The Binding of Isaac is a hugely successful videogame, and thanks to two extremely lucrative crowdfunding efforts that netted around $8 million, you could argue that its a highly successful card game as well. The videogame fits almost too perfectly into begin turned into cardboard, with its roguelike genetics being suited to the randomness of dungeon crawler, variable bonuses and and player powers sitting well within the tabletop realm. There's around eighty thousand people who have some kind of variation of the tabletop game. So surely its extremely good because well funded games are always amazing, aren't they. I'm approaching this as someone who is away from the hype canoe sailing down the river rapids of marketing and excitement and so this is probably going to be dull in comparison. I'm also someone who is a fan of the game, and has spent many an hour running around randomly generated dungeons of blood and filth. For those unfamiliar with the videogame, you play
Shamans is a trick taking hidden role point scoring game that uses a mixture of success and failure in suit matching to either help the Shamans restore harmony to the world or allow the Shadows to win through. My recent endeavour with Brian Boru piqued my interest in the trick taking side of things, and so I was cautiously optimistic about what Shamans was likely to be bringing to the table. I've never entirely got on with the hidden role type of game though, and only because it requires a certain type of person to play them with and get something out of it. You need more than just the mechanical aspect of a hidden role in order for it to really shine as it usually requires scheming over and above the regular mechanics. Every round you'll be playing cards that either match the lead suit or defy it and move the ominous Shadow pawn towards the end of the track and therefore win the round. Cards that are played that don't match the lead suit are played into their world areas