Revenge Of The Turkeys!

Modern (animal, comedic)
Dread Vector
2017
Complexity: 1

So it occurred to me that every Spooktober I review thematically-appropriate games to go along with the season, but why don’t I do the same for other holiday seasons? Well obviously because Halloween is a holiday that has an entire genre associated with it, whereas other holidays are much more specific and any games that would fit them thematically would have to be specifically made to do so, and likely be a slapdash mess of concept over quality… yeah, that does pretty much sound like most of the games I review.
Note: This is also the first test of a somewhat radical change to my rating system, which will hopefully make the overall score more reflective of the overall quality of the product.


Character Creation: 1/5
Players in Revenge Of The Turkeys! take on the role turkeys on a mission of revenge… which I suppose was a given. Players create their turkey by rolling 1d6 to determine their “Character” (e.g, Lover, Renegade Jokester) another to determine their “Skill” (e.g. Intelligence, Diplomacy, Weapons) and another to determine if their turkey favors party unity or separation. None of these things have any actual effect on gameplay.

Mechanics: 1/5
Normally in this section I summarize the game’s rules, but this time I think it would be easier to just quote them in their entirety.

Your actions are determined by your motivation to align or separate the party and your action roll. Roll 1 D6 to determine if your action is successful (success is a D6 roll with an even number).

Now from that I am led to assume that every check is just an odd/even roll with success on an even result… and that your character has literally no effect on the outcome of any roll in any way. Also, that is pretty much the entirety of the rules, there’s no rules for dealing damage, no rules for receiving damage, no rules for winning or losing (other than drowning if you look up while it’s raining). Honestly I don’t have anything sassy to say about this, it isn’t exactly bad, it isn’t exactly anything, it’s just kinda nothing.

Writing and Presentation: 1/5
The rules are explained extremely minimally, even for as minimal as they actually are they still manage to be under-explained. I still find myself wondering if things like the skills and attitude on unity versus separation are actually supposed to have any effect on the game.
Overall there’s nothing impressive in the presentation, I kinda want to give them a little credit for using and uneven two-column layout, but text from the left column repeatedly runs into the right one. There’s a single image of a combat turkey with headband, bandolier, and gun which to be fair is mildly amusing, but I would much rather have seen that space devoted to something else, like, maybe actual game rules,

Final Remarks
Revenge Of The Turkeys! Is a two-page thanksgiving-themed game, and as such I went into it with extremely low expectations, and yet as is so often the case I somehow managed to have set my expectations too high. Weirdly enough, I actually find myself wanting to check out the publisher’s other holiday-themed games, if for no other reason than to see if they’re even lazier reskins of this game.

Base Points: 4
Character Creation: 1/5, Mechanics: 1/5, Presentation: 2/5
Adjustments: −1
Setting: N/A, Writing: −1, Content: N/A

Overall Score: 20% (3/15 Points)
I’m thankful that I won’t be expected to review another Thanksgiving-themed game for an entire year.