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Review of Madame
Blurb from the publisher: '1673 NT: Ah! Versailles. Its court. Its Tqtue elte. iTs p1sG3Tre. DO. Hdesba rgasezfl. FATAL 3RROR: 3ND OF TR. 1011100101.——'
What you get: Your USD 29,99 or equivalent will buy you Madame, the eighth and final expansion for the first, white cycle of the T.I.M.E Stories game line, the hybrid boardgame/RPG/PC adventure made for tabletop gaming. The adventure can be allegedly played within 90 minutes by two to four players (count a minimum of three hours if you wish to be realistic). The product hosts 196 cards in three distinct decks; 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. Seeing how it deals with the culmination of the first cycle, this is not a spoiler-free review. If you enjoy surprises, you might want to stop reading now.
The strong points: That's it; this is the final scenario of T.I.M.E Stories' first cycle, and we have visited every single adventure together. This is not a scenario to be played either out of order or without having played every other scenario first. Keep on reading, and you will understand why. Madame is a long story, 196 cards long to be precise, which is even longer than Brotherhood of the Coast, the longest scenario up to now. Those who enjoyed swapping receptacles in Under the Mask are in for a treat. Madame does not implement the mechanic in the exact same way, the results however are impressive. I am counting some 26 (!) characters players can access, with a vast assortment of stats. There aren't many tests which require rolling, on the other hand however one will need them in order to access certain of the map's areas. You will be aware of the locations you need to explore from the very beginning, yet different areas can be entered by different characters.
The runs in this scenario are short, very short, and keep becoming shorter the more you keep failing. This creates quite some tension, even though they are means of alleviating the issue. The scenario is a sandbox, even though much of its contents are off limits and will be revealed sequentially, provided you do the right things. The problem is finding out what those are...
The art is nice and evocative. To my eyes it borrows from 20th century publications and creates an aura of authenticity since the scenario is mostly historical. In many ways it reminded me of reading books for young adults during the previous millennium.
The weak points: The obvious points first: Madame is a scenario which, when it comes to its ending at least, is deeply entrenched into your achievements while playing the white cycle's previous scenarios. As such, its conclusion will not be enjoyable if you play it out of order, or if you haven't played and succeeded in everything else before it. You will be able to solve all its puzzles and reach its end, but your course will abruptly end two cards before its real conclusion. That feels like watching a movie up to the last two minutes before your internet connection or your blu-ray player breaks down for good. It isn't satisfying, let's put it that way.
The scenario faces many issues. It is a sandbox, yet it doesn't provide any guidance. Your choices will be based on a hunch most of the times. Yet, some of the choices lead to a vicious circle of diminishing returns, where you might find yourself executing runs with a ridiculously low allotment of TUs. How low? As low as 1 (!) TU, if you get unlucky. The fact that the game can potentially decay into something as meaningless as that, no matter how minor the chance, means that the engineering behind it isn't as robust as it should have been. What however is a frightening example of bad design is the question right before the end, with the game surmising that you have played all the previous scenarios before it: 'I have the 9th cube. You have the other 8, don't you?' If the answer is positive, you can proceed. If the answer is negative, that's it: thank you, and fuck off. The game doesn't deem you worthy to give you an escape out of that puzzle. It gets stuck there; there is no backtracking, no glorious or inglorious way out, no nothing. You might have been playing for months, but if you haven't found eight cubes, die you moron. What sort of half-baked and half-arsed design is this? Nobody thought that even if dedicated players have played all the previous scenarios, some of us might not have found all eight cubes?
After all the build-up, the metagaming, the secretive, conspiratorial backstory about the Consortium, the Elois and the Syaans, T.I.M.E Stories players get a full fat serving of... nothing. This is the culmination of the first cycle, and one would legitimately expect links with all the hints and insinuations about the world of T.I.M.E Stories that preceded this scenario. There are none. Literally, none. Not only the story about Bob never having existed comes out of the blue, it also doesn't get resolved. In what I can only describe as incredible incompetence, the QR code provided at the end of the scenario (and yes, you would have needed a QR reader since no link is provided), does not work. Scour BGG for the real address that you will need to consult in order to fully complete the adventure. Is that conclusion successful? Again, no! You get an ad for the next cycle as well as a bonus action die. Storywise you get nothing. I dig cliffhangers, but this stuff is just bland. I didn't play all that to gain an action die and keep playing; I played in order to engross myself in the stories and the metaplot. I feel as if all my plays up to now have been irrelevant, futile even. How long can a story ark last, and when does the publisher expect to resolve it? It took the white cycle four years to publish nine scenarios. Should we wait another four years of the blue cycle in order to find out what all that Elois/Syann stuff means? Glaciers melt faster than this!
There is absolutely no way a group will finish this particular adventure in 90 minutes as advertised. I suggest you devote a full gaming session to it; two and a half to three hours is the minimum I believe an intelligent group will need. I do hope that when the new cycle begins the publisher will stop understating the playing time.
Seeing how this is the last game in the first cycle, it might not make much sense to repeat the issues of sleeving the 70 x 120 mm cards (a pain in the ass when it comes to finding the right sleeves). Yet, I will, just in case somebody up high is reading this. I wish the game had opted for 80 x 120 mm, a size that is both bigger (cooler aesthetics!) and easier to sleeve. Don't get that wrong in the next cycle, honestly.
Conclusion: I am extremely disappointed by the conclusion of T.I.M.E Stories' first cycle through Madame. If it weren't the concluding episode and had a different ending, Madame would have rated from 3/3 and higher due to its interesting mechanics on receptacle jumps and limited access locations. Yet, it is the concluding episode. It blithely disregards all the backstory up to now, offends everybody through a yes/no question that gets you stuck forever if you answer no, and gives a QR code which doesn't work, and if it does, it is nothing but an ad. So what, a player went through nine different modules for nothing? I liked the first cycle and I will give the second cycle a go, yet after Madame I am not holding my breath.
For more info on Madame and T.I.M.E Stories overall, visit Space Cowboys at http://www.spacecowboys.fr or Asmodee at http://www.asmodeena.com.
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