Explore an Endless Map on an Alien World in ‘Vantage’
Vantage is a cooperative game where you explore an alien world. Will you complete your mission, or just discover a beautiful new landscape?
In Vantage you’ll explore, discover, and change your own little piece of an alien planet. It’s a game that’s both cooperative and deeply personal as you—and your friends—all work on your own to explore your own bit of a virtually endless world.
| Quick Guide | |
|---|---|
| Mechanics | Cooperative, Dice Rolling & Resolution, Missions |
| Players | 1 – 6 Players, Age 14+ |
| Playing Time | 120 – 180 Minutes |
| Similar Games | Destinies, Lands of Glazyr, |
| Publisher | Stonemaier Games |
Vantage Overview
The concept of Vantage is that you are a crew-member on an intergalactic ship heading to somewhere. On the way, your ship crashes and you and your companions (the other people playing with you) have been scattered around this alien world. You can communicate, but physically, you are separated by a vast distance and your exact location is nearly impossible to convey. Each crew member must separately explore, discover, and interact with their new planet.
It’s a wild concept for a game. Everyone is on the same team and playing cooperatively… But everyone is also playing their own game as any one player can’t do much to effect another person’s part of the world. There is comradery and communication, and sometimes a small amount of help. But for the most part, everyone is viewing the world from their own unique vantage point.
Designed by Jamey Stegmaier, Vantage was inspired by the open and endlessly explorable world of Breath of the Wild. Players can move about where they like, discovering a ton of new things along the way, stay put, or circle back to where they have already been. And this is a game where failure isn’t an option. Which is to say, your actions don’t fail. Things may be difficult and choices may have associated costs to pay. But if you set out to accomplish something during your turn, you will.
How to Play Vantage
One of the first things to know about Vantage is that it’s a game that comes with its own spoiler warning. Flipping through the rule book, you won’t even make it to the end of the first page without a note about not reading ahead in any of the storybooks or cards. This is a story-driven board game with twists, turns, and secrets to reveal.
Basic gameplay consists of players taking turns performing actions around the table. They can use skills to decrease the cost of an action and roll action dice to see if there are any additional complications. But actions always succeed, so these complications could come in the form of lost time, morale, or health.
In a turn, players can interact with the world by taking a location action (move, look, engage, help, take, or overpower), a card action (reference a card, some may reference storybook entries), or depart (move away from your current location).
They determine the cost of the action, roll dice for any additional complications, pay any costs and suffer any penalties, and then read the action result. Players will explore and interact with the world around them like this until the mission is completed, they complete a destiny, or any player’s time, morale, or health is reduced to zero.
Should I Buy This Game?
Vantage seems like it will be a difficult game to get into. Any time I open up a game box with multiple books to flip through depending on what’s happening on the board, I know that I’m in for a time. Will that time be good? Will I want to flip the table over half way? Who knows until we start. But with Vantage, these books hold secrets about the world and about your character’s story. And it does a good job of making you want to find more!
This is also a game with a surprising amount of replayability. There are hundreds of cards on top of the eight storybooks. You could spend hours playing and not uncover a fraction of what there is to see in Vantage. If a story-driven board game that was inspired by Breath of the Wild and is hiding a ton of secrets sounds like your kind of game, you should absolutely check Vantage out.
