HOW DOES FEAR OF THE DARK WORKS?

I have been asked several times how does Fear of the Dark compare to other games such as Pulp Alley, Perilous Tales, Strange Aeons... So Let´s talk about how does this game works.

In fact all of those games are quite similar, as they are centered around the adventures of a small group of highly detailed characters.

I have played most of those games (and I have read all of them) and the main differences are:

Fear of the Dark is designed for solo playing, it's not a player vs player game that has some rules to be played solo... It's designed from the very beginning to be played solo. In fact, I plan to develop a player vs player rules to be added to this game. In case you want to play with some friends, you will have to fight together against the AI of the game... And I have to warn you... The AI is damned good at it...

Fear of the Dark has a huge narrative component, as every scenario is designed with a "choose your own adventure" style, mixing it with skirmishes played with miniatures. Below I´m going to show you how a Scenario is designed and played.

Fear of the Dark background is set in the world of madness created by H. P. Lovecraft, and horror will be the core of every scenario, although I have some pulp ideas...

The rule system is quite easy to learn, as the game is though for solo playing, and when you are playing solo you need that the rules help you to play, not that they slow down the games. So the rules are made easygoing in such a way that once you have played it a couple of times, you don´t need to check the rulebook (no exceptions, no specific rules, no fine print...). I want to enjoy the scenario and the story not to get bogged down by rules.

So, how do you play a scenario?

Every scenario is made in a "choose your own adventure" style, You start reading a set of numbered entries, and you strat reading entry numeber 1, and you take decisions that take you through the story from one numbered entry to another, many times you will be asked to make a die roll or a characteristic test and depending on the result the story will unfold one way or the other...

And sometimes, your decisions or your luck will take you to "scenes", that are miniatures skirmishes played in a game board against an AI that will make things tough for you...

It will be better with an example, isn´t it?

Let´s say that you start the story reading entry number 1, and you have this:

You decide what to do and where you want to go. Do you want to talk to the police? Maybe you can get some information from them? Or do you want to go straight to the crime scene? Your decisions will affect the story as it unfolds.

And imagine that you decide at some point that you want to go to the crime scene, then, you will be taken to "Scene number 1", and you will find this:

Once you set the game board in a similar way as it is described, you start playing this scene with miniatures, checking Point of Interest, fighting evil enemies, or even trying to flee the game board to make it alive...

The enemies will be controlled by an Artificial Inteligence based on flowcharts and obective selections, and although it may seem difficult, after two or three games played, you don´t even need to check the flowcharts to know which enemy unit will activate and what will it do.

As you can see, from the very begining you don´t know what is happening or what will happen in the story... you will have to play it to find out what is all about... and get out alive!

I hope this post show in a deeper way how to play Fear of the Dark, and I really hope you like the game.