At Gen Con last year, I purchased the Final Girl core box along with the feature film box, Camp Happy Trails. Both games are published by Van Ryder Games. What interested me about the games is that they are solo games. This means that you play them by yourself with no other players. It’s funny, you think that if this were a game I would play myself, I would have played it a lot sooner. I didn’t get a chance to open this until a few weeks ago. Final Girl was a fun and narrative-driven adventure with numerous replayability options.

Final Girl is a game in which you play as both the Final Girl and the slasher at the same time. The goal of the game is to either kill the slasher or kill the Final Girl. In the Camp Happy Trails box, there are two final girls: Reiko and Laurie. Both Final Girls possess distinct abilities that can be utilized in the game. There’s a bit of a deck-building component, as there are cards that the Final Girl can play to move around the board, search for items, and attack the killer. Some cards are free, while other cards are purchased with time, as in the time it takes to perform actions. There can be a lot to keep track of, but once I played a few rounds, it was easy to pick up.

I loved the dice rolling aspect of the game. For the Final Girl’s actions to work, you would need to roll the dice. Fives or sixes counted as successes, while anything four or lower did not. Depending on the successes rolled, it would impact how well things went. For example, I could play a Sprint card, which allowed the Final Girl to sprint around the board. If I rolled one success, they could go a certain number of spaces, but if I rolled two successes, I could move more. If I fail the roll, it could end my turn, or I could lose time, which meant I couldn’t spend as much to buy new cards. I like this component of the game. In my first game, I was rolling hot, but in my second game, I wasn’t rolling well at all. It completely changed the tone of the game.

One thing I don’t pay as much attention to is how the game is designed. In the Camp Happy Trails box, each side of the box pops off, and it’s the killer’s health and the game board. To put it back together, you slide it back into the box, and it seems like it’s magnetically held in place. It makes for easy storage and is easy to put the game away. This isn’t something I normally care about, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

In each game, I successfully killed the killer with both Reiko and Laurie. Once this happens, there’s a card in an envelope that you can open only when you kill the killer. It unlocks special items for both Reiko and Laurie, which can be used in other feature film boxes. I think this is neat. It allows for more replayability with both Reiko and Laurie, and the items are connected to them as Final Girls. I could see this being fun to include Reiko in another feature film box with her special item and trying the harder version of the game. Speaking of which, there are two modes to the game. I played the easier difficulty because I didn’t know what I was doing, but I would be open to trying the higher difficulty with each Final Girl to see how it varies.

I liked playing Final Girl a lot. I could see myself buying the other feature film boxes in the future. If I find myself at Gen Con again, I’ll definitely wander towards Van Ryder’s booth.

Last week at Gamescom, it was announced that Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 was going to release on October 21st, 2025. In addition to this, there were pre-order bonuses for those who pre-ordered and for those who pre-ordered beyond the base game. It was revealed that two vampire clans, Toreador and Lasombra, were locked behind a DLC. For those who aren’t gamers, this means that the base game doesn’t include Toreador and Lasombra, and to get them, you would have to buy them as additional content. Internet reaction has been swift, and there are a ton of angry fans upset by this. I have talked about Bloodlines 2 before, so of course, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I address this.

Let’s talk about the clans locked behind a paywall. To try and explain this, imagine if Baldur’s Gate 3 locked the Wizard and the Barbarian in additional paid content. For a game that’s based on a TTRPG, I find it odd that the base game wouldn’t include all the clans. If anything, I’d understand if clans like Lasombra, Banu Haquim, or Salubri would be additional content since they weren’t pushed into the fifth edition of the game, but Toreador? Toreador is a hugely popular clan, and the fact that it’s not included in the base game is irritating. Let’s be clear, Bloodlines 2 isn’t the first game or franchise to not include everything in the base game. However, this feels like a major misstep to me.

Another critique I have been reading is the fact that you can’t create your own character. In Bloodlines 2, players play as Phyre, and while you can choose your clan, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of customization beyond that. This isn’t a deal breaker for me, I don’t mind playing as a pre-made vampire, as long as I get access to the clans that I want to play. With that said, I would prefer to at least be able to customize my appearance and hairstyle. It’s an RPG, and with most RPGs, character customization is a part of the game. I’d also add that I enjoyed the Vampire: The Masquerade visual novels on Steam, and I didn’t get to customize anything about the character.

Will I be pre-ordering this game? Nope. With that said, I rarely pre-order games. The last game I pre-ordered was Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and that’s because I knew the game would be good, and it was. Will I play this game? I want to, but I don’t want to waste my money either. If I had to guess, I would lean towards playing it because I want to see if I like the story at least. No matter what, this game is disappointing and had the potential to be so much more than what it is.

Several weeks ago, Badwolf Adventure Studios hosted a Daggerheart one-shot utilizing one of the campaign frames from the rulebook. I played Daggerheart once last year before the game’s release. I haven’t played it since the beta and was curious if there were any substantial differences. I was also watching Age of Umbra, which is Critical Role’s shorter series taking place in another campaign frame from the book. In the past, I expressed skepticism about the gameplay, specifically with the lack of initiative order and how rolling with d12s would work. I’m happy to say that I am impressed with Daggerheart as a system and I’d join a campaign if I had the opportunity to do so.

In our one shot, we had seven players. It was nice to see a full table of other players who were curious to see how Daggerheart would run. I ended up playing a Faun Ranger with the Beastbound subclass. This let me choose an animal companion. As a side note, you will never catch me having an animal companion in Dungeons & Dragons. Why? I would be emotionally destroyed if my animal companion were to die in combat. In Daggerheart, when the animal companion loses its health, it doesn’t die. Instead, it becomes stressed, either running away in combat entirely, hiding, or taking another action. At rest, the player can choose to clear stress, and if so, the animal companion comes back. This is perfect. It lets the Ranger class shine, but also allows players to have the comfort of knowing that the animal they choose will never die.

The Ranger in Dungeons & Dragons is notorious for not being as powerful as the other classes. I think it’s a shame, really. In Daggerheart, the Ranger has vastly improved. There are abilities that the Ranger can initiate, which include the animal companion. In our group, I had a robotic tiger named Petunia, and she could benefit from some of my Ranger abilities. I think that’s rad. There’s nothing more fun than sending a robotic tiger in to do some work. After our session, one of the players also commented on how much fun the Ranger was and how they would consider playing the class next.

In Daggerheart, there were two things I was skeptical about. The first being a lack of initiative order. During combat, players decide who goes first, and once a player rolls with fear, the GM goes next. Our group did a great job at asking other players who haven’t gone for a bit that they should take their turn next. Our group had seven players, so it’s easy for one person to accidentally dominate the game. With that said, our GM was great, and he queued players up as well, so they could take their turns. The overall gameplay experience was seamless.

The other thing I was skeptical about was rolling two d12s, one representing hope and the other fear. Our group, for whatever reason, always seemed to roll higher in fear. The GM could have wrecked our group, but chose not to. With this being a one-shot, I don’t think it was the GM’s goal to kill our characters. For Daggerheart campaigns, I think it’s important to settle on a difficulty level. Do players want an easier game or a tougher campaign? I think this would dictate how the GM spends fear based on what the players want. This was something I was nervous about, but in the two times that I have played Daggerheart, it was a non-issue.

Daggerheart has been a fun game to play. I’m curious to see what else is developed alongside the system. I wanted to give a special shout-out to Jordan from Sortilege, who was our GM for the game. He did a great job at keeping all seven of us on track. If Badwolf Adventure Studios decides to do more Daggerheart one-shots in the future, I will definitely be there.