Reviews:
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While only ideal playing with a friend, Ship of Fools manages to be both simple and complex… and compelling
I’ve said before that getting the family to play inherently multiplayer games with me can be a challenge, but luckily this weekend my oldest daughter was home for the holidays and I was able to pry her to try this one out with me. We both walked away feeling pretty glad that she did, as this was a pretty intense title that had fundamentals with its controls and play that made sense quickly, but then plenty of nuance to learn people and things to unlock in order to improve your future runs in true roguelike style. Where I feel most co-op games in this vein tend to allow or even encourage you to fall more into roles, Ship of Fools really actively tends to place demands on both players to be fluid, responsive, and to communicate clearly. The need to coordinate who is moving guns to the other side of the boat, whether to address threats on both sides or to double up when there’s a major threat requiring both at once, is pretty constant, but for the majority of your run it will tend to feel like very reasonable demands. Of course when things get ugly with bigger threats you’ll likely need to take a couple rounds to get more juiced up and understand what to do better, but that’s what these sorts of games are all about. While finding a partner who is at least reasonably as capable as you are may be a challenge for some, if you’re able to find someone and you’re both determined to tackle some tricky challenges, this does deliver pretty nicely.
Justin Nation, Score:Nindie Choice! [8.1]