Review of Estrella Drive

Blurb from the publisher: '1982 NT: We are at the beginning of the 80's and there are ghosts from the past that can't find rest. Unveil the dark secrets of the Californian showbiz industry.

In Hollywood, the ghosts of the past never sleep! Embark on your next adventure into the past with Estrella Drive, the sixth expansion for T.I.M.E Stories. Like all T.I.M.E Stories adventures, you and your fellow players are members of the T.I.M.E Agency, sent to investigate a disruption to the Time Stream. This time, you and your fellow agents are sent to 1982 to investigate a temporal anomaly in a supposedly haunted Hollywood mansion. Please note that Estrella Drive is recommended for mature audiences — certain themes within this adventure may be objectionable to younger players.'

What you get: Your USD 29,99 or equivalent will buy you Estrella Drive, the sixth expansion for the T.I.M.E Stories game line, the hybrid boardgame/RPG/PC adventure made for tabletop gaming. The adventure can be played within 90 minutes by two to four players. The product contains 166 cards and nothing else; the basic game is needed in order to play this scenario.

Spoiler warning: each scenario of T.I.M.E Stories, just like any RPG adventure, is very likely to be played once only to fruition, even though this will happen in more than one run. As much as I am not going to describe, let alone detail the scenario, parts of it might be revealed while discussing its strong and less strong points. This will not make the scenario unplayable, mind you, nor any less enjoyable. If you enjoy surprises however, you might want to stop reading now.

The strong points: The scenario doesn't even make an effort to disguise the story it is loosely based on. Let me give you three of the game's protagonists (not characters) and three seconds to sort it out: Karl Maxxon, Nora Slate, Norman Palovik. You guessed right: this is the Tate murders perpetrated by Charles Manson, re-imagined with mysticist twists. The story is undeniably dark. It is broken down in two distinct settings, one in the 1980s and one in the 1960s, with the players caught in a loop. There are no puzzles in the story, there are however numerous dead ends. The idea is to exit the groundhog day without altering the events of the past. Seeing how these events involve the mindless and pointless murder of innocents, including a pregnant woman, and the characters will be present during that event, the atmosphere of this scenario is not for everybody.

Even though this is not the first time to visit the same premise after an event for the first time, and then confront the event itself on subsequent runs, it is done again quite stylishly. The tightly written and presented story manages to mostly overcome the innate problems of the dead ends in exploration which are impossible to guess. It goes without saying that you will need multiple runs to sort this out, if it succeeds in creeping you out however it doesn't really matter.

There is a nice spread of three women and three men receptacles for either part of the scenario. Their backstories are particularly intriguing. Some of them are total losers, and as such are quite interesting to play with some proper role-playing laid on top.

The art is once again very well done. The distinction between the 80s and the 60s is emphasized by the changes in design when it comes to the characters, but not when it comes to the locales. I have yet to find a scenario in this line whose art was disappointing. Even those which didn't particularly strike me where nicely and cohesively done.

The weak points: It is very unfortunate that Estrella Drive did not receive the editing oversight that it deserved. There are numerous typos on the text. That might not have been an issue in other games, on a narrative game like this however it ruins the allegedly ominous mood after the second occurrence. What is even weirder is that even the art wasn't as carefully inspected. In an otherwise cool-looking image with a standard deck of cards, the cards depict the French nomenclature for Queen and King, that is D and R instead of Q of and K. Such a mistake on the English version of the product, with a backstory set in the US in the 1960s and 1980s, is inexcusable. In fact it is as bad as dubbing Wild West movies.

I have no idea why this product proclaims its content to be suitable for a 'Mature Audience Only'. There's the Charles Manson inspired story which is admittedly grim, depictions of cocaine abuse, insinuations of nudity from the scenario's Sharon Tate equivalent (nothing is actually shown) and a mystic's séance. So what? Expedition: Endurance has half-eaten corpses, half corpses lying around, dead, frozen bodies looking at you while hanging from the ceiling and more. How is it even remotely possible that the present scenario is for mature audiences, while the other one isn't? Either both are, or this is a marketing gimmick.

Those looking for new rules or twists on old ones will be disappointed. The groundhog day effect is the only thing going on here. Depending on where you come from, it will be enjoyable until it isn't.

There are no puzzles in this scenario, unless one considers sniffing around for dead ends as a puzzle of sorts. Surely, there must be some middle ground between the extremely hard puzzle of Lumen Fidei and this?

The overall T.I.M.E Stories backstory does not advance at all. I am perplexed. On the one hand, it makes the present story enjoyable even if played by novices immediately after the basic set. On the other hand, the progress behind the previous two scenarios was promising. Having this scenario totally skip the backstory feels like the alternation between background scenarios and monster-of-the-week scenarios that TV series usually opt for.

I haven't commented on it at all in the previous scenarios, but the game's intros and outros start annoying me. Bob's snarky, modern TV series-style commentary about how bad everybody performed when they were given inadequate resources and information, and they are obliged to fail to sort things out is unfaithful to the actual premise of the game. Were I to drastically alter something in future scenarios, that would be these texts. There must be a better reason as to why players are given so limited resources and info at the beginning.

Those who wish to sleeve their cards will be not that happy to find out that the 70 x 120 mm is always alive and kicking. Good luck finding sleeves for that. I wish the game had opted for 80 x 120 mm, a size that is both bigger (cooler aesthetics!) and easier to sleeve. Even though we are six expansions in however, I am not losing hope.

Conclusion: Even though it is practically outside of the T.I.M.E Stories campaign, Estrella Drive has an engaging narrative, an interesting alternate take on the Tate murders for the players to resolve, and a clever two-part structure. Ultimately however, it fares worse than every other scenario out there, due to the lack of editorial TLC. It really pains me to see half-baked products. With just a bit of additional attention, it would have fared much better.

For more info on Estrella Drive and T.I.M.E Stories overall, visit Space Cowboys at http://www.spacecowboys.fr or Asmodee at http://www.asmodee.us.

Shameless plug: for more gaming news and content (including, for example, pictures of Estrella Drive that I am unfortunately not able to upload on RPG.net for the time being), and to better keep track of my reviews, subscribe to my Antonios S facebook and twitter page.