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I tend to mutter to myself when I play board games. Working out strategies, crunching numbers, fretting over tactical options—it’s an annoying habit that kicks into overdrive when I’m playing a game solo. (This is naturally to the eternal consternation of my longsuffering wife, who is often in the same room as I mumble endlessly about efficient wood-to-stone conversion rates.) But while I was doing a solo playthrough of the first scenario in The 7th Continent, a new cooperative adventure board game, most of my monologues came out as exclamations of surprised joy.

Oh my God, that is SO cool.

Wait...but how does that… oh. Wow. Wowww.

What?!! I love that!!

Game details Designers: Ludovic Roudy & Bruno Sautter

Publisher: Serious Poulp

Players: 1-4

Age: 14+

Playing time: 1,000+ minutes

Price: $80 on Kickstarter Ludovic Roudy & Bruno SautterSerious Poulp1-414+1,000+ minutes

The 7th Continent is something else. It’s a giant game filled to the brim with genuinely innovative and exciting ideas. The game has its predecessors, of course, but you’ve never played anything quite like it. It bills itself as a Choose Your Own Adventure book in board game form, a sort of open-world pulpy adventure that you can play by yourself or with up to three friends. Add in its heavy emphasis on exploration, survival, and crafting, and you can practically hear gamers of all stripes—from nostalgic Fighting Fantasy fans to Steam Early Access crafting-game junkies—salivating uncontrollably.

With the game’s second printing on Kickstarter right now, it’s pretty much the only thing board gamers are talking about this month. But it’s a very unique type of experience that's likely not for everyone. Is it for you?

This review contains what some might consider light spoilers (nothing beyond what can be found on its Kickstarter page). If you want to go into the game completely blind, come back later.

We have to go back, Kate





























It’s 1907, you’re an explorer, and you feel like crap.

Several weeks ago, you were part of an expedition to the 7th continent, a mysterious and newly discovered land off the coast of Antarctica. At some point during your adventures (you don’t remember when or how), you picked up a curse of some sort—a physical and mental affliction that haunts your daytime thoughts and plunges your nights into exhausting, restless sleep. It’s been rough.

And then, one night, in the middle of one of your curse-fueled fever dreams, you awake with a start to find yourself… back on the 7th continent? But didn’t you… weren’t you just… ? The only thing you know with any certainty is that the curse came from this place, and if there’s any chance you can lift it, you’re going to have to get to work.

Voracious Goddess

Belying the imposing double-sided and icon-laden player aids, the gameplay of The 7th Continent is so straightforward that you could start a new player off with almost no explanation. Do an action, draw some cards, see what happens next.

The gameplay is driven entirely by a huge box of almost 1,000 numbered, square-shaped cards. They sit in trays complete with numerical dividers, and almost every time you want to do something in the game, you’ll dive into the box and pluck out a card. Decide to travel east? Pull card 163. Open that mysterious box? 345. Examine those footprints leading off into the brush? Hold your breath and dig out card 230.

There are essentially two types of cards in the game: adventure cards, representing the terrain and contents of the continent, and action cards, which you’ll play and manipulate to move around and take actions.

You start each curse—essentially a scenario that gives you a goal to accomplish—by placing your character(s) on an adventure card representing a patch of land on the continent. "The Voracious Goddess," the main curse I played, started me off with two vague clues: a sketchy map and the idea that I had been seeing tortured visions of a strange idol.

And that’s pretty much it—go forth and lift the curse! Here’s where The 7th Continent immediately starts to shine. There are no game “rounds.” The game doesn’t get a “phase” where it fights back at you like in many cooperative games. There isn’t even a set start and end point for each session. Instead, you simply take a turn by doing an action, and you keep on going until you’re satisfied with your session.

You then create what’s essentially a savefile of your game and pack the whole thing up; the next session, you pick up right where you left off. Each scenario is a long, continuous adventure that you play in sessions that are as long or short as you want. My playthrough of the Voracious Goddess took about 15 hours, and I played it in standard 90-120 minute sessions. You’ll eventually either lift the curse or die trying.

Listing image by Serious Poulp