Tonight on GeekNights, we review Whale Street. It is a solid concept, combining the stock/operating round structure of an 18xx game with poker hand mechanics, but it doesn't quite stick the landing on execution. In the news, Wizards of the Coast has an AI art problem, and Free to Play games like Overwatch and Marvel Snap have a new card/character power creep problem. PixelMeat is back. If you care about unions and good working conditions, consider calling Arsenal Scaffold to tell them workers need living wages.
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Things of the Day
You don’t do episodes on stuff you don’t like very often. Between this and 2023 it’s kind of 2 in a row.
I think power creep can naturally fall out of tweaking a game, even if you’re diligent about maintaining balance. Suppose you’re asked to balance Slay the Spire, and it has 100 possible strats. 20 are bad, 60 are viable, 20 are OP.
You buff 10 garbo cards, and nerf 10 OP cards. Now there’s 90 strats you could win the game with, where there were 80 before. The game got “easier”, but also the average deck has the same power.
Also I forget if Scott talked about having done GeekNights for so long in this episode or the next one. There’s GeekNightses from 20 different years now.
Rym and Scotty, 100 years!
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