It?s no secret around these parts that I have a great fondness for deck building card games. It also may come as a shock to you, me being a writer on a website and all, but I am rather fond of the fine art of word-smithery. Never did I think the two would be joined in such a perfect and holy union as they have been in Tim Fowers?/Fowers Games Inc.?s Paperback: The Game [$3.99]. It?s like the love child of Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer [Free] and Scrabble [$7.99], and while it could use some more meat on its bones, it?s a beautiful little baby.
The idea is that you and your opponents are competing authors of kitschy genre novels. The kind of pulp novels that often follow the same old conventions with few changes because that?s exactly the familiar or even nostalgic experience the audience keeps coming back for. Not to undersell the effort and skill required to write them. I?ve only written a few kind-of sort-of passable short stories in my time, so no judgement here. Anyway, the theme is really more of a window dressing. The gameplay isn?t about creating stories or sentences, though my creative brain was firing with such ideas as I thought about this game. The gameplay is Scrabble with a few glorious plot twists.
To start, every player of the possible two to four is given R, S, T, L, N, and five wild cards. In addition, every player has access to the common vowel deck. These letters are used again and again without belonging to the players. Like a free public car...