Platform: PC

Developer: Charlie Oscar Lima Tango Interactive Entertainment

Publisher: The Merchant Guild of Rund (Limited)

Release Date: March 11, 2016

Genre: Strategy / Board Game

Nerd Rating: 6 out of 10

Reviewed by Kikopaff

There’s always something conniving, sinister and curious about goblins. Their insatiable thirst for coin and riches is a popular trait that’s emphasized across many popular culture films and video games. Seeing these aspects come to life in Gremlins Inc. is fun and charming, as you apply a gremlin’s mind of wit and materialism into a strategic digital board game. Compete against other players and race to the top of the chain with pockets of green cash and tricks up your sleeve. But despite its underground, steampunk galore, Gremlins Inc. is confusing and overwhelming with its information for players, and could use some quality-of-life tweaks to its interface.

Gremlins Inc. is a strategic digital board game that can be played with up to six players. You have twelve cunning gremlins to play as in Clockwork Town. The board game has a feel and aesthetic that’s very reminiscent of underground sewers, steampunk towns, and grimy streets. In some ways, it’s similar to the Hearthstone expansion ‘Mean Streets of Gadgetzan,’ but in a board game format with a steeper learning curve. Like Hearthstone, it incorporates the use of cards with different conditions to be met in order to use them. Cards are your primary resource for moving around on the board, as well as for forming strategies against your opponents. But, despite the game’s multiple mechanics to encourage creative innovation, Gremlins Inc. is overloaded with information and it takes some time to comprehend what you should even do.

Thankfully, the tutorial is in-depth, which is great, considering the multiple rules and avenues to remember. The tutorial also includes a practice mode which is helpful and may be a point of interest you’ll frequent before you feel ready to take on other thugs. But, once you arrive in a single-player game, expect to scratch your head and stare brainlessly at the events before you. Part of what I think is the issue is its lack of a detailed interface. From a visual standpoint, Gremlins Inc. looks great, but it’s cluttered with an overcrowded board and very minimal space for the players log, which shows what cards have been played, results of random dice rolling, and essentially, the entire game. The backlog is exceptionally quick, and trying to read back on past turns is confusing, as it relies on symbols rather than explanation.

Speaking of symbols, there are many to familiarize yourself with. Score is the resource you need in order to win the game. At the end of every session, the player with the most score wins the game. Score can be earned by playing different cards and resources. Money is the resource that you use to pay for playing different cards, to give bribes, and to feel better on a bad day. Playing cards enable you to move around on the board, with each card containing move points, the number of tiles you can move over. Across the board are multiple tiles of various types that affect the gameplay. Tiles include earning money, losing money, being interrogated by the police, or entering the casino and gambling your way to some more resources.

Aside from moving around on the board, cards can also be played on corresponding tiles to achieve special effects. Some cards require you to pay resources in order to play them, which is frustrating when you intend to play a specific card on a certain tile, but somehow along the way, you’re being framed and find yourself in Jail for several turns. By the time you’re out of Jail and ready to make your way back, you don’t have enough money to play the card you held onto for so long. Much of your experience in Gremlins Inc. is about framing and blocking your opponents, giving them a rough time. But it feels awfully unbalanced and unfair, meaning that no matter what strategies you think of, it all comes crashing down by the sheer luck and cruelty you experience in the game.

Much like Monopoly, Gremlins Inc. also has a Jail that opposing players can send you to, or certain events on the board can also lead you behind bars. At the start of each turn that you spend in Jail, you must choose your behavior. If you choose bad behavior, you have a chance to earn resources as well as to speed up the increase in your Jail rank. However, you also face a higher chance of gaining Malice points and having to spend an extra turn in Jail. If you choose good behavior, you run a higher chance of shortening your sentence. However, you may lose some of your Jail experience. If you choose neutral behavior, any of the events from the other lines of behavior may happen. At the same time, there’s a slightly higher chance of receiving amnesty.

On every turn spent in Jail, you get to choose a Jail event that will happen to you. You can choose the first event that’s being offered, or skip it to get to the next one. With every turn that you spend in Jail, you earn Jail experience. When you collect enough experience, your Jail rank increases. Once you reach a certain Jail rank, you can’t lose it. As your Jail rank increases, you get access to more profitable Jail events. You are also able to skip more Jail events in one turn. Upon reaching the highest Jail rank in the game, you start to earn Score points for simply spending time in the Jail. It’s a clever mechanic that many other popular board games don’t consider, but again, your choices don’t feel significant as it’s randomly determined and somewhere along the way, you’ll find yourself in a miserable spot anyway.

Elections are also another way for players to earn Score points and influence the events of the board. Elections happen every 20 rounds. The player with the highest number of votes wins the Elections, earns the title of Governor and receives one Score point. Votes are one of the essential game resources and are used to win the Elections. Votes are earned by playing certain cards or effectively using other players’ stats to your advantage. As soon as the Elections kick off, the player with the least Malice points gets three votes as a bonus. The player with the most votes wins the Elections. Votes tend to feel like a waste of time, as much as your other Gremlins Inc. experiences, it’s all about manoeuvering through your opponents and hoping they don’t decide to be bad to you. Which, more often than not, is impossible.

Playing a game of Gremlins Inc. also feels long, drawn-out, repetitive, and boring. There are multiplayer modes and you can join lobby rooms to play with or against other players, but there isn’t a real difference between the single player mode or the multiplayer mode, as both use the same mechanics. It can take up to 20, or sometimes 40 rounds, depending on what mode you’re playing, and over time, you start to care less about what’s really happening on the board. Gremlins Inc. also requires a stable internet connection to play, so if you’re like me, and you have wonky Australian internet, then expect many timeouts and disconnections. At this point, winning a game in Gremlins Inc. is never going to happen.

Gremlins Inc. is disappointing because of its wasted potential, and imagining this as a physical board game may actually be better than its digitalized counterpart. Its soundtrack is charming, upbeat, quirky, and one of a kind, really setting the steampunk vibe and atmosphere so well. It’s a shame that even the wonderful score is left behind, as there’s no music during your actual gameplay and is left to be played in the main menu lobby. Gremlins Inc. might be the board game that’s better left to the side, and if you have friends who could play with you online, it may turn out to be a better and more fun experience. For now, Gremlins Inc. has too much information, some interface tweaks to be had and it is not for the fainthearted, as you will encounter many unfortunate and unbalanced events. My pockets are empty, time to get out of this slum.

Written by Kikopaff

Kikopaff is an avid fan of comics, slurps many bowls of ramen, and lives in the land Down Under. When she’s not writing about video games, she is playing Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. She also loves cooking up a storm in her kitchen.

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