Super Girl Squad: Halloween Edition Board Game!

"Super Girl Squad: Halloween Edition Board Game!"
is a handful of a title. It's a short board game starring Powerpuff Girls-lookalikes playing a magical spooky boardgame.

It has great potential and has different story-threads that compliment each other well, but the gameplay feels very repetitious quickly and more could be done in terms of introducing the game and its characters. It feels like the focus is set on the technicalities of the game, not what actually makes it fun or how you'd approach it.
However, the little flavor and story portions that are in there are interesting and seeing it also is waiting for updates (currently one of three story trees is bugged and cannot be completed) and may see more story-threads added soon, I do feel this could become quite a gem.

Jumping right into the game you find yourself in a little orphanage (I assume), as you find three girls and Ms. Fusion preparing to go Trick or Treat'ing on Halloween. Only they find a strange roleplaying boardgame wrapped as a present and decide to try it out once the girls return home.

After a short sequence the actual game in-game begins.


Outrageously scary!


You are then greeted with a detailed tutorial dialogue on various topics but to be honest reading it at first just had me confused and frustrated. Playing it, it actually is quite simple and intuitive as there is only so much you can do.

(BEWARE - this is tutorial material)

You see these cards scattered across rooms? Those green ones with those black stripes? That means you haven't searched those rooms yet, and until you do and solved what you found or found nothing they will stay there. Your goal is to search as many rooms/cards as quickly as possible and eventually collect three story "revelation" cards that explain what is going on in this mansion, or what happened a little bit.
Once the story is "revealed" (hence the name), you need to either fight a boss (currently impossible to beat) or collect an item or similar in a random location that will be marked on your map. You then win the game!

So what you do is use your turns to either search the room and find clues (sometimes you find a locked chest and need to return, sometimes you find keys, sometimes you find nothing!), or to move/return to a different room.
If a monster is in your location (those statues) you cannot search the room unless you kill it first. You can also try fleeing to a different room.
Monsters randomly change locations every few turns and sometimes follow you as you flee too (you never know what they do), so often times killing them is the best option. You attack and retaliate in turns. You may also want to wait around a bit searching an already turned-on-its-head room for a few turns straight to wait for the monsters to pass if you are trying to avoid those.

Impeded is your quest not only by monsters, but also fear and special events that may effect you one way or the other over time.
If your HP drops to zero you die, if your sanity drops to zero you die as well.
When events occur a dice roll (good old pen n paper style, only done automatically) will decide if you withstand it or if it hits your sanity or HP or other attributes. So if you just wander around aimlessly without doing anything, eventually your characters will go crazy from the weird floating things, Poltergeistern and monsters roaming around.

If a character falls, the other characters will continue on alone.
(The game once froze after a character died, but I couldn't replicate it)


I always think Barbarian when I hear powerhorse.

Your attributes also affect how likely you are to pass certain tests that are sometimes needed to explore rooms and find clues.
You have a fairly balanced cunning "detective" character called Alice, a very strong but weak-minded "demon slayer" called Natalie and a wise "ex-cultist" called Felicia. So if it's a test of strength, choosing Natalie is best, but she will be horrid at puzzle-solving.

Alllright, so far so good.

I mentioned I found the tutorial very confusing (and I still stand by that! similar to the interface), and that is because while part of it (about the objective of the game) is nicely packaged, a lot of it is made much more complicated than it needs to be.

Reading over it now it makes a lot of sense, but the majority of mechanics are explained without any context - this attribute is good for doing this.
Well, when can actually do something with it? During exploration, during combat, elsewhere?
Hell, every roll says which attributes it needs and is rolling for, so since you cannot ever select anything and you always see your currently selected characters attributes in brackets (ranging from 3-7 usually) you pick that up quickly. Why isn't there anything mentioned about seeing what is being rolled for?

The tutorial says a lot about different card types and needing to find cards, and that you interact with the environment, and then that by solving clues you can get those special cards and that monsters are there (could you point out those statues are monsters somewhere?)

Or in short : you understand the tutorial only as you actually play the game, or after you have played the game, which makes me question why there is a need to have an extensive one before the game starts at all.

One simple directive - use the visual information in the game.
Nothing in this tutorial section refers to anything you can actually see. Maybe you can see the cards in each room, but is it clearly pointed out?
The tutorial could explain that once you explore a room fully the card would then disappear. It could use two pictures for it, done.

You do not know how those monsters look like, or what those statues are (you can guess, for sure), a tutorial could either highlight the different parts in game (like a glowing yellow box around a certain thing or pictures) to explain what it is, or it could at least be mentioned as what it is shown as on the map.


I like the flavor texts!

Especially the combat sections needs this. Please look at this screen, at the bottom you see the characters' names and a few symbols.
Those symbols correspond to your battle rolls. Is it mentioned anywhere that they correspond to that? Nope, it's just out there in written form. It's so much easier to understand and memorize when you have both visual and text present. Schooling uses this a lot, please use it.

I frankly had no idea what those rolls meant at the time since I was quite loaded mentally as I was confronted with three different characters - whose names and roles I never heard of before because they aren't introduced in any way - and an unfamiliar roll-system. Using those symbols to help you would be wonderful.

Really, you see three little girls playing a game, why don't you see them making their character? Or describing them?
The ending sequence talks about one character gloating a lot, when all the time you were playing everything was utterly silent. It's hard to imitate conversation during randomized sequences of events, so at least let them introduce the characters. I would have liked to know what kind of characters they are before I stumbled around in the game.

As for combat:
In combat you select someone to attack. Now look at the icons displayed at the bottom of the screenshot again. They then roll and have 4 chances spread out across "skull = critical hit", "axe = normal hit", "shield = miss"
So a lot of shields mean they miss a lot. If a field is grayed out it means it can't happen. Look at the characters again, there you go.
Only Alicia has a special effect, which is that she can sometimes attack twice and duplicate what she got before (so if you got a shield once, you'll get it twice, and same for the other options).

I still don't quite understand if those attack roles play a part only in attacking or in defending as well since monsters use the same system. It'd be curious if someone who doesn't hit as well has better defense but it seems it does not apply and just depends on the enemy rolls.


Who attacks first is rolled out and fairly random. I found it made it a little difficult to make out who is actually getting hit or not, or whose turn is it. You then realize they use a picture for the one who is attacking (not the one getting hit) and it became easier.
Also, while you can choose who attacks, you cannot choose who is under attack. So it's completely random and luck-based if you want to keep someone alive.

Furthermore, you can see those icons displaying your characters and their attack roles, fine. But you cannot actually see either their HP or their Sanity.
If it reaches zero, they die. This is really impractical as you won't easily notice your characters going down!
It also means that while you can look in the menu and have the characters state displayed that way, you have no way of telling once you already are attempting an action.
That makes it very frustrating when you reach certain events. There is the option to sometimes pray to your god, for example. If you roll well you regain HP and Sanity, or you can lose some too.
When you find it, you are prompted to select whether you want to attempt at all, and also select a character to try - without a way to look up character attributes, and worse without even knowing if they are injured at all. So it is difficult to make those few decisions work if you didn't remember exactly what happened the last 10 actions. Why would you risk getting anyone hurt if everyone is in top condition?

Granted, there are only very few instances where you actually can choose. Usually you select a character before you know what kind of attribute is needed (you only get the prompt once your character is locked in searching a room, for example), and usually you do not have the option to decline a test.
If you fail to solve a room puzzle you can try again with a different character.
Which brings us to the repetition part I mentioned earlier.


All new or boring?

The description (and the ingame narration too) says that your experience is going to be allll new because it is randomly spread out. I disagree.

There are so few opportunities for you to interact with the game outside of the standard patterns I really feel you do the exact same thing all over again. And even those opportunities are made difficult because of what I explained earlier.

There are two items you can use without time restrictions before your turn - one regaining 1 HP for all characters, and one regaining 1 Sanity for all characters. They are fairly straightforward and most times it doesn't really matter when you use it. Usually you also don't need to use them either as you could survive just fine.

There are three "extra points" you can use on most special events or actions that require dice rolls (so no combat use here). They increase your odds of passing by adding your luck. So basically, it's a free "get out of jail card" and you can save your character's bacon if you are almost out of sanity.
It is a one-time option and has little impact on the grand scheme of things. Yes, it is nice to use for certain events (I mentioned the HP and Sanity regeneration prayer earlier).

What it boils down to is that all you do is run around searching rooms and you search them until those three super story cards are open. You then move to a location on the map and do your thing to end the story.

That's it. Every single time.

Doesn't matter where the monsters are, it just means you may search the left side of the mansion first instead of the right one. Maybe you go back n forth more than before.
Maybe a different stat is rolled, who cares? It is done automatically and even then you do not actually feel very involved as you do not see the actual roll (of how close or how off you were).
Maybe a certain event comes sooner or later. You really just do the same thing all over again.

And I find it hard to really think of a solution to make the game more interactive and different throughout the playthroughs.
Rolling different stats automatically for different events makes all those feel the same after you have seen them once. And that's okay.

See, this game is really easy to play. It forgives a lot of empty navigation, bad luck in rolls and other things. It would be very frustrating if it did not do that and I am very thankful it is balanced as it is.
The mansion can widdle down your characters slowly, but usually it is easy to win and using the few decisions you have can help you out a bit too.

Why not have some Story Flavor Fun?

Which makes me wonder why there is so much emphasis put on explaining the intricacies of these game mechanics and replaying the scenarios, when frankly the most fun part of the game were the little flavor texts and story portions.

Hell, the gamepage has an enormous description of these things (and here I go imitating that in the review, sorry guys!). It even adds more explanations (like losing dexterity by spraining an ankle .. only that part of flavor was never added in the actual game, I'd love seeing it! I'd also love seeing different modifiers on your profile - as in what wounds do you actually have?! I have no idea if they sprained an ankle or who or when or what is actually added up right now! It's such a great opportunity)

It just feels really impractical. You could in fact just jump in without a tutorial, or just go out knowing you need to figure out some story events to end the game, and you'd have a blast!
It'd be interesting for us perfectionists to know of those workings underneath, but a separate help file seems much more appropriate for it because the very game layout is so intuitive and skips most of these things entirely. You don't need to know all this to play it. And additionally the game even gives out the most crucial information for you to piece it together.

There is very little you can do and choose, and the upside of this is that it's incredibly easy to pick up and play without any explanation needed! I don't feel the creator realizes this.
It's a very forgiving game too, so even if you made mistakes you could continue your playthrough with ease. I feel this lets you enjoy the atmosphere even better as being surprised by an enemy the first time around was quite fun to deal with.

My game experience was that I felt overwhelmed by the density and distance to the game components in the tutorial that I just realized I didn't really want to play this for a while and quit it.
To then pick it up later, ignore the tutorial portion completely, and just have a blast!

While you recognize and get used to the different fear cards, to the different descriptions and mechanics, it all felt wonderful to read through the first time.
There is only very little in terms of story, but because you have multiple paths you can actually slowly put together a bigger picture because they all revolve around the same theme or even the same events.
It's not really original, but I really enjoyed it.

I was trying to finish the third (buggy) story because I wanted to know more about how it could be put together.
I also wanted to find out if the short story section back in the real game world would change depending on what or how many endings you have seen.
It seems they do not which I find so much wasted opportunity in the ending sequences, because they could build up to lovely puzzle pieces coming together to form the purpose of why you got this board game and what it is, as well as the story within it.

It also made it so frustrating to note that those endings are chosen at random and you do not have the option to lock in a specific one. I didn't just want to replay the board game, I wanted to see more story!
I actually restarted the game many times to find the correct story line to then attempt that one boss fight time and again to notice it was broken beyond salvation and there was literally no way for me to finish it.

Sadly there is also no option to skip the introduction yet, although a blog on the gamepage said it is in planning and being worked on.

I would also love to have the option to either get a random story line or to select one I haven't seen (numbers would work too so you have no spoilers in the title).


All in All

This is a simple game. It also a very casual game, and I like it. It's fun for a little while and I adore the flavor texts.
Only I wish the displays and information feed would be a little easier to use (like noting + and - on your current character's attributes and displaying your current HP/Sanity) and it would build more on the story it has going on.

I also realized I completely ignored talking about the aesthetics and sound.
Sound design is spot on at times (like rain and creaking), other times a little off (like some battle sounds, the axe sounds very unnatural). It works well for what it sets out to do however and I quite liked the background tunes it has.

The ingame portraits stand out a little bit in the menu, but otherwise it's an aesthetically pleasing game with simple interface. The mansion does have different rooms but while they have different details (like footprints and circles on the floor) I wonder why none of these are actually described when you search the rooms.
It plays with being a "scaaary game", but really, it's quite neutral and there's no real scare to be had although it strives to create a little bit of a creepy atmosphere and I feel it does so well. You know things are going wrong here in many places, and while it's not overly threatening, it is intriguing.


If you want to pick up a short game to play, this is a great pick. Just ignore the tutorials.