Order of Eventide: Pen-and-Paper RPG for 1-4 Players Paperback – November 2, 2024

Yeah this game is incredible. I've played LOADS of 4AD and loved every session of it and used many of the separate add-ons, and I can see the comparison here, but it's only similar on the surface in terms of some general structure where you draw dungeon rooms as you go. THIS IS BY NO MEANS A CLONE, and it really stands apart among the other solo/co-op games of this genre. From my experience this most closely resembles Diablo 2 in a digestible tabletop format. For anyone interested in getting this game, let me help you out...- Campaign: As a fellow game designer of homebrew titles and variants in the genre, this one is special. This game is actually complete with a full story campaign and side quests. Judging by my play sessions, it looks like it will take months solo or with a group to complete it, maybe even a whole year depending on your pacing, which is awesome. Even after completing a campaign there are legacy features you unlock that will boost things for new parties in your world. They also offer a brilliantly simple framework to employ your own created Quests and questlines, so I can see a lot of player created content down the road.- Replayability: There is no hero level cap, and I can level up my heroes as much as I want, maybe bum around a lower level region a bit longer to help with the challenge, and yes it is challenging! I've been party-wiped once, and making some better decisions on my second party. There seems to be an inexhaustible combination of race and class pairings, and any race can be any class if you unlock that class. You are not stuck to any archetypes. Not to mention the loads of loot that come with their own skills. I have high doubts that a single playthrough will see all the content the game offers between unlocking titles, finding all the loot, completing all the side quests, unlocking all the marketplace options, or even encountering every enemy. There are a lot of races and classes which can dramatically change how you do combat, especially in a party, that will net you a very different experience each dungeon, each campaign. Maybe you want to focus your town unlocks with the resident bombmaker, Roslyn, and maybe you want to focus on on titles from just one Guild... The choice is yours!- Gameplay: When you level up you choose which of your 3 stats you want to improve: ATK, DEF, or Health. Your choices actually matter a lot! And given the fact that every race has different starting stats, this is meaty yet digestible! What a breath of fresh air in the genre! Just when you realize the gravity of your level up choices, then you realize that the gear you find can tailor your loadout in a unique direction. Weapons come with skills that have a number of uses before needing to be recharged (brings me back to that Oblivion nostalgia). Magical shards you can find also come with useful passive abilities. You'll need to leverage every bit of it to survive well, since there is permadeath if your entire party gets wiped. So, like a Diablo game, there is incentive to do multiple dungeons in the same region because you'll need the XP, but also the loot is randomly generated, so you may find a melee weapon, then you roll for it's handedness, then you roll for it's special ability, and it's all concise and right there. You may be trying to find a specific loot item that's only in a particular region, or you're trying to kill a specific enemy for a Title. Or maybe you are trying to complete a Guild side quest in a region that is a bit easier for your party. So you do a few dungeon runs in a region, get some good loot, level up a few times and kill the boss to move the story along, then you can go to any other region, but each region has a recommended hero level, so usually you'd be doing this in order, but could always push your luck for some stronger gear if you want to risk DEATH.- Roleplaying: This aspect also floored me. The writers went so far as to include an entire section in the back of the book dedicated to house variants so you can play with more or less than 4 heroes in a party. AND they included rules to create your own side quests and roleplay your characters in the game by leveraging their "surge and blunder system" to do whatever action you propose. It's honestly brilliant. I just need to find time to get my gaming group together, because this is such a unique feature not only for gamebooks for tabletop gams in general!!! They constantly encourage roleplaying all throughout and leave just enough room for players to do it. For example, when you find a weapon, you can decide what it is and give it a name either based on its special ability or whatever you want. So if you want that two-handed ranged weapon you found to be a Bladed Watermelon Launcher, so be it. Undead beware! They hold your hand just enough so that if you don't want to roleplay anything, you absolutely don't need to, but lots of room and encouragement to do so.Side Quests and Worldbuilding: I don't mean to gush but... They have Guilds, and I can't help but feel like I'm playing Oblivion again... You can join any guild with any hero. Guilds offer little story side quests themed to that specific guild. Their titles are all poetic, another detail I noticed. You can get titles for your heroes that net you more rewards the more titles you gain over time. I love writing the titles on my hero sheets, and again, the writing is apropos. This game kills it. There is a full roleplaying game under the hood here. There are travel narratives when you find a dungeon, again great writing, and the narrative also gives your dungeon a unique name to write on your dungeon sheet. So for example, the "Abandoned Crypt." So aside from getting a unique dungeon each time to explore, you each dungeon also gets its own procedurally generated name and travel narrative you can write on the dungeon sheet. I love this little addition to dungeon delving. Again this brings me back to Elder Scrolls games to almost emulate that moment you walk up to an ancient ruins with skulls on a stick next to the entrance and a tattered banner blowing in the wind with the sounds and smells brining you in. Each dungeon tileset thematically changes with each region, and they did a great job making the jungle type tiles look more jungly than the frozen mountain tileset for example. I didn't even mention each region's themed perils (traps and hazards) or the random global events...- Gamebook quality: They didn't overlook this one bit. The layout is very well designed. The page footers include both the page number and heading of the page, and they've color coded sections of the book according to Region, so it's really easy to find where you need to be. They also color coded all the guild sections. I noticed! They also created their own symbols and coding system, which essentially acts as shorthand so you don't have to write as much on your character sheet. It's sprinkled all throughout the rules--a much appreciated detail!- Boss battles: Ok at this point, I'll try to keep myself together... This game has a narrative system when you encounter a boss that moves the storyline along during battle while also buffing the boss during the fight. It's just fantastic. I won't say anymore so as not to spoil, you'll just have to experience it yourself. This is going to be a hoot with my game group.- Enemies: This is worth a category all on its own. The enemies are awesome. They are horrifying, they all have special abilities that makes fighting each one unique from the last enemy, and they each have flavor text that describes them. They are very well-fitted into the world and are oozing with a unified theme per region, per enemy type. Their names are intriguing as well as the names of their special abilities -- a really nice unified touch to the worldbuilding details. The game seems to be oozing theme at every aspect.- Artwork: I see someone offered some flack for the writers using AI for their artwork. Let's be clear, if you've ever tried to generate AI art and make it look good, GOOD LUCK! These guys clearly spent a LOT of time generating their own artwork from their own imagination, and let me tell you, I can't see the flaws. Their art direction is incredibly consistent and unified, and not to mention unique. They didn't rip off anyone else's game art or copy and paste any particular artist's work-- it's just really different, something totally new that didn't exist prior, and they didn't put anyone out of the job that they never employed to begin with. All the art has a fantastic color scheme and style that I have not quite seen before in a roleplaying game, but really fits their own unique world. The art is tailored very well to their own writing meaning the pictures match the storyline down to fine details, and again a testament to someone spending a lot of time generating art to exactly fit their world and vision, not haphazardly spinning AI art to sell copies, but carefully editing. They clearly spent time manually editing every artwork in the book so it actually doesn't have weird artifacts like 6 finger human hands and no eyes and such, a feat within itself. For all those AI art haters out there, these guys used a passionate careful approach, and clearly made this worth the price tag. They literally created something that didn't exist before, that no one else can take credit for. It bothers me that some people would gatekeep how indie creators create any of their work. They brought life to their own world that is totally unique. It's freaking awesome, and looks so good in person.Summary...For me having played boardgames and hosting game groups at my house for over a decade, I remember the first time Mage Knight the board game hit my table. I was floored by the quality of the components and pieces as everything was laid out during a session. Seeing my hero trapsing across those beautiful double-sided land tiles sprinkled with enemy and dungeon tokens brought such pleasure knowing that I had carved a path with my decisions to get me to the final castle. I hadn't seen a board game up until that point that was just so gorgeous and thematic. Order of Eventide gave me a similar experience for the gamebook genre.All in all, I'm floored by the level of detail in this game. As much as I love other games in this genre, this one does a lot of things differently--in a good way, offers a meaty roleplaying and character development experience, lots of combat tactics, lots of loot, a serious challenge, and so much more. Every system that they've designed feels balanced, works well with other systems, oozes theme, and feels natural. I also love the fact that I don't need a giant binder full of printouts or a bazillion individual add-on books to have a complete game. This is board game quality in this genre. There are a lot of other quality of life features packed into this game that you'll just have to find for yourself. I wish I could give it more than 5 stars!

This game is made by people that truly enjoy a good adventure and it shows! From the art to how clearly everything is a explained to the monster and boss design, everything is incredibly well thought out! From someone who doesn't have as much time to commit to a full D&D type campaign, Order of Eventide is the perfect game to get that questing fix. I've played games with Chris in the past and I'm super excited and happy that he and Chad took their gaming to the next level!Also worth mentioning, there is a new public Discord server where you can join and ask the creators questions, or look for a group to go adventuring with!10/10, would recommend!

This game is amazing! Well made. Its similar to Four Against Darkness, D100 Dungeon, Ker Nethalas, etc. But its great as everything you need to play is in one book. It comes with 6 dungeons you explore with replayability on several of the same dungeons. Its fun to upgrade your character. And its very streamlined so it makes following the rules extremely easy. I hope they make an expansion to this game because its my new favorite game. It feels real satisfying playing this game over Four Against Darkness since its streamlined and also way better combat system. If you want something fresh, this is the game for you.

Excellent fun! A buddy and I have been rocking a campaign with just the two of us, each controlling 2 characters.The variety continues to surprise - one moment we're clearing out room after room like bosses, then next thing you know we meet the real boss and barely make it out alive. We limp back to town, the centaur carrying three unconscious companions on his back.Ten of ten, will do again.

It’s a great dungeon crawler to play solo. Like how it’s self-contained, easy to play anywhere, and it’s been a wonderful experience. Pretty much replaced playing rpg/story driven board games!

AI art. Don’t waste your money unless you’re cool with the writer taking shortcuts.