One Plugh Over The Sentient’s Nest: VANTAGE Solo Review

I caught the bug for exploration games after playing Robert Arnstein’s text based adventure game called ‘Haunted House’ for the TRS-80 way back in 1979. My friends and I played it for hours, but the rudimentary parser system and frustrating puzzles ultimately left us wanting. 

We read about games like Colossal Cave and Zork, but at the time, we had no access to those games. That all changed when my dad brought home an Apple IIe, and we all dove hard into the entire Infocom catalog. (Shout out to my favorite robot in ‘Planetfall’!) Even while we played them, we yearned for true “open world” style gaming. We wanted to go anywhere. Do anything. Interact with almost everything we could see or touch. 

You already know the rest of the story. Computers got way more powerful, the internet became ubiquitous, and now I see little kids on the train playing open world immersive gaming on their iPads and iPhones together. 

But could open world gaming translate to our hobby? Could a board game publisher make a game that comes close to delivering an experience like in Skyrim or Red Dead Redemption?

Stonemaier Games emphatically says yes. For the last eight years, and paying due homage to other games in the genre like Sleeping Gods, Jamey Stegmaier has been working on Vantage. 

There won’t be any spoilers in this review, except for one. Spoiler alert — I love this game. 

Couple of caveats. First, I have five plays of Vantage so far, but only in solo mode. With 1700 unique cards and hundreds of hours of replayability, my experience hardly covers the broad spectrum of the game. I’ll probably revisit my thoughts on Vantage as I get more plays.

Second, I’ve only played the game solo, but my solo gameplays of Vantage have been fantastic, frankly, better than I expected. The combination of open world game play mixed with a choose-your-own adventure feel is smoothly integrated. Honestly, it’s probably my favorite game of the year so far. 

So what is Vantage? I think Stonemaier Games says it best: 

Vantage is an open-world, co-operative, non-campaign adventure game that features an entire planet to explore, with players communicating while scattered across the world. 

Many games call themselves “sandbox games”, but Vantage truly fits. Players began the game after receiving a mysterious message that calls them to orbit their spaceship near a strange planet. Complications ensue. Haywire is the flow of the day. Suddenly, players find themselves on the surface of the planet but with no one else in sight. 

The mission?

Well, I would tell you, but discovering that is half the fun of this game. 

What I can tell you is that Stegmaier’s own mission must have been to create a game experience tailored for almost every gamer. Want to euro-strategize your way to an epic victory? You can. Want to level up your character and get cool stuff like an RPG? You can do that, too. Want to just explore around the world, and maybe, just maybe, fulfill your destiny? That’s probably the heart of the game, but do what you want. It’s your game. 

Let’s talk about my favorite parts. The ability to get this game up and running in just minutes is a real draw. Stegmaier tricks the players into thinking the game starts right away, in the first few seconds, when in reality you are just setting up the game. But the way it starts does get you crucial stuff (cards and tokens) for your adventure, and also puts you in the mood for what comes next and explains some key components. Well done. 

Next, I love the simplicity of the two central game mechanics, namely, the player grid and the skill checks. Your “player” is in reality a three-by-three grid of vertical cards that you discover as you play. Each gives you abilities or stats or opens up a “choose your adventure” tech tree adjacent path to improve your character. For 99% of the symbols and instructions, it is very intuitive. 

The skill checks are so well done, too. Surprisingly, there is no way to fail a check. You will succeed. (Just like in life?) But, you do risk the danger of running out of time or health or morale, so managing the skill checks — rolling dice and placing the results in favorable spots on your grid, or taking the penalty of not being able to do so — is one of the more gamier, strategic aspects of the game. It’s a revelation and really allows players to maintain the illusion of immersion, and get into the storyline that comes with the missions and quests and personal goals that come the player’s way. 

But focusing on skill checks and winning isn’t the only thing. While you are working on those missions and quests and epic wins, why not try exploring? And interacting? And climbing? And jumping? And learning? The world is your sentient oyster. 

In my first game, I did what I usually do. I just wandered around collecting side quests that I never completed. In my second game, I focused on doing what I would do in a computer game — equipping my character (one of six randomly assigned characters in each game) to best handle the landscape (again, one of many randomly assigned landing spots in each game) and the inhabitants that I met along the way. 

It’s so hard to do a review like this without spoiling all of the juicy bits in this game. One obvious thing I can say is that almost every card in the game provides the player with multiple actions. It could be movement or interacting with an object or being. It could be improving the character or weapon. All of these come with a cost, that can be paid in tokens you collect or by rolling dice. I really like how intuitive most of the actions are — if you see a rope, you are probably going to use it in a few ways that makes sense, for instance. 

Because Stonemaier Games has been obsessed lately with making games with short rulesets (I get why, but there is something about a very clear rulebook — a la Queen Games — that makes gaming so much easier), in my first game or two, I did have to spend a little bit of time diving in and around the rule book or on BGG for clarification. The rulebook, such as it is, comes so close to being a great rulebook, with a few puzzling inconsistencies, but other than those very few picayune issues, from a mechanical standpoint, the game play is very smooth. 

Maybe the storyline isn’t as strong as the writing in Red Raven Games’ entry — or, maybe 15-20 hours of game play isn’t enough to know for sure — but the world that Jamey Stegmaier has created is not only fascinating, but it feels like a real world. The map of this world must be huge, with hundreds and hundreds of location cards to explore, and even after all of these plays, I have yet to visit the same spot. 

I also like … and boy this is a hard one to describe without spoilers … I like the fact that there is more to this game than meets the eye. Every single play has introduced another … erm … interesting wrinkle to the world or to the story or to the game itself. Vantage really is a game that is basically a blank canvas, where you as the painter start with just one drop of paint in the center of the canvas and then build out a beautiful painting by the end of the game, with each game generating a different look. 

Who is this game for? It’s not for everyone, unfortunately. If you want a tight rigid game experience, sure, Vantage can be played that way. It can certainly be experienced as a mathematical euro, where you wander around min-maxing your character and skills, and complete your quests in an hour or so. But why play this game if that’s all you want? 

I think this game will be most enjoyed by people with a sense of adventure, who want to recapture the days of turning on a computer or opening up a game box with no clue what to expect from this particular session. The fun of Vantage is in experiencing new places, encountering new things, and making new choices.

And occasionally winning.

Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo 

** A complimentary copy of the game was provided by the publisher. **