Early Access to Disco Lady #6: Tabletop Simulator

Babes and I have been looking for a new game to play together. So we decided to try Tabletop Simulator. Will we be satisfied? Stay tuned to find out.

I almost passed this game up. I assumed it was just Poker, and I already have Poker Night at the Inventory and Poker Night 2 in my backlog. OK, I admit saying just Poker is kinda unfair because Poker is actually pretty damn cool. But if I was to pay $14.99 for a game of Poker, I may as well be betting using real money, so I have the potential to lose trillions.

This could all be yours if you play me at Poker.

Alright, moving on. So, I totally found out that it's more than Poker. Chess, Checkers, various card games, some other shit.

Solitaire. Kind of.

Being an Early Access game, I was bound to stumble across problems. Most noticeably, the chance to cheat or end up confused is very real. Say you break out the Checkers board, you want to jump a Checker, as you do when you play Checkers. Well, there's nothing to stop you not placing the Checker wherever the fuck you want. Normally, when you play a video game board game you will be called for illegal moves and you will have to adhere to the rules of Checkers. When you manage to get your Checker crowned, by reaching the end of the board, the only way to show the Checker in a new light is to flip it. Normally, a video game would give you some indication that the checker has been crowned. I like the game doing the work for me. Why should I have to take note of it? When you play online, you don't have the same luxury of playing with someone you know in real life. You need the bathroom? You need to pour a new drink? Get up, it's fine. You can't trust like that online. And unless you take screenshots or have a photographic memory, there's no way to know if the other player hasn't jeopardized the board somehow.

This picture is only here because of the extremely long paragraph above.

There's no rules. Someone has to enforce it. It's bullshit. I want to play a game, not work out scores and keep track of everything like some kind of GameMasterEverydayGenius.

I also disliked playing Dominoes. I should not be able to see the other player's Dominoes and they should not be able to see mine. This isn't Kindergarten where your teacher gets the 1st graders to play an Open Dominoes match so you can learn how to play! Yes, that happened.

You could just play the entire game like this, and not see your Dominoes.

F12 is the default Screenshot button on Steam. Every man and his dog knows that. (Unless that man is scared of dogs, like a sane person.) So, why is it that F12 takes screenshots AND removes the Heads Up Display of the game. Seriously? There's no lack of keys in this game, there's hardly any keys used at all. Why should I have to rebind?

Now, to the best part of the game. The board flipping. Getting your ass kicked? Want to tell someone you never learned how to play Chess because you hate Chess? Flip the board! No wakkas mate. They'll take the hint.

Crack that Flip

Of course, you can just abuse the feature over and over. There's a way to turn it off, but when that's literally the only reason to play this broken ass game, why bother?

And we'd do it again, dammit.

 I think this game could actually be really great. But right now? No. It sucks. It's a shame because it offers so much promise.