Member-only story
The team at XYZ Game Labs is on a nice roll: A Borderlands-licensed version of their first game, RobotLab was a hit at Gen Con 2019; they’ve hosted two successful Gen Con tournaments of their second game, Inoka — a rock-paper-scissors type card game with more strategy and fantastic art — and their third game, ArchRavels, fully funded on KickStarter in less than 48 hours.
Back at Gen Con 2017, I got to play an early prototype of ArchRavels, and it was fun. The version XYZ showed off two years later reflected the effort put into making it better, and their booth was busy with a stream of interested gamer-knitter-crocheter-crafter types. (I like that they actually worked with fiber artists to help represent the hobby within the game.)
The yarn-crafting theme and basic goals of the game remain the same as they were back when the project was still nameless in 2017: You’re collecting yarn in various colors and using it to complete projects for points. A few new wrinkles have been added, though, to make things more interesting and complex — for instance, each player now assumes one of four character types, each of which has a unique action that comes into play.
While I didn’t get to play ArchRavels at Gen Con, I did get a quick walkthrough from co-designer Jordan Miller, and an emailed copy of the rules from co-designer Adam…
