Players: Eric, Justin, Kevin, Tierney & Shiloh, Will

I'm a bit late on posting this, but here's the report from my second run of Until We Sink (which is available for free here­) by Magnus Jakobsson of Archipelago­ fame. This game OLD, as in circa 2007 old, and like a lot of older story games there is no hand holding, literally just: Here's the prompt, go!

It was still fun the second go around, but a lot stood out this time around, partially because I was able to watch things as they happened, and also because I got the feeling we weren’t all on the same page (it seemed as though a few folks strongly wanted to send the game one way while other folks totally did not pick up on it.)

What’s more, having since played Lovecraftesque­, I can confidently say that there are other games out there now (granted with the benefit of several years of game design to build upon) that do a much better job of trying to accomplish what Until We Sink sets out to do.

So, here are a collection of thoughts:

• It requires A LOT of heavy lifting on Players (as I mentioned last time.) Success is highly dependent on the experience of the folks you're playing with.
  
• There is NO guidance on helping set the pacing for the game, and the prompts themselves don’t lend towards that either. Each prompt is a weird independent event unto itself. Eric suggested that the game would benefit from having multiple groups of prompts that help set the mood for various stages of the game, similar to what The Quiet Year does with seasons.
  
• The prompts themselves are too specific or there simply aren’t enough of them, so while they’re really novel the first go, they are increasingly less so with each subsequent play through.
  
• The prompts also do a poor job of giving the players enough to work with. You have weird events, but the players have to come up with inventing the clues for trying to solve the mystery.
  
• The die roll with some prompts is still super clever for a Whodunnet style as it can, as it does a good job of creating misdirection and that “Wait! Then the killer can’t be you?!” moment.
  
• I like that the island is sinking, but I wish it was a bit more planned and not sudden and random; the game can end any time after the 5th turn.
  
• Also on the positive side, it really wouldn’t be that hard to clean Until We Sink as the basic mechanics are solid, it just needs to provide more guidance through setting creation and to put more pressure on the Players to drive towards a narrative.
  

Tl;dr: I’ll run Until We Sink again on request if someone wants to check it out, but I personally wouldn’t pitch it again without giving it a nice face-lift first.