Last night Jonathan and I met up for a game of his recently arrived Kickstarter edition of Chocolate Factory.

I’d last played the game back in February at the Alley Cat game day. Back then it was still a prototype waiting for the Kickstarter to be done.

Naturally the final components are a lot better than the prototype (which btw was pretty good quality for a prototype).

What I hadn’t appreciated back then, but was blatantly obvious to Jonathan and myself what a lot of set up is required for this game, and how much space it takes up on the table.

It’s a relatively quick game to play, basically seven rounds. It took roughly just over an hour to play.

As engine builders go, Chocolate Factory is an above average game. It’s fine.

There are pockets of down time during the game. These tend to happen during the running the factory phase. All the players do this simultaneously. So if one player gets stuck in mentat mode (sorry for the Dune reference), the other players are left hanging around waiting for that player to complete their turn.

The components are really high quality. The factory and the sliding crates is a neat novelty mechanic. The theme is fun, and unique. Not many games out there about running a chocolate factory.

But at the end of the day I don’t think there is enough here to warrant going through all the flaff of setting up (and tearing down) to get this game out on a regular basis.

Afterwards Jonathan and I started talking games, and particularly Wingspan and the “broken” Raven cards (image below nicked off bgg).

I personally thought it was a none issue. And people should stopped whining about it. It is such a situational thing, you need them very early on in the game, ideally starting hand. I don’t think I’ve seen the cards come out in the games I’ve played (granted not many, especially compared to some).

There are 170 birds if I remember correctly in the base game. And two of them are particularly good if you get them at the start, and really good if you get both. Oh come on. Plus with the new expansion adding more cards plus a take that mechanic where you can take food from another player (oh wait until some-one gets these Ravens and a take that card at the start, watch the uproar).

Is it really a problem that needs dealing with? I don’t think Stonemaier Games need to ban them. If it upsets some players remove them from the game. Simple. Maybe errata the card to as Jonathan suggested take the food token from the feeder instead of the general supply.

But as I pointed out to Jonathan there seems to be a trend these days on line with people playing a new game and declaring it broken or needing more play testing before it was published.

I tend to put this argument in the camp of “I don’t like X therefore it has to be broken, I demand you fix it”.

There have been similar grumbles about another Stonemaier game Tapestry. Particularly with certain civilizations, or they don’t like the random nature of certain aspects of the game.

I don’t mind comments of “I don’t like this much randomness in a game”, that’s fair enough. Not every game is for everyone. But to declare a game is broken, and then go on to say they “fixed it”. Just gets my heckles up.

I think from time immemorial players have house ruled games. Nothing stopping players doing that if they don’t like an aspect of a game. Heck does anyone play Monopoly properly using the actual rules?

Heck with Tapestry we hand out three civilization cards to each player to chose from. Do I shout out about it online that I “fixed” the game? No.

Some players in Wingspan draft their cards at the start. Which is fine. It adds to the play time, and is great for players that have played the game a lot, but new players are at a disadvantage. Maybe something that could be added to the rules as a variant for more experienced players. But it fixes nothing. It wasn’t broken.

Don’t get me wrong. There are games out there that are broken. Or have elements that are. It’s pretty obvious which games these are, everyone is talking about them (when they occur). But in the cases above and the trend I’m seeing it’s a handful of people. Some passionate fans of the game, that are doing it from a position of love for the game. Although some have other motives, and use it as an excuse to knock the game or publisher. But what they are really doing is expressing an opinion about an aspect of the game. Some may agree, others will not. I just think they need to rephrase their words, from “this is broken” to “I didn’t enjoy this aspect” or “I didn’t like”.