Using a metaphor, Vantage is the boat that Jamey has kept in his garage for the last eight years that he has been slowly working on bit by bit, day by day. It seems to be his most personal project yet. It is a game that he cares about, but I’m not sure if he is overly fussed if you care about it. Obviously, it needs to be commercially successful, but I wonder if we are at the point where the company can maybe take a few risks on a couple of passion projects. Vantage is definitely like a passion project. It exists to exist. Critiques would use something like ‘A very private endeavour’ but for anyone who grew up during the days of Choose Your Own Adventure, this seems like the deluxe board game version of that. Though unlike those two hundred pages of trials and flipping pages, Vantage doesn’t really want you to do anything much except enjoy the view and reach some kind of goal.
The premise is simple, you are part of a team that has crashed on a planet with little to go on except the immediate vantage that you are faced with, and some kind of mission that really doesn’t make any kind of contextual sense until you start walking off. You’ll explore the land around you by visiting locations and at every location you’ll have the chance to carry out an action that is relevant to the area that you’re standing in. Each of the potential actions is connected into one of the main actions you have at your disposal, but the action offered is usually in the context of the area that you are in. So maybe you’ll see a creature that you can interact with. One of the options is to observe the creature, but that requires you to use the LOOK action and therefore look up the numbered entry within the LOOK book. Find the number, pay the cost and find out the outcome, then you can decide to move on to another area. You only get one action per area, and if you are playing with other players, then you may be able to carry out another action. Otherwise play will pass on to the next player, let them decide what they are doing and then which direction they will take off on.
So this is like a Choose Your Own Adventure, if it required you to cross reference several books as you were playing. There’s no chance of you sticking multiple fingers in different pages to see if you picked out the correct outcome, because you would certainly need more fingers. Though it’s more than that. Vantage has more roots in an RPG than an exploration game, with less narrative and more decisions. I’m reminded of the recent games of Outgunned that I’ve been involved in, where you are trying to pass skill tests based on the most appropriate skill, where the difference isn’t down to how well you roll the dice, but what skill tokens you can spend before you have to roll any dice. Ah, the Challenge dice, which are there to act as a timer on the game, to slowly dwindle your resources as you explore, losing time, morale and health, but also if you have the cards in your possession, these troublesome dice can be placed around your character to mitigate there potential challenges to your journey. Cards that have rules on placement, but also provide bonuses, and also come with their own set of rules.
Rules. There’s a lot of them, well, there’s a lot of learning of little bits of additional information. So your first couple of forays onto the surface of the planet will have you sitting with the rules open, the action books open, plus several of the additional mystery books nearby. It takes a little bit of getting used to, which I don’t know why because I normally find the Stonemaier games to be pretty straight forward once you’ve played the minimal number of rounds. For the life of me I couldn’t get my head around the Move action, which is just another action that you do, but then acts as a move like everything else, so it is a turn, so if you’re playing with other people, could be the only action you take until it comes back around to you, and you’re changing location BUT at the same time, the blue move action is also listed as an action within the area you are in, but the context is different. You could be moving towards something in the vantage point to check it out. My brain was just refusing to cooperate at this point. There’s just a bit more faff than I expected from Jamey, but I guess that is down to something that has grown organically over the years.
Vantage is there to embrace the wandering soul, it’s like a walking simulator for cardboard. There’s no epic yarn, there’s no big evil dark force to defeat, you could even argue that although everything appears to be a giant mystery, there’s no real ultimate aim here than just to take in the view. There are quests and goals and you only bow out of the game if you literally lost the will to continue. It seems to sit in its own little place in the world. It certainly doesn’t sit with the rest of the Stonemaier catalogue as far a I am concerned. It’s more relaxed, like an interactive narrative that you are meant to dive into when you have time to spare but only really yourself to entertain. I’m not even sure if this is meant to be played in any other guise than as a solo player. I certainly didn’t think it would be something I would be playing at the local club. If it was with more players then it would likely be in a more personal location, to avoid the need to public noise and the ability for you to take you time. It’s more about climbing hills and enjoying the view. Rather than running and screaming as you are chased down a mountain as lava rains down.
Looking at it through some RPG eyes, it sits closer in that niche then it does and an exploration board game. For those used to rolling for checks with the gentle managing of stats, and who embrace a story that is there to be experienced, then they’ll probably get on quite well with this. For me, with the lack of big set up, and ease of which to dive in, and more importantly the lack of need to remember every last detail, it will probably suit those afternoons when I’ve got a bit of time on my hands and the weather prevents any potential desire to garden.
It’s different, and sometimes different can be a welcome break from the normal expected. Interesting vantage.
