Friday Board Game
for 1 player (strictly solo)play time 30 mins
setup time 5 mins
teaching time 15 mins (if you're teaching yourself)
Fun! fun! fun!
Sometimes we all need that one board game that we can play solo especially when no one's free for a board game night and your hands are itchy to touch some components and when you feel like a bit of strategy. Not having enough time for a full fledged board game? Take on Friday, and you'll have time spent "wisely".
Friday is a solo deck building game (as said in every review). The theme is about you (Friday) teaching Robinson Crusoe how to survive the island of hazards (If you've read the story of Robinson Crusoe, you'll immediately know what I mean. If not, I just peaked your interest to find that out). To do this you choose which hazards to fight. You also choose whether to win or not because by winning, you add good cards into your deck (good experience thematically) and if you lose, you get to take out the bad cards from your deck (learning from mistakes thematically). At the end of the game, you should have built a good enough deck to face the tough pirates who have come to raid the island.
Components 7/10
For a cheap, small game, Rio Grande Games have given you all you need and more. 3 square-shaped boards to place your different piles of cards on. Although this is simply a deck building game and you could do without the boards, they do give you an added board game feeling instead of just a card game. The boards also help you remember which deck is which.
The cards themselves are thin and elongated vertically. I found these easy to shuffle when shuffled sideways. The art on them is comically cartoonish but IMO adds to the flavor of the game. I do not really look at them much throughout the game but mostly at the numbers on them but I do appreciate good art. So far after plenty of games (probably more than 20 games), the cards are still in perfect condition. They are bendable and do not defect easily although they are thin. I do take good care not to roughen up the edges when I take them of the table hoping that will make them last longer.
The life tokens are in the shape of leaves and made of wooden blocks colored in green. A very nice touch to a survival game in an island.
Yes, only three components in this small box. Cheap as I got it for $15 and have played it so much.
Mechanics 8/10
Deck building, an art of mechanics. This game uses it so well making it seamless and easy to adapt to any player, new or old.
You start with a deck of 18 cards, good and mostly bad cards (a.k.a. your Fight Deck). Each of these has a comical Robinson drawing and a number at the top left showing its strength and a number of life tokens drawn at the top right depicting how many life tokens it takes to discard that card. Some of the cards have special abilities which you can use by tapping the card sideways (just like in Magic the Gathering). You also begin with 20 life tokens.
You draw two hazard cards from the Hazard deck and choose which to fight. This is where most of your decisions take place as you need to balance which cards you need in your deck and whether you are able to fight that hazard. Each hazard card has the top and bottom side. At the top side is the hazard side which shows the strength you need to defeat the hazard and how many free cards you get to draw. The bottom side of the card shows a Robinson drawing just like in your starting cards with numbers and life token drawings on it so if you add this card to your Fight Deck, this side will show you how much better your deck will become.
After choosing which hazard card to fight, you discard the other hazard card and Robinson Crusoe goes into battle mode. You can draw as many free cards up till the number stated on the hazard card. After this, it will cost one life token for every additional Fight card you draw. If your card has any special abilities, you may tap and use them at any time. Once tapped, you may not use it again. Some abilities allow you to draw additional cards for free, some give you life tokens and still others help you destroy bad cards. If your strength matches or is greater than the number needed to defeat the hazard, you have won this fight and the hazard card, along with all the Fight cards you have drawn is placed in your discard pile (Don't worry, you will get to use these again later). If you decide not to draw any more Fight cards and lose to the hazard, you discard the number of life tokens equal to the number of strength you still need to defeat the hazard. For every life token you discarded this way, you can destroy the face-up Fight cards according to the amount of life tokens they have at the top right corner. This will then help you to take out the "poison" from your deck.
Once your Fight deck of 18 cards is fully drawn, and when you need to draw an additional card, you will add the top card from the Aging deck to your discard pile, shuffle them all and this will now make your new Fight deck. So all the Hazard cards that you have won go into your newly shuffled deck which you get to use when you draw them out again. An Aging card is a bad bad card. Thematically this shows Robinson getting older and making more mistakes. It takes two life tokens to get rid of Aging cards.
So as you play the game, your Fight deck gets stronger. You'll need to strengthen your deck because after going through the Hazard deck, you reshuffle the discard pile to form the new Hazard deck and now they become harder. The number you now have to match is higher than the previous level. You go through the Hazard deck 3 times and after that you will face the tough Pirates.
Gameplay 8/10
The strategy is there. There is luck involved in which Hazard cards and Fight cards you draw but the strategy is in the statistics, knowing which cards are left in your Fight deck, and building the most appropriate Fight deck to get more cards that you need. What you do in your first round, second round and third round, just before the pirates, will determine how far you will get in the game.
The different special abilities allow you to shape how and when your deck will be a certain way. Say for the first round you needed more life points, then when a Hazard card comes with life tokens, you will choose those. Or say you needed more strength, you still need to pace yourself because those cards that have higher fight strength will cost more strength to defeat first. So you might wish to get a lower Fight strength first and go for the higher strength cards later.
I always pick this game up when I do not have an hour to play. It is so enjoyable. The steps are easy to learn and once played through, the game will flow like a river - take two cards, choose one, fight, win or lose, repeat. This is one game where the simplicity does not take away the strategy. The point system and also the possibility to adjust the game difficulty level makes the game accessible for both the heavy gamer and casual gamer.
Replayability 7/10
The point system and 4 difficulty levels allow the game a sufficient amount of replayability. After the game is over, whether or not you have defeated the pirates, you get to total up your points and see how well you did to survive the island. The more you play, the better you will become to beat your previous score. This is not a competition with anyone but yourself so it takes the "take that" pressure away.
I'm currently at level 4 (the highest level) and managed to beat the pirates just today actually! The available strategy in this game does bring you back again and again to play and beat your old score. However, I'm not sure if there is any meaning to play anymore after you've found that optimized strategy to beat the game. As with most solitaire games, after finding out how to beat the game, it becomes more of a routine. I would say that the different difficulty levels provided do need different strategies to win each time.
Then again, with most solitaire games, some of us do not care if we use the same strategy to play again and again. To give you an example, if you have played the game "2048" on Android or iPhone app, you will know what I mean when I say the game is addictive. It is a solitaire game where there is only one optimized strategy to win. But we still play it again and again hoping that by chance we can achieve a better score. Heck, I have managed to get 4096 once and have been trying to get there again ever since (Not much luck so far). Friday gives you that kind of addiction, to come back again and again to beat your old score. There is always a chance that you will get lucky today.
Overview 8/10
Love this game. A very cheap alternative when you have no one to play with you. Get two boxes and you can challenge a friend and play together. There are variants that folks on BGG have come up with for multiplayer games (You'd have to get more than one box for this). The game is portable, so you can bring on trips to take away that boredom and itch for board games. A word of caution - Do not take this out to play solo when you have friends around as it will deem you a social outcast.
A fun, addictive, solo, deck-building game. It will not hurt your wallet to get one immediately.
Pros:
Can play solo
Addictive
Cheap cost
Simple
Filled with strategy
Cons:
Can play solo
Addictive
Cheap components
Let me know what you think of the game once you've played it! Leave me a comment...
