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Flying Frog Productions · Pick Up and Deliver

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Welcome to pick Up and Deliver the podcast, where I pick up my audio
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recorder as I step off the train and deliver an episode to you while I
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walk home. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listeners. It's
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a lovely day here in suburban Chicago, and by lovely I mean it's lovely
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in spirit, not particularly in climate. It's actually pretty gloomy today. We've
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got low hanging sort of slate gray or even I don't know one notch darker
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than slate slate gray clouds. It's light out, but not super light grim.
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It's also a bit it's been rainy. We've seen a fair amount of
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rain in the We've seen a fair amount of rain in the street, and
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so everything's a little bit wet. But that's okay. So today I would
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like to I was thinking about what I might talk about and realize I haven't
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done a Message from the Deep episode in a while. For those of you
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new did the podcast, the Message from the Deep is an episode where I
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sort of take a game that I'm really familiar with and kind of do a
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deep dive review of it. And sometimes I'll do that in a pair,
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I'll pick two games that I want to talk about, and actually this time
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the thinking what to do is talk about a publisher, and that's flying Frog
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Productions. I was looking at the history of my show and I did not
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see anything indicating that I'd done this theme before, but I thought I would
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mentioned maybe I have. You know, this is in the five hundred and
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sixties in terms of number of episodes, so anything could could be true at
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this point. Also full disclosure. One more thing before I do this,
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So I discovered flying Frog Games in two thousand. Flying Frog Productions as the
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game company in two thousand and nine when a student did a presentation in my
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zombie class about the game Last Night on Earth, which I acquired shortly there
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after and have enjoyed ever since. Since then, I came to like other
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games from that company, including a Touch of Evil and Fortune and Glory.
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Meanwhile, sometime in there after I learned about Last Senators and acquired it.
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My good friend Rolf, whom I've friend friends with since I was in high
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school, became an employee at flying Frog Productions, and I now end up
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seeing him regularly online because we play role playing games together, and I see
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him usually once a year at gen Con because he comes to gen Con with
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flying Frog to work in their booth. This is by means of full disclosure
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to let you know I'm good friends with somebody who works at flying Frog.
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So for what for? At what level you think that might influence what I
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have to say here about about their games? So be it? Okay?
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So flying Frog has let's see, one, two, three, four main
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games in their stable and one one sort of light game that I can think
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of, actually five, now that I think about it. Hold on.
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Flying Frog Productions has six games in their catalog, two of which I have
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not played, two of which I've played once each, and then two of
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which I'm very familiar with. So I'm going to cover all the ones I'm
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not that familiar with first, and then I'll spend the bulk of the rest
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of my time talking about the two I know best. So the two games
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I have not played. There's a game called Dark Gothic, which is a
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deck building game themed around investigations of supernatural horrors in colonial New England. It
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uses a lot of the same visual assets as a touch of evil and a
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sort of set in the world. It might even be a touch of evil
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game. I don't know. I have not played that one. The other
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game of theirs that I have not had a chance to play is It Came
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from Outer Space or Aliens from Outer Space something like that, which is a
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game set with a very similar rule set to Last Night on Earth, and
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in fact, I think so that it can be played with Last Night on
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Earth in a sort of combined game. It's about aliens invading, and I
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think there's clown aliens as well, or something like I said, I haven't
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played that. I do have availability to play it, so I probably will
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at some point, but since I haven't played that, I can't really talk
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about that one either. Now two of their games I've played one time each,
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so i'll talk about them for a moment. The first one is Shadows
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over Brimstone are Shadows of Brimstone. This is their most recent and wide heavily
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supported title they've put out I think six different big boxes for this game,
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and they're all interchangeable. The premise is it's sort of an Old West.
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I think the first set is Old West, and then they had Samurai era
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Japanese and then most recently Vikings. And the idea is that you're a group
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of heroes from this era, and you encounter interdimensional doors that lead you to
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other places where scary monsters live, and you fight them, and then you
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go back and you sort of ramp up. It's a campaign game with a
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lot of the sort of signature elements of flying Frog games. Really robust cards,
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lots of counters, lots of finicky rules, lots of dice rolling.
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It's a good time and I really enjoyed it the one time I played it.
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I haven't had an opportunity to play it much more than that. We
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do have a set of Shadows of Brimstone at Toggle Gaming, so at some
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point I may try to get that played on a more regular basis, maybe
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next year. Maybe that could be one of my goals once a month or
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something. But because of that, I can't really talk about it much more
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than that. The one I played was one of the old West ones and
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it was a fun time. I had a good time with it. So
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that's Shadows of Brimstone. Like I said, I haven't played it very much.
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And finally, the fourth game is actually one I own. We've only
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played it one time. It just hasn't made its way back to the table,
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but I did enjoy it enough to keep it. I've kept it in
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my collection, and this is Fortune and Glory. Fortune and Glory is loosely
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based inspired by pulp adventures, like the same kinds of adventures that made Indiana
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that inspired Indiana Jones. In the game, you are world traveling treasure hunters
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trying to find treasures and fight various evil groups, including Nazis and some sort
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of made up groups like the Red Hand, and I think there's maybe one
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other set. I think in the Biggest game it's just Nazis, though I
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could be wrong about that. Anyhow, In the game, you are going
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from place to place trying to solve quests and find treasures, and one of
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the things that happens is you have these The most interesting mechanism is you have
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these cliffhanger moments where you get halfway through an adventure and something goes wrong,
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and then it's left in a cliffhanger until the next time you have an adventure,
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and then so someone else's turn. We had a good time playing it,
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but we did not come back to it, so I can't really speak
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much more to it than what I've just described. So that sets aside the
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games I haven't played in the games, I've only played once, which leaves
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me with Last Night on Earth and A Touch of Evil. Now, both
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of these games I've played many times each. If I had to estimate,
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I would say Last Night on Earth is probably in the neighborhood of ten times,
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and A Touch of Evil is probably the neighborhood of six times. Now,
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these are generally pretty long games. Last Night on Earth usually runs two
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to three hours, maybe a little shorter. A Touch of Evil usually runs
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a little bit longer, often between the three and four hour mark. And
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I've played, like I said, played both pretty extensively. So I'd like
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to hear us talk a little bit about what the games are like, why
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you might pick one or the one over the other, and maybe do a
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little bit of comparison between the two. I don't really want to make this
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a dual episode, but I guess that's the way I'm leaning quick briefly what
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they're like. Last Night on Earth is a zombie game. It's actually called
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the Zombie Game, and it's set around the idea of sort of a cheesy
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B movie zombie movie, so pretty corny in terms of the way that the
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story is being told, The characters are all sort of hyper genre specific characters.
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So like when you're playing, you're the town priest, or you're the
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sheriff, or you're the high school cheerleader, or you're the farm girl,
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or you're the nurse, or you're the football star or the drifter from out
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of town. Like there's a bunch of I mean, they all have character
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names, but they fit these generic roles. The game is a US versus
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many game. At its highest player count, it's six players, two zombies,
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two zombie players, and or four human players. My favorite player count
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is probably either three players where you have two players playing two humans each and
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one player playing all the zombies, or five players where you have or six
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players I guess where you have four humans and two zombie players. At those
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numbers, the dice rolling in different actions get spread about pretty easily. The
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big trick with Last Time on Earth is just making sure that you keep the
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turns moving. This is also the trick with a touch of evil, but
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in the game you are one of those humans. There is a scenario card
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that gives a goal for the round. It could be something as simple as
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kill a certain number of zombies and the humans are trying to kill the zombies.
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It could be to escape town, so you have to find keys and
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the keys to the truck and gas and then get out of town. It
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could be defend the mansion. So there's a scenario where there's a mansion in
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the middle of the board and the goal of the humans is to keep the
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mansion in violate until the end of the game. So those are just a
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couple examples. Okay, so that's a touch of evil. Generally, that's
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the way the game works. In terms of style. The art is all
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photographs. So that's one of the things that makes the Flying Frog games up
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everything before Shadouts of Brimstone really distinctive, is they all use photograph like photoshop
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or photographs that have been done with like makeup and clever costumes and then a
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little bit of photoshop. It gives them a really distinct kind of goofy look,
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but really in keeping with the theme. Like if you're talking about a
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sort of cheesy zombie movie, having cheesy photos really fits. It makes the
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theme really work well. A Touch of Evil is in a similar vein.
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It looks similar to Last on Earth in terms of the style, except that
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everything is about Colonial America. It's sort of really about the investigation of a
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supernatural entity in Colonial America. What makes a Touch of Evil different that in
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this game, instead of being teams humans and zombies, you are individual investigators
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trying to find and defeat the big bad The game does come with a co
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op mode where you're all investigators working together to try to find and defeat the
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big bad That one's a little bit less contentious and also generally features fewer fights
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with the big bad guy. Often you go until everybody's ready and then you
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all do one big fight against the bad guy, as opposed to in the
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competitive mode, you're kind of racing to get to get the stuff you need
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to fight the bad guy. The game itself involves moving around and doing investigations,
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and some of the investigations will result in bad things happening. A lot
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of them will result in you finding equipment or finding different benefits. This is
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also part of Last Night on Earth is searching for equipment, which is a
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crucial part of getting the humans armed up enough that they can defeat the zombies.
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In both games make extensive use of outcome randomness, so the humans and
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the zombies fight each other or the humans fight the minions of the Big Bad
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and A Touch of Evil, and you fight by rolling dice, and generally
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in both of these games there are opposed dice rolls with concurrent wounds. So
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in both games you could have the you could do damage to the villains and
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they could do damage to you at the same time. In I would say,
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the human characters in A Touch of Evil are much less fragile. You
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can get knocked out, but then you end up back at the town hall
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and that progresses the game. That increases the shadow track, which is sort
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of the tracking how much power the evil character has, but it doesn't result
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in you being out of the game or that sort of thing. And Less
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on Earth you have the characters. As they take wounds, they get closer
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to dying, and once they die you have to roll up it get out
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a new character, and generally a certain number of characters dying will be one
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of the ways the zombie player can win. Both games depend a lot on
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drawing cards and seeing what happens, or playing cards and seeing what happens.
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They're very thematic, really involve the theme and the art and the play style,
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but also very very luck driven. These aren't the kinds of games that
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you can play and if you really want your strategy to translate directly to victory
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or you want a very minor role of luck, in this game, you're
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constantly rolling dice and generally you need a fiver or better to hit, and
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so the likelihood of succeeding based on the dice is generally pretty low. You
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have to get a bunch of equipment. Like I said, thematically, these
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games are really good, and they both both Last Time on Earth and A
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Touch of Evil heavily welcome expansion material. So Last Time on Earth they've done
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that through a number of Hero packs, a number of zombie upgrades, additional
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scenarios you can buy, and then the big thing is they have two more
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big boxes of different stuff that you can add into the game to expand the
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materials that are available in the game. So there's more locations, there's more
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cards, there's more boards, etc. Etc. In A Touch of Evil
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they've done the same thing. They have two big box expansions along with several
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hero sets, of hero upgrades and some villain upgrades. Now, my friend
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Rob Hey, Rob has pretty much everything involved in Last Night on Earth.
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He has a Last Night on Earth fiend, and based on the fact that
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he had all this already, I have been content with just my one box
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of Last Night on Earth stuff. Instead, I have collected everything for A
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Touch of Evil, and I have almost everything. The only thing I don't
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have, as far as I can tell, is that when they came out
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with the tenth anniversary of A Touch of Evil, they came out with little
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minis for the four different significant locations in the base game. They have not
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made those available for separate purchase, and I don't really want to go pay
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one hundred dollars to buy a new copy of A Touch of Evil when I
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already have it, so I have not upgraded my set to match that,
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but I have all the other expansions. I have both sets of Hero upgrades.
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I have the villain upgrades are the additional villains. I have both big
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box sets, and actually recently got Hero weapon upgrades at gen Con, although
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we did not get to try those yet. All in all, both games
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are really fun. It's very hard for me to say that I like one
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more than the other. I think ultimately I like A Touch of Evil just
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a little bit better because I have a lot of different zombie games, but
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I really like Last Time on Earth as well, so I'm happy to play
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either of those if you and I are in the same space and you want
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to try one. They're both a good time, but they are really cheesy
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and very luck focused, and so you have to kind of have as an
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attitude the idea that the game is going to be that kind of game.
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But if you do, boy, there's a lot of fun to be had
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in the games from Flying Frog Productions. Well that's about it for me today.
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I hope that you've had a pleasant walk. I know I have,
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and I look forward to see you next time. Thanks for joining me.
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Your next walk is this pleasant than blind was? Goodbye? Brought to you
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by rattle Box.