Gremlins, Inc. Review

Let's take a first look at the amazing digital board game about wealth and corruption, called Gremlins, Inc. Make your way to the top by stealing, bribing, and throwing your opponents in jail. Play with your friends, find a match online, or play against the A.I. Just remember, don't feed them after midnight!

Gremlins Inc.
Introduction

Gremlins,Inc. is a board game set in a steampunk world of greedy and disloyal Gremlins who will stop at no costs to undermine their competitors for money, political power, and prestige. Bribe police officers, send your competition to jail and steal resources, nothing goes too far for these money-grabbing figures of nightmares. Play against A.I. opponents, play against other players online or invite your friends and try to get them thrown in jail! So forget Gizmo and Stripe, these Gremlins are even worse from the once you watched in one of our favorite movies from our youth. 

General info

"The game has a deck with over 160 cards with some of the most beautiful artwork I have ever seen."

Set on a beautiful digital table top board, you start your journey to wealth and prestige. The winning conditions may vary every session you play, one time you need to have the most points after a certain number of turns or time, other timesthe session will finish after reaching a certain amount of points. To get these points you will need to play cards at specific tiles on the board. Every tile on the board has a specific symbol on it, corresponding to an action that will happen once you land, or sometimes pass the tile. You can land on a police officer who will investigate you and can throw you in jail, you can land on the casino and gamble away some money or you can pass a bribe tile and lose some money to bribes.

The beautiful board in Gremlins, Inc.

Gameplay

The game has a deck with over 160 cards with some of the most beautiful artwork I have ever seen. You will have six cards at every point in the game. These cards can be played on certain tiles if the symbol on the card matches the one on the tile. Actions these cards trigger vary, you can receive a bribe rather than paying one, you can let the police investigate a competitor instead ofyourself, or you can gain points at the cost of money.

But you also need these cards to move around the board, since there are no dice to move around. Every card has a specific number of dots on the upper left corner, telling you a number of tiles you can move on the board in that turn. If you play the card to move, however, it will disappear from your hand and can no longer be used as an action card later on in the game.

I’ve only played a hand full of games, and still haven’t seen all the cards. Something I’m looking forward to, though!


There are four types of “resources” in the game:
Points, which let you win the match. Gold, for using cards, gamble or to pay bribes. Votes which can grant you the office of Governor. And Malice, which you receive when you get into mischief.

A standard match against two A.I. opponents took me about half an hour to finish, so make sure you have enough time once you start up the game for a “quick match”.

The tutorials in this game are rather good, as far as tutorials go. They are easy to follow and all of them are rather short, so you don’t get bored. They have a perfect mixture of “read the tutorial and click OK” and “Do these actions to continue”.

The first match I played after the tutorial, I played the role of The Thief, and won the game within it’s time limits. Truth be told, the first match after the tutorial is still part of the tutorial, so I don’t know if that one actually counts…

Still, it made me feel good about myself and I couldn’t wait to get into the next match! So good job Gremlins, inc.

Graphics and Sound

"My advice is to try this game for yourself, and find yourself lost in it for a good amount of time."

The graphics and art style of this game look amazing in my opinion. The board, the characters and all the cards look to be hand drawn and have an astonishing amount of detail. The layout of the board may seem confusing and a bit overwhelming, but once you get the hang of the game it is really in-depth and hard to figure out the right path to get to a certain tile you need.

The music in this game is marvelous! It gives the right ambiance for this game and gets you in the perfect mindset to play a session or two.

Once you meet the victory conditions set for the session, or have the most points at the end of the last turn, you win this round. But keep in mind, Gremlins always come back for revenge!

The only downside I found in this game, is trying to find an online match in the lobby that fits your desire. It takes ages, so if you want to do a quick match, I would suggest gathering some friends and create your own match, or play a couple of sessions against some A.I. components.

It would take me years to explain every concept and strategy you can use in this game, so I will not bore you to death with it. If you like complex strategy board games, or are a huge fan of the comedy fantasy genre, my advice is to try this game for yourself, and find yourself lost in it for a good amount of time.

Final Score

Pros:

  • Beautiful artwork
  • Stunning music
  • Good tutorial

Cons:

  • Hard time finding online matches to join
  • Only 2 server regions to join

With these pros and cons in mind, I’m going to give this game a score of 9 out of 10, because the developers did almost everything right in my opinion. The one downside being that there aren’t many online matches to play, isn’t even the fault of the developers! Once this game gets a decent fan base, there will be more than enough matches to chose from.

Gremlins, Inc.

Developed by: Alexey Bokulev, Sergei Klimov, Charlie Oscar Lima Tango Interactive Entertainment
Published by: Yukitama Creative Industries
Released on Steam on March 11th, 2016.

The game is available on Steam for $14.99, the DLC called “Uninvited Guests” is available on Steam for $4.99.
Gremlins, Inc. is available in multiple languages, including English, Russian, German, Spanish and French.

For more info, take a look at the game in the Steam Store.

9
Amazing

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