Gloom is the new card game where the players control ‘eccentric families of misfits’ and work them towards a dark and disturbing end. The player with the most negative points from living the worst life wins!
The cards come in one of the dreaded double-layered packs, which mean that when it’s time to pack the game, you’ve got to split the deck in half. The game is suitable for 2 to 4 players and for ages 8 and up running for $19.95. The cards themselves are printed on clear plastic.
This is bad news. See, I’ve already been through two decks and really, I should’ve been through three decks, but despite how friendly my local hobby shop is, I wasn’t going to look for all perfect cards. See, the cards have different colored plates, red, black and white in the center. My first deck’s red plates had white text, which was simply not readable. It didn’t effect every red or ‘event’ card, but enough of them where I didn’t feel comfortable keeping it. Perhaps that’s what comes of printing transparency cards in India?
Open the new deck in the store and ah, the event cards are readable, but the deck is grimy, looking like it’s been heavily scuffed. What’s worse is that I don’t notice that until I get home, some of the cards have lost the value of their modifiers. Thankfully I’ve figured out that red means negative and black positive but given the chance, I’d probably swap this deck out too and if I wasn’t too cheap to mail these back to Atlas for a new deck, I’d do that. Hmmm… postage due perhaps…
Anyway, outside of the physical construct lurks a fun game. Players pick from one of four different families, each family being five cards and each family having it’s own icon under it’s illustration. The icons are very similar to Gorey illustrations in black and white with colored backgrounds to differentiate them from the rest of the deck. Out of the four families, my favorite is Dark’s Den of Deformity. You’ve got to love a family with “Mister Giggles”, the creepy clown. My girlfriend on the other hand, prefers the Blackwater Watch family because of Angel, the starry-eyed serial killer.
Should I be worried?
After players select their families, they get five cards. Cards are broken up into modifier cards, cards with black text plate, event cards, cards with red text plate, and untimely death cards, cards with white text plate. Players can use or discard up to 2 cards before drawing more cards.
Modifier cards come in different types that are identified by the story icons on the right hand side including beast, blank, death, duck, goblet, lucre, marriage or no icon. They either provide positive modifiers or negative modifiers as well as enforcing some action on your hand. These modifiers are listed on the left side of the card and are red for negative values or black for positive values. For example, my poor killer clown may be “galled by gangrene” and suffer –15 with no other notes but a skull on the right side. Each card also includes a quip to be read aloud and put into the character’s story, which the group should be working on while they play.
There are three spots on the card where points can accumulate, top, middle, and bottom, with frequency following that placement. Most cards will be for the top spot, while other cards will fill in, with less frequency, the middle or bottom.
The event cards, those dreaded red cards which were printed poorly in my first deck, have no points. They are used to mix things up in the game. For example, if someone’s got a lot of negative points built up and I’ve got the card, “A Chance to Begin Again”, I can play that on them and they have to discard all the modifiers on one of their living characters.
Yeah, that’s right, living characters. See, there’s a third type of card, the untimely death card. This card kills off your character and is best played on those characters with the most negative points on your side, or the least negative points on another player’s side to prevent them from accumulating points.
The instructions are clear and short being on one double-sided folded page, and I even had my mother playing. Unfortunately, even though I could read (most of) the cards, I’ll point out that my mother who has bi-focal glasses, was having a very difficult time reading any of these cards. If you have glasses, make sure you’ve got your good ones on to read these cards.
Gloom isn’t a long game, but the authors include instructions on reducing the time by say, reducing the cards when all four players are involved.
The card’s illustrations are top notch for what they represent and the price isn’t bad. I dislike the double-layered holding deck. Get a regular deck already. I’d recommend opening your set in the store and making sure that you can read the red cards and quickly looking over the negative modifiers on the left hand side to make sure that all the numbers are cleanly and clearly printed.
Gloom may have missed Halloween 2004, but it will be joining my other card games come Halloween 2005.
Review Summary