I backed Burgle Bros on Kickstarter, a cooperative heist game, and it just arrived and I played it for the first time today. I backed it in no small part because we very much enjoyed the designer's previous game, Paperback (aka, "If Dominion were a word game"). Burgle Bros is completely different: a longer and purely cooperative strategy game. Based on our first play, I am very happy with it.
The theme of the game is a crew performing a heist, and the game feels very evocative of that kind of story. There are alarmed rooms, computers to hack, patrolling guards and safes to crack. Each player also has a special role: the safecracker, the hacker, the acrobat or various other standard tropes from this genre. The gameplay succeeds at replicating the feel of a heist movie or TV show with interesting strategic choices.
Each time you're in the same room as a guard you discard a stealth token, which can be thematically thought of as ducking behind a desk or hiding behind curtains. When you run out of stealth and a guard finds you, you're caught and the whole team loses. Of course, a lot of the game revolves around not running into the guards. Our game ended up with numerous nice thematic narrative moments which were interesting strategic choices at the same time.
At one point the guard was on the verge of catching one of the players so another player set of a nearby alarm and hid in the bathroom, and the guard ended up "pacing" back and forth across that section of the office while a player hid in the stalls. At another point, we had a series of alarmed rooms we needed to pass through; for one, we had found the computer station and hacked it enough to bypass it repeatedly, but the fingerprint scanner had us stuck. We thought it might cause us to lose, when one of us realized we could just smash the fingerprint scanner with the crowbar we had found downstairs, removing the bottleneck. Finally, another moment had the guard closing in on a corridor where several players were simultaneously, but we all escaped by sneaking into an adjacent corridor via a hidden door.
We played the easier/introductory "office" scenario, and won, but only by the skin of our teeth. The shorter scenario still felt like a full game, but was obviously easier than the full game. The tension was there until the end and the repeated feeling that we just barely evaded capture felt very theme appropriate. I'm eager to try out the full length scenario and explore some of the other character roles. That said, I enjoyed the "Juicer" character who could trigger false alarms to distract the guards, which again felt fun and thematic, and seems like the roles have nice replay value.
In general, I'm a fan of cooperative games, especially with kids where the "alpha-player" problem becomes more of a parenting exercise than a social dynamic issue. This game could fall victim to the alpha-player problem, but something about the pace and style makes it feel like it's not likely to be as severe.
Overall the components and art are good and it packs a lot of game into a remarkably small box, which is nice. Overall, we'll see how it holds up on replay, but based on one play I'm eager to play more. Recommended.
The theme of the game is a crew performing a heist, and the game feels very evocative of that kind of story. There are alarmed rooms, computers to hack, patrolling guards and safes to crack. Each player also has a special role: the safecracker, the hacker, the acrobat or various other standard tropes from this genre. The gameplay succeeds at replicating the feel of a heist movie or TV show with interesting strategic choices.
Each time you're in the same room as a guard you discard a stealth token, which can be thematically thought of as ducking behind a desk or hiding behind curtains. When you run out of stealth and a guard finds you, you're caught and the whole team loses. Of course, a lot of the game revolves around not running into the guards. Our game ended up with numerous nice thematic narrative moments which were interesting strategic choices at the same time.
At one point the guard was on the verge of catching one of the players so another player set of a nearby alarm and hid in the bathroom, and the guard ended up "pacing" back and forth across that section of the office while a player hid in the stalls. At another point, we had a series of alarmed rooms we needed to pass through; for one, we had found the computer station and hacked it enough to bypass it repeatedly, but the fingerprint scanner had us stuck. We thought it might cause us to lose, when one of us realized we could just smash the fingerprint scanner with the crowbar we had found downstairs, removing the bottleneck. Finally, another moment had the guard closing in on a corridor where several players were simultaneously, but we all escaped by sneaking into an adjacent corridor via a hidden door.
We played the easier/introductory "office" scenario, and won, but only by the skin of our teeth. The shorter scenario still felt like a full game, but was obviously easier than the full game. The tension was there until the end and the repeated feeling that we just barely evaded capture felt very theme appropriate. I'm eager to try out the full length scenario and explore some of the other character roles. That said, I enjoyed the "Juicer" character who could trigger false alarms to distract the guards, which again felt fun and thematic, and seems like the roles have nice replay value.
In general, I'm a fan of cooperative games, especially with kids where the "alpha-player" problem becomes more of a parenting exercise than a social dynamic issue. This game could fall victim to the alpha-player problem, but something about the pace and style makes it feel like it's not likely to be as severe.
Overall the components and art are good and it packs a lot of game into a remarkably small box, which is nice. Overall, we'll see how it holds up on replay, but based on one play I'm eager to play more. Recommended.