London Dread is a co-operative game set in Victorian England. Players take on the role of investigators trying to uncover plots on the way to confronting a story specific finale.
The game is gritty and thematic, featuring a series of dark events and story lines (such as the appearance of a caped killer on the streets of London) with a hint of the supernatural.
The game is broken into a series of stories, usually played over the course of 2 chapters, in which players alternately participate in a timed planning phase where various obstacles and plots are uncovered and then an untimed story phase where players resolve the effects of their planning.
The result is a tense and truly cooperative experience where players must work together, communicate well, plan effectively, and use the strengths of their investigators in an attempt to stay a step ahead on the mean streets of the city.
darker
Timed co-op action programming. I like that, and how solved things cascade into helping you solve further things... though not especially predictably. I'm not certain whether I like the push-your-luck dynamic where blowing too much of your help deck during play shoots you in the foot for endgame.
Big B
Boy this is a weird game. I like programming generally, but real-time programming? In a cooperative environment where if you mess up in the chaos (which is half the point of these elements) you automatically lose? Sure you can try again to go through the (very scripted feeling) scenario, but then there's dice rolls (on the mean side) on top of it? I can see some groups being into it, but it's a bit too much for me.
bitmapx
Strong narrative gameplay that drives tense mechanics played in 3 phases: Space Alert style real time planning, then a character & unique personality story phase, then (after repeating the first two phases a 2nd time), a final showdown. All this, told in a cohesive single horror story set in Victorian England.