Players: 3-6
Playing Time: 30 minutes
The Components
Locke & Key is mainly a card game, focusing on three decks of cards. There's also a first-player marker and (of course) a rulebook.
Quality: The cards are all medium-weight, glossy cardstock. The first-player marker is a cardboard lock, which is printed on glossy cardstock. Overall, everything is good quality. 4 out of 5.
Beauty: The strength deck and the challenge deck each feature high quality art by Gabriel Rodriguez, that I presume is taken straight from the comics. It's weird and occasionally creepy and generally looks good. The key deck, meanwhile, is all printed with a fifth ink that looks sort of metallic and sort of holographic. The result is stunningly beautiful cards that pull the look and feel of the game up from good to great. 5 out of 5.
Usability: When you get started with the rule book of Locke & Key you're presented with long paragraphs printed in all caps lettering. It's intimidating and hard to read. Fortunately, that's the only real problem with the game's usability, and it'll only last through your first attempt at reading the rules. Even within the rules, there's a good attempt made to explain both the "combo" strength cards and all of the keys through glossaries that exhaustively detail each sort of card.
The actual cards clearly present the color and numbers of each card. Rules for special cards are succinctly presented at the bottom of each card -- though I would have much preferred icons, to make it easier to see what special effects are about to go off when cards are played all around the table. Overall, it's perfectly easy to use the cards for play, though I think there's room for improvement. 3+ out of 5.
Theming: All of the artwork of Locke & Key: The Game is based directly on the comic books. Similarly, some of the core concepts such as the "keys" and the "Shadow Army" challenges are drawn straight from the comics. If you're not familiar with the comic, the theming will go straight over your head if my two playtest groups are anything to go on.
I read the first two issues of the comic in preparation for this review, so I can speak at least somewhat of how the theming will feel to someone more familiar with the comics. (And I'll briefly say: awesome comic; the first hardcover is now winging its way to me based on the excellence of those first two issues.) The artwork all does a great job of putting you in the milieu of the comic, while I suspect readers will get a lot of enjoyment out of the challenges and keys that refer to specific incidents in the comics. The inclusion of "person", "otherworldly", and "shadow" challenges also feels right to me, based on my limited experience with the comic.
However, I also think that the connection isn't as strong as it could have been. The strength cards in particular are vague, showing incidents from the comic without explaining how these depicted incidents might offer personal, otherworldly, or shadow strength. Some of my players also thought that though the keys had cool powers, they didn't feel particularly "key"-like in what they did.
Overall, I suspect that readers of the comics will make up their own connections as they enjoy this attractive and evocative artwork, and for them the Theming will likely earn a 4 out of 5. People unfamiliar with the comic will feel like they're playing an abstract.
On the whole, Locke & Key has extremely beautiful cards, qood quality components, good theming for folks familiar with the Locke & Key comic, and average usability. That earns it a good Style rating of "4" out of "5".
Summary of the Gameplay
In Locke & Key: The Game you're trying to score the most points by overcoming challenges and simultaneously putting in more effort than any of your opponents.
Setup: Each player is dealt a hand of strength cards, while separate decks are setup for keys and challenges. The "lock" (first player) marker is given to a player.
Revealing a Challenge: Each round of play starts of with all the players drawing a strength card, then the lock player revealing the next challenge.
Challenge Cards. Each challenge comes in one of three colors (white/personal, blue/otherworldly, and black/shadow). Each has a "difficulty", which is both how much strength you need to overcome it and the value of the challenge. Finally, each challenge has a special reward for the second place player: white challenges usually let you gain keys, black challenges usually let you draw or steal strength cards, and blue challenges usually let you score strength cards.
Facing the Challenge: In turn each player starting with the lock player. gets to take one action. He'll either: pass and draw one strength card; discard two strength cards to draw a key; or else play one to three cards face-down strength cards in order to try and defeat the challenge.
Strength Cards. Strength cards also come in three colors. They have strength values that are typically 1-4, though there are a few 7s too.
Some of the strengths cards also feature special-power text. Many are "combos" that give you a reward if you place a certain selection of cards (e.g., three "2"s, three differently colored cards, or a 1-2-3 combo). Others give you bonuses if you win the challenge or if you don't win the challenge. A few give you special abilities, but only if played face-up.
Defeating the Challenge: After everyone has had one opportunity to play cards, all the face-down cards are revealed. Then everyone has one last opportunity to use keys that might affect the challenge. Finally, the challenge is resolved.
If there was sufficient TOTAL strength of the appropriate color to tie or beat the challenge, the challenge is overcome. In this case, whomever played the highest value of cards takes the challenge and scores it, while whomever came in second place gets the listed second place reward. The winner becomes the new first player.
If the challenge was not overcome, there's no negative effect: the old first player will continue play with a new challenge.
Key Cards. There are a variety of keys in the game, some one-use and some reusable. The reusable keys do things like let you draw a strength card during certain challenges and change the colors of other cards. The one-use keys do things like give a one-time bonus in a specific color. It's typically the one-use keys that you'll be choosing to play after all the cards for a challenge are revealed.
Ending the Game: There's a "game end" card buried in the challenge deck. When it's revealed, the game ends. The player with the most points in his score pile (mostly made up of overcome challenges, but also including some strength cards scored during blue challenges) wins.
Relationships to Other Games
Locke & Key is at heart a blind auction game (perhaps semi-blind, as you can see some info from how many cards have been played and whether any of them are face-up) mixed somewhat with card management and even a tiny bit of American take that gameplay. (The last coming from the fact that a few of the challenges and strength cards let you take cards from opponents.) The special powers on some of the cards are most of what make the game unique, though its short (30 minute) play time is pretty rare too for the genre.
Some places have described Locke & Key as a "semi-cooperative" game, and I can't agree, mainly because there's no downside when challenges are failed. As such it becomes a much purer game of bidding and bluffing.
The Game Design
Overall, Locke & Key is an interesting and thoughtful game. As I said, I think it really works primarily because of the combination of those special cards with an auction. The result is that you have quite a bit of tactical option, as you try and figure out whether a challenge will be overcome or not, and thus which cards you should play (as different cards can take advantages of these different situations).
The "combo" cards add an interesting bit of set collection to the game, which again adds to the tactics of play, as now you have to decide whether to use your combo cards right away or try to save them up to use their combo for even more benefit.
I like the "color" mechanism the best, because the idea of three colors is carried through all three of the card types -- strength cards, challenge cards, and even key cards. In a more standard auction, these three colors will simply have been three different currencies that you can auction with. However, the fact that the colors are also relevant for certain special powers, and that there are keys that can not only change the color of cards, but also change the color words on the cards makes them more important than just a currency type (and also again improves the tactical possibilities of the game).
Overall, I feel like Locke & Key packs a lot of punch and some nice originality into a fairly short auction game. I've given it a high "4" out of "5" for Substance as a result.
Conclusion
To fully appreciate Locke & Key: The Game, you'll probably need to be a fan of Joe Hill's comic book series. However, the game doesn't rest on its license alone. It's a fun game of auctions mixed up with the special powers of a card management game, and that's all packed into a surprisingly small, quick-playing package!
