Dear Haunted MTL Readers,

It’s been a long and crazy ride this year. I’ve been posting a tabletop game review every month (and a few extras), all listed below in case you want to read them. But this is my last hurrah, at least for now (seeing as how I’ve pretty much reviewed most all the games I own that are suited to here except for a few stragglers). It’s crash and burn time. So for my final episode, here’s Ravine.

Ravine is a crafty and cooperative card game by Stellar Factory.

You can find Ravine pretty much anywhere including Amazon and even Walmart… The art is simple and the line drawings bring just enough focus to story around. Essentially, the luck of the draw tells the story of what happened. Everything is based on cards drawn at random, which creates a lot of different scenarios and stories to be woven. Some of the situations are adult themed and the win conditions can be challenging depending on what cards you draw, so the game is not recommended for players under 10.

Each character is drawn based on a deck of airline passengers, and each has something they can use. Some are better equipped than others, as expected. Since characters are drawn randomly you aren’t super invested in them, so the focus of Ravine is a bit more about the story of their survival.

After the crash, the big question is how will your band of survivors make it through the night in the Ravine? During the day, you look for useful items, but at night you may be attacked by animals or harrowing weather conditions or slowly go insane. You have to try to equip yourself against whatever dangers may come your way until you are rescued. You need to forage for food and materials to make crude baskets, spears and shelter as well as keep a fire going to thwart some of the threats. There is a somewhat magical bent as well, with good and bad powers granted by certain cards if you find them. Once you are reduced to one heart, or as specified in a scenario, you begin to succumb to madness which takes many different forms, again depending on what is drawn.

We played two games recently, and the outcomes were very very different. The first band of survivors perished in a gruesome end while the second actually managed to thrive. Planning things through can certainly help offset the randomness, and building useful items is always a boon, but honestly a lot of this really comes down to luck. Does your group find enough food? What threats are encountered? What are the conditions in which they find themselves? The two scenarios couldn’t have been more different. In fact, we did so well during the second scenario that many members of the group were rescued in better health than they were at the time of the crash.

Because of the variability, I will give Ravine 3.5 Cthulus.

Some games are great, others are just kind of shitty. Some are too easy; others are nigh impossible even if you are totally on top of it. Fortunately the game plays fast and you’re not so invested to want to just flip the table when things aren’t going well. And you can collect bones. They can even talk to you, whispering in some ancient mystical island language. Just don’t lose hope that you can find them again when the island tries to take them back…

And as promised, here is a list of my tabletop game reviews to date:

Horrified: Universal Studios Monsters are on the loose

Pocket Paragons: One, Two, Three, Now Fight

Sub Terra: We’re going down… down…

The Grizzled: Can you all survive the war together?

Twilight 2000 Campaign: Series of RPG gaming logs and review

Mysterium: Connect the dots across The Void

Elder Sign: It opened up my mind…

Nevermore: Pecketh the raven

Flash Point: Rage against the inferno

Dead of Winter: Get your zombie apocalypse on

Revisiting The Grizzled: Campaign edition

Sentinels of the Multiverse: Comic relief

Making Christmas: Twas the nightmare before