I recently received a Kickstarter
campaign copy of Cheapass Games’ Get Lucky, the card game
based on its popular Kill Doctor Lucky board game. The
original game won the Origins Award for Best Abstract Board Game the
year after its first release, and still remains available as a free PDF print-and-play download at the generous Cheapass Games website
(though you can always leave a donation “tip” to show your
appreciation). Seeing the card game version reminded me how much I’ve
enjoyed killing Doctor Lucky over the years and made me happy to see
many familiar game mechanic themes distilled into a compact yet
strategically deep play experience.
I can’t recall where I picked up my
old “Director’s Cut” copy of Kill Doctor Lucky. It was,
like many Cheapass Games of the time, packaged in a cardboard mailer
box with a few separated cardstock map sheets and a host of
hand-trimmed cards; players had to supply their own pawns and one for
Doctor Lucky, a hallmark of the company that created games playable
with pawns, dice, and other bits cannibalized from other games in
players’ homes.
The original mechanics revolve around
each player wandering through Doctor Lucky’s mansion, following the
hapless fellow as he makes his way from one numbered room to the
next. Players could, depending on available cards, move themselves or
Doctor Lucky several rooms and hallways or to a specific room, search
for items to aid their murder attempt (draw a card), or attempt to
murder him. These attempts required no witnesses with a line-of-sight
view into the room where the dastardly deed might take place, an
extremely difficult feat particularly in games with many players;
while the active player could use a weapon to increase their chances
of success, others could play “failure” cards to stop this
particular attempt with the hopes of killing Doctor Lucky themselves
on a subsequent turn. While gameplay was extremely engaging – with
players jockeying their pawns and Doctor Lucky around the board and
nobody really certain who had the best chance to win until the very
end – it became very frustrating setting up the perfect no-witness
meeting with the old fellow only to have everyone else pitch in to
ensure failure. With a host of players the game also seemed to drag
on until someone made a murder attempt after everyone else had spent
their cards canceling earlier tries. (An optional “spite” rule –
made a regular rule in the deluxe edition – helped escalate the
action by giving players a token for each failed attempt, which they
could use as a +1 bonus on subsequent attempt or play as 1-value
failure pieces to cancel someone else’s attempt.) Overall, though,
the game has some wonderfully intuitive and intriguing mechanics,
particularly the one where any player in a room into which Doctor
Lucky moves immediately takes their turn, skipping other players in
the normal sequence.
At some point in the past few years I
bought the deluxe version of Kill Doctor Lucky produced by
Paizo Publishing. While it’s nice to have cardstock pawns with
stands for each potential murderer, Doctor Lucky, and his dog, as
well as professionally produced cards, the wonderfully rendered,
full-color, top-down map-board of Doctor Lucky’s mansion is so
graphically detailed it’s sometimes difficult to determine which
doorways lead where. Still, it’s good to have a quality,
professionally produced game version of a beloved basic-publishing
classic.
Cheapass Games also produced a
“prequel” game in the Doctor Lucky series – with Paizo later releasing a slick deluxe version – that cleverly reverses
many of the Kill Doctor Lucky rules and adds a keen escalation
mechanic to keep the game from running too long. Save Doctor Lucky
includes four smaller, elongated game boards depicting the decks of an ocean liner much like the RMS Titanic (complete with iceberg...). Players must save Doctor Lucky from the sinking ship so they can savor
their intricate plots to murder him later.
The game still uses similar movement mechanics as the original
game, though “move” cards frequently offer the option of moving
player pawns or Doctor Lucky a certain number of rooms or sending one
or the other off to a particular location (rather than the separate
“move” or “location” cards of the earlier game). In a
suitable twist the draw deck is divided into four, each placed next
to one of the ship's deck boards; players draw cards from
the lowest deck, so when that deck of cards disappears, the ocean
liner’s actual deck board also goes, sending any player pawns and
Doctor Lucky up to the next viable deck. When all four decks are
exhausted the ship sinks, the game ends, and everyone loses.
Cheapass Games recently ran a
Kickstarter campaign to release Get Lucky, another game in the
Doctor Lucky line. This card version artfully distills the essence of
the original game, leaving the board behind and condensing murder
weapons, locations, failures, and spite mechanics onto a 72-card deck. Instead of moving from
one numbered location to another, the Doctor Lucky pawn (included)
moves between numbered character cards. Players choose several
characters who can try murdering the old fellow when he’s on their
card (and players can trade out character cards as a turn action).
Players can attach “upgrades” – motive, weapon, and
opportunity cards – to their character cards for a +1 bonus in
murder attempts; pairing one of those cards with the matching
character card (indicated by similar numbers on the cards) gains a
+2 bonus. Foiling murder attempts uses several new mechanics in the
spirit of earlier games. Instead of playing separate “failure”
cards, players can use motive, opportunity, and weapon cards that
have one or two “luck” icons (four-leafed clovers) in the margin,
the number of clovers indicating the value of the “failure” card.
Anyone playing an upgrade card with a number matching that of the
character attempting the murder automatically foils the attempt.
Twelve “spite” cards also offer one-point failure options; in a
nice escalating twist on past mechanics, spite cards detract
their value from a character’s future murder attempts. All these
options in the “failure” mechanic force players to make a choice:
do they burn through their cards to stop a murder attempt now, or do
they save choice cards to use later? And when the deck is gone, the
discard pile isn’t shuffled and re-used, giving the game a shorter
play time and an increasingly desperate tone as players scramble to
get Doctor Lucky.
Cheapass Games and James Ernest –
the creative genius behind many of its offerings – have a rich
history of offering both affordable games where players provide their
own pieces and entirely free print-and-play games. The company
website offers links to read about and buy current titles, but
provides a host of excellent games for free PDF download for those
willing to produce their own print-and-play copies (for those seeking
guidance in preparing such materials, James Earnest has even produced
several instructional videos about cutting game cards and making tiles). Several games stand out from the host of free offerings,
particularly the popular Button Men (with intriguing dice
mechanics), Light Speed, Unexploded Cow, Take-Back-Toe
– winner of Daniel Solis’ Thousand Year Game Design Challenge –
and, of course, the free PDF download for the original, Origins
Award-winning Kill Doctor Lucky. If you like the free
materials, leave a “tip” in the form of a donation through the
website.
The company continues developing and
funding new games (primarily through Kickstarter) that incorporate
intriguing game mechanics and engaging (if not outright humorous)
themes. Cheapass Games might not have the same marketplace visibility
and prominence in the collective consciousness of gamers as more
massive adventure gaming companies, but it certainly deserves greater
recognition for its excellent titles and generosity with free games.
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