Secret Science Sewer Siblings

Modern (anthro)

Cloven Pine Games

2019

Complexity: 2

Cowabunga dudes, dudettes, and dude-non-binaries! It’s time to check out another radical slice of not-quite-copyright-infringing gaming with Secret Science Sewer Siblings! A totally radical game about sewer-dwelling mutant siblings trying to rescue their kidnapped mentor. Okay, I’m going to stop talking like that now, being totally tubular isn’t as easy as it seems.

Character Creation: 3/5

Characters are defined by four attributes: Teenager, Mutant, Ninja, and Critter, which are assigned values from an array of 2, 3, 4, and 5. Players then chose their character’s critter type, signature weapon, role in the family, and favorite food. All fairly simple, so let’s make us a character.

Overall it’s one of those things that’s “just stupid enough to work.” The attributes are highly-thematic, but also more or less sufficient to cover all the situations that are likely to come up in the game. It actually reminds me a little bit of Ironclaw, where in addition to more traditional attributes a character’s race and job were defined and functioned as attributes.

Mechanics: 3/5

Overall the mechanics are fairly simple, when you want to do a thing roll a d6 with success on a result equal to or under the relevant attribute.If one of your character’s other qualities applies you get to roll 2d6 and take the lower result. An interesting aspect is that there is no form of hit points, instead failure can result in taking an ‘insecurity’ to one of your attributes, resulting in you being unable to use that attribute until one of the other characters takes an action to remedy the situation.

Basically it’s a fairly standard “rules lite” system, it works, but nothing fancy. The only real issue I see is that your favorite weapon is one of the things that allows you to roll two dice, which means that characters will have that advantage on almost every combat check they make.

Content: N/A

Small games like this are best when they don't rely on predefined content, and this game adheres to that. I just wanted to mention the table for randomly generating the threat the players face where you roll 3 dice and come up with a result like “Cyborg | Fungus-folk | From the Future! I like a good random table, especially one that gives you such random results.

Writing and Presentation: 2/5

Everything is more or less well explained with a fairly consistent tone throughout. Layout is fairly standard, two pages of two-column text with some appropriate illustrations. Overall it’s honestly just kinda “meh,” there’s a definite focus on concisity and simplicity over presentation.

Final Remarks

So that was Secret Science Sewer Siblings, a little game with a simple system and a simple predefined goal. Not spectacular by any stretch, but definitely good enough for what it is.

Available via: https://cloven-pine-games.itch.io/secret-science-sewer-siblings

Base Points: 8

Character Creation: 3/5, Mechanics: 3/5, Presentation: 2/5

Adjustments: 0

Setting: N/A, Writing: +0, Content: N/A

Overall Score: 53% (8/15 Points)