]

I loved the conversational style of this review! I've watched several Brink videos and got some idea of the game, but your video helped me understand the game and how it would feel to play. Excellent job 👍

[@GameBrigade]

Thanks for the awesome compliment Billy. Hope all is well.

[@GamerPhysics]

Those were some very good call outs for some risks in enjoyment. I know that the team is addressing some of those concerns, there's a first player action so you can have some control over that, they've already done some work on accessibility for colors (the KS page has a section on it). Great, honest review, thanks for the info!

[@DMBuc2k1]

Thanks for the great breakdown! I’m excited to back it!

[@GameBrigade]

Any time!

[@franktitzler2689]

Great review. Sounds like this will be a great fit for my group

[@louiseubank9371]

Had a blast, really looking forward to the campaign

[@donbooger]

Looks cool, a bit like andromedas edge/dwelling of eldervale and siddereal confluence. How does it compare to those game?

[@clanechelon]

I don't know if the structure of this game would allow for a house rule at higher player count, but it seems to be negotiation games would benefit from a timed round so that negotiation don't drag the game too long.

[@J_Miller22]

Great review, I can't wait for this to come out! FYI, IV has said that they are aware of the color issue on the prototype and plan to fix it.

[@GameBrigade]

Austin actually sent me a preview of their color changes which looks great

[@rickrivera827]

I’m wondering how resource hoarding was an issue with the revolt mechanism? Is it due to the random tile draw?

[@scatter_brain]

For me I’m looking for a great negotiation game at the moment. Trying to think long term, with your experience, which game would you rather play or scratch that itch: Moonrakers or Brink? I don’t have Moonrakers and I’m trying to decide if I should commit to Brink or go Moonrakers. Any perspective you could share?

[@scatter_brain]

I guess put more simply, is there one you would rather play 9/10 times? Sorry to put you on the spot and I’m sure it’s hard to decipher considering they are 2 very different games

[@fablesmith1931]

Well, you can get Moonrakers right now, while it will be at least a year before you can get Brink on the table. If time is not an issue, it seems that Brink is more of a barter game and Moonrakers is more of a negotiation game. Both highly interactive but a different kind of interaction. Have not played Brink though, so I’m open to being corrected

[@GameBrigade]

​@@fablesmith1931 This is a solid response. Moonrakers you need your opponents to go on missions with you to complete them and you have to decide how much resource is you're willing to trade for their help. Bring your needing your opponents to give you their resources in exchange for your resources that you don't get to keep if you don't trade them. This causes your opponents to get better trades values. They are both really social

[@stevenokeefe2681]

Does the negotiation/trade sound like Catan? And is it only on your turn?

[@GameBrigade]

You collect resources when you send your ship out to do an action. If the resources have a white border, those resources are to be traded, and if not traded will be lost at the end of your turn. So you are incentivized to trade the white bordered resources on your turn. When it's other people's turn you are able to trade any of your resources that you own for their resources including whiteboard resources they collected. There isn't a way to really Bogart or control resources because there are plenty of places to go get them. But we had several times where certain resources were very limited because people were going for specific colors for control.

[@kir_osv_1443]

Do you think the game is suitable for two people?

[@GameBrigade]

I've been told it is, but I would need to see how the negotiation mode is handled with only two players.

[@kir_osv_1443]

@@GameBrigade Thank you, your opinion would be interesting :)

[@louiseubank9371]

It would definitely be a different game (not implying good / bad, but different) - biggest thing I can see is that interaction on trading resources would be much less (if I know you desperately need blue or purple, I can make it extra expensive or just not offer trades) but you could have massive swings for which colors count for points - if you have 5 people and everyone has a ship or two on green, you can almost guarantee that green will count. But if it's just the two of us, do I want to go hard on green because I have 3 ships on it and you have none, but then I'll have no resources at the start of the next round? (having been there, that was not fun) I think it is definitely intriguing. Biggest issue I think you'd run into is that there would be sig more direct "take that", so I can think of several players in my board game group who'd be fine with that, but several others who absolutely wouldn't and my wife would hate it.

[@GamerPhysics]

There's a ghost third player to trade with in 2-player, ThinkerThemer had thoughts

[@ilqrd.6608]

IV Games perhaps should route some of that marketing money towards gameplay. It’s so clear that they are a marketing company first and foremost. They want to sell an Apple product like board game but gave yet to deliver a stellar gameplay experience

[@stevepettenon1]

Sure, if that's your opinion. Having backed many of their games, I love the level of player engagement from their games and I love how they try to find the grey areas of game genres in trying to reach something new. Out of curiosity, which of their games (that you own and have played) do you think is subpar or 'non-stellar'? Veiled Fate is still a hit with my player circle, that's not including the expansion. Moonrakers also gets some good airtime amongst the other games we've got on rotation.

[@ilqrd.6608]

@@stevepettenon1 I played Moonrakers (which felt very tame, small and unspectacular), Veiled Fate (which was good but nobody felt like we needed to play it again after our third game) as well as Mystic Mischief. I love abstract games but this one didn’t hit for me either. I was really hoping we would play it a lot and get competitive but it just felt like it was holding back. E.g. I love Tak, Shobu, Yinsh, Santorini. Mythic Mischief gets nowhere near those. I’m not saying their games are bad. In my experience they are solid but that’s just not enough at that price point

[@novon246]

100%. They used to be a design/animation studio, so it’s clear where their focus lands.

[@Spin0saure]

Sounds like it is more an issue with your play group rather than their games. You can not please everyone and that is okay. All of their games have overwhelmingly positive reviews, product quality is top notch, gameplay is fun, easy to learn yet has some degree of complexity to it. The very rare negative reviews are usually people purely bashing them because they don't like their marketing or whatever or worse, involves some form of gatekeeping. Oh well, haters gonna hate. :')

[@novon246]

I’ve played their games with multiple different types of groups. I think Moonrakers is their best game they’ve made, but even that has glaring issues. I’m not disagreeing that the games have great production quality or don’t get good reviews, but the gameplay is almost always lacking, and rests heavily on forced player interaction to give the game any life or interest. It feels like each game is aimed towards more casual audiences who are willing to overlook the flaws because of the above average production (and we didn’t even get into the price associated with that production yet)