itch.io

brilliant fucking game. it's body horror. it's kink. it's a proud declaration of rebellion against the world. it's a howl of rage at the state of the world. it's a howl of rage at the state of the rebellion. it's hard to read, it's fun to read, and i imagine even harder and more fun to play.

i don't know if i will ever be ready to play this game. i don't know if i want to be. but it's a brilliant expression of queer hate, joy, fear, love, pain, and desperation. i'm in awe at how coldly it read me and impacted me. this game is evocative and disgusting and beautiful. definitely recommended as long as you're not put off by the trigger warnings.

god this game is so good. copying my thoughts from elsewhere:

Its systems are deeply elegant, creating a game where players can piece together mysteries alongside their investigators in a grounded world that still leaves space for supernatural intrigue. Combat is swift and strategic, but deadly if you go in without a plan. Investigations can be complex, but even the stickiest of situations don't require railroading to keep players on track. Mundane and supernatural characters alike have access to unique abilities, quirks, and skills that make each character feel distinct in mechanics as much as in flavor. The game interacts with the real world by way of fiction in a way that's refreshing and endlessly fascinating.

Systems like Eureka! moments (which allow investigators to retroactively learn information from a previously failed roll) and the streamlined character creation system allow the game to run smoothly and efficiently without getting overly bogged down, and mechanics like the Composure meter (representing an investigator's energy level and state of mind) and the Success/Partial Success/Failure resolution mechanic create an interesting element of risk where player choices matter a lot.

On top of all that, Eureka includes rules for supernatural characters that beautifully integrate the themes, traits, and abilities of classic folkloric or media monsters, making for intriguing secrets, hard choices, and a lot of variety in the gameplay of different investigators. (Most of this is already true of mundane non-supernatural characters, but it's carried through into the lens of vampires and other monsters very elegantly.)

I'd love to see the tabletop gaming scene as a whole take notes from Eureka's handling of a lot of different problems, and I'm constantly excited to see what their team comes up with next. If you ever want to run a mystery story in a tabletop game (especially if systems like D&D 5e have disappointed you on that front), I would seriously recommend Eureka as the game to use for that purpose, and if you're interested in the hobby at all, I would recommend reading Eureka as a way to get valuable insight into the thought process that goes into game design in the tabletop space.

I think it's worth remembering that this game is intended as a toolkit for a variety of potential stories. The rule book doesn't explicitly answer your question of what the investigators look into and why, but that's because the answer will depend on the mystery that the GM runs and the characters that the players create. Some games are made for very specific types of characters with very specific motivations, but in my experience Eureka is more focused on creating characters with all of the messy situations and motives of real people and then seeing what happens.

(In terms of the other questions, I think the game makes the motivations pretty clear: playing as a cop would make the game less interactive, because it would necessitate spending more time on police procedure and less on the characters personally interacting with the case, and monsters usually prefer to hide their true nature because it's scary and causes harm to other people.)

cool game! i won with YW5hbHlzdA== (base 64 encoding)