Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Wednesday Review: Save Doctor Lucky

This is a review of the Save Doctor Lucky Board game produced by Paizo Publishing, LLC. http://www.paizo.com

First Glance: High quality heavy duty box game. You get 8 stand-up counters representing The 7 players and Doctor Lucky. You get 4 nice thick boards, with nice quality artwork. You also get a nice Deck of cards.

Main Review: Save Doctor Lucky is the prequel to Kill Doctor Lucky.

In Save Doctor Lucky, you must conspicuously save the Doctor from the sinking cruise liner. The first difference between this game and the original is the boards, you lay each of the decks of the ship out with ¼ of the cards (after dealing cards out). The Doctor wanders on his standard pathway around the ship, but as the cards run out, boards sections disappear. Another difference is that when you attempt to save him, others must be able to draw line of sight to you, as you’re not saving him for no reason, you’re trying to get ahead in the world. No spite tokens are awarded in this version, the game length manager is the sinking ship. As the sections disappear, the game play speeds up quite a lot.

Artwork: Excellent, The artwork is stylized and the boards are gorgeous.

Replay Value: Excellent, this game is never the same, and while you might have some winning strategies, you’re not going to win every time. This is a family favorite, everyone can win.

Comprehension Level: Excellent, The rules for Save Doctor Lucky are very simple. Publisher’s suggested Age Range is 10+

Humor: Decent, While Save Doctor Lucky tries to maintain the same level of humor as it predecessor, it does not quite succeed, the jokes on the failure cards just aren’t as funny as the jokes on the failure cards for Kill Doctor Lucky.

Family Rating: 8+, rules are easy enough to learn, and there’s no moral ambiguity of murder in this version of Doctor Lucky.

Price Tag: $29.99 retail. Well below the price point of similar games, for something of this quality, you can usually expect to pay $40.

Value: For us, it’s still worth the money. Not as good as the original, but it’s a nice alternative.

Overall Rating: 4.5 Stars



You can purchase Save Doctor Lucky from from Paizo.com or your FLGS!




2 comments:

  1. I just saw this game at a friend's house. The Line of Sight rules seemed inconsistent with physical reality when going between decks. If you look at the first example that goes from the top deck to the next deck and tried to map that to an actual model of a ship, it would make no sense. The line of sight goes out the starboard side of the top deck and then comes in the port side of the next deck. Am I missing something? It seems really weird - and pretty much wrecks the whole premise.

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  2. I hadn't noticed that, interesting. However, I don't think it wrecks the premise, as I can imagine those passages being a ladder leading down into the next area, crossing the ship as it goes.

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