Deathmatch Asylum
By MazeForge (www.mazeforge.com)
What is it?
Deathmatch Asylum is, in essence, a board game, but it also incorporates a few miniature game concepts that round it out nicely. The premise is pretty straightforward: Basically, you're an inmate in an insane asylum, and you have woken up to discover that all the doctors, nurses, and orderlies are gone. As a result, you haven't had your morning dose of medications, and you're convinced that everyone else in the ward is out to get you. So, the "logical" course of action is to pick up the nearest pile of high-powered weaponry and start gunning. Obviously, this is a comedic game, and it succeeds at being amusing both in presentation and play.
There are two versions of the game available. One version is a free download provided for use with the company's VersaTiles product. The other version is a stand-alone printed copy available for sale from the website for $14.95 (plus shipping). This review concerns the stand-alone printed version.
Number of players: 2-6
Time to play: 30 minutes to an hour
What you'll need to play: In addition to the game itself, pencils, paper, and a generous handful of six-sided dice. About twenty is probably plenty.
What's Included?
The stand-alone game includes full-color maps, a sheet of full-color counters and standees (cutting required), and a rulebook, all of which come in a sturdy envelope for storage.
One really nice touch is the packaging. The game comes in a letter-size manilla envelope (the kind with the string closure). Rubber-stamped on the front are the words "Mazeforge County Asylum," in black ink. The envelope is also stamped in red ink with the words "Confidential" in a few places seemingly at random. The effect is quite cool; the envelope looks like something out of a B-movie insane asylum.
As for the contents, the boards themselves look very nice. They are printed full color on sturdy semi-gloss paper. There are three different 11" x 17" boards, each of which has a different layout. Depending on the number of players, one or more boards are joined together to form a single map. The boards depict the interior of an insane asylum from directly above. Beds with straps, institutional flooring, padded walls, and even a nurse's station complete with desk lamps and waiting room furniture assure a variety of environs for the participants to try to kill one another. I give very high marks for the boards. Simply put, they look great.
The counters, on the other hand, are a bit drab. A picture would have been cool, but instead each counter has a number (which is referenced on a chart to determine what it means). There are two types of counter - weapons and power-ups, and these are differentiated by a colorful symbol on the back. As for the standees, they're fairly straightforward, but it should be noted that the pictures are pretty amusing, showing cartoony, zany inmates carrying blood-dripping axes, hypodermic needles, and the like.
The rulebook is fairly no-frills - there are a few cute illustrations to break up the text, but for the most part it's a four-page 8.5" x 11" booklet of text in a two-column layout. The text itself is very flavorful, and for the most part an enjoyable read. However, the flavorful prose can be an impediment to quick rule lookups during play. This is where a flavor-neutral summary of play would be handy. If you read through the rulebook with a bit of care, it shouldn't be much of a problem, however, and there aren't so many rules that this is at all an issue. Just a minor quibble.
Rounding out the package are the reference sheets detailing the different weapons and power-ups and a character sheet for photocopying.
How Do You Play?
First, you'll need to create a character. This is a fairly painless process of assigning numbers to three stats - Aim, Dodge, and Health. Aim is how well you shoot, Dodge is how well you avoid being shot, and Health is how much damage you can take before you're "fragged." Although these are pretty basic, there's more strategy than you'd expect in choosing the stat levels. Different characters play very differently. To finish up, you pick a name for your inmate, and you're ready to rock and roll.
Once all the characters are finished, players build the game map in a collaborative fashion, assuring that each game's ward will be different. Weapon and Power-up counters are placed face-down in the denoted spots on the board. Then players take turns placing "respawn points." There are six of these counters (numbered 1-6 on both sides), and they can be placed wherever the players want. These are spots where players will enter the ward, and also where they will re-enter the ward after being fragged. (The inmates aren't really certain why they keep coming back after getting killed, but it doesn't really bother them since they're insane...) Each player rolls a 6-sider and the number determines which respawn point the inmate starts on. Once all the players have been placed, the game begins.
An individual turn goes like this: Roll 2d6; you get to move that number of squares (orthogonal only, like in Clue). Once at any point during your turn, you may shoot another character. This involves rolling 2d6 and adding your Aim and your weapon's accuracy rating. The target can dodge, rolling 2d6 and adding their Dodge and the distance in squares from the attacker. If the attacker beats the defender, damage is determined based on the weapon. If you take more than your Health stat in damage, you're fragged, and the attacker records a frag on his or her character sheet. But that's not so bad - you'll re-enter play at one of the respawn points on your next turn.
Incidentally, we learned during our playtest games that the board layouts themselves are quite effective. Virtually every turn, there is a decision to make about what would be a better course to take. The map layouts are very well-done in that regard. They not only look pretty, they also play well.
If during your turn you move over a counter (either a weapon upgrade or an equipment upgrade), you pick up the counter and put it on your character sheet. (Counters are placed on the board facedown, by the way, so you won't necessarily know what the item is unless you grab it.) This method of tracking the equipment you're carrying and the heat you're packing is very convenient - there is sufficient space on the character sheet to hold all your weapons. You use a 6-sider to track how much ammo you have, one of this game's very clever uses of dice.
When a counter is picked up, it is replaced by a 6-sider showing 6. Once per round, all the 6-siders on the board are turned to show one number lower. When a 6-sider hits 1, it is picked up and replaced with a new counter. This elegant mechanic makes tracking respawning of power-ups a breeze.
There are 11 different weapons and 12 power-ups, so there's a good deal of variety in the game play. Among the weapons you have things like chainsaw, shotgun, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, grenades, and things of that nature. Power-ups include armor and med-kits which prevent or heal damage, extra ammunition, and things like that.
The game is played to 5 frags total. (That's 5 frags by all the players, not one player reaching 5 frags.) The player with the most frags at the end is the winner. If there's a tie, it's pretty cool to play a grudge match with the same characters. The 5 frag limit makes the game long enough to be interesting but not too long to become tedious. Even at the beginning of a match, the end is in sight, giving the game play a sense of urgency and tension. Play itself is fast-paced and exciting. We played with four players and with two for our playtests, and both games were quick, funny, and quite enjoyable.
Is That All?
Well, not quite. After the game, you can keep your characters and pit them against one another in future matches, keeping track of the total number of frags each character scores. Every five frags a character gets, a stat of the player's choice increases by 1. This little feature gives the game a strong sense of continuity, but without all the tedium of book-keeping required by many miniatures combat games.
Conclusion
This is a solid product. Its play manages to be interesting even at the preliminary set-up level thanks to the character creation. Actually gameplay is well-balanced, quick, and above all, madcap fun. Replay value is high, as the three boards provided allow for many combinations and different setups. As an added treat, the character advancement rules let you improve your lunatic, turning him or her into a death-dealin' juggernaut of questionable sanity. And the price is reasonable too.
Disclosure: I am a friend of the game designer, and I received a review copy. I have attempted to provide a fair and detailed review that will give the reader sufficient information about the game. The bottom line is, regardless of my affiliations with the game's creator, I really like the game. Hence, this is a positive review. If you wish to investigate further, you can download everything but the boards for free at the website, sort of a "try-before-you-buy." If you like what you see, picking up a copy is worth it for the boards alone.
