Mission: Cupid’s Wings

Unspecified (comedic, fantasy)
Dread Vector
2018
Complexity: 1

You may recall during my review of Revenge of the Turkeys I suggested that I found myself curious if the publisher’s other holiday-themed games were of… let’s just say “similar quality.” So now I find myself looking at Mission: Cupid’s Wings, a Valentine’s Day themed game, where players play as cupids trying to help another cupid named Dreamer who needs to make two creatures fall in love while also being distracted by their own amorous ambitions.

Ghostbusters International

Join me in checking out Ghostbusters International, the second edition of the award-winning Ghostbusters role-playing game, which isn’t winning any awards.

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.

Clown Cops

Modern (comedic, crime)
Memento Mori Theatricks
2001
Complexity: 2

That’s right, I’m reviewing another clown-themed game. In fact, I will not rest until I’ve reviewed every clown-themed role-playing game I can find.
On a related note, I will be resting after this because Clown Cops is the only other  clown-themed role-playing game I could find. It’s also one of the most eccentric I’ve encountered. And if you stop and consider the games I’ve reviewed, you may realize that “most eccentric” is a pretty bold claim for me to be making here. Also, it is very important to keep in mind while reading this review that this is a very real game, I am not just making this up. So get some milk and animal crackers and enjoy—no, seriously, those are required to play.

The House Always Wins

Modern (comedic, horror)
Self Published
2018
Complexity: 1

The House Always Wins is a game about characters in a house, trying not be be killed by said house, and failing. It seems that this game was made as a student project, as there is reference to material being added “post-in-class-presentation,” but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go easy on it. The fact that is is a non-commercially-distributed product means I’m going to go easy on it.

Clown Helsing

Modern (comedic, horror, vampires)
Self Published
2015
Complexity: 2

Let’s try something different, shall we? How about a game about vampire-hunting clowns? No, that’s too different? Well too bad, you’ve already started reading the vampire-hunting clown game review so you might as well buckle up and enjoy the ride.
Clown Helsing is--as previously stated--a game about clowns who hunt vampires. Why clowns, why vampires, why anything? You’ll just have to read on to find out. Or I guess you could just read the book, but then you’d be missing out on my whimsically meandering commentary.

Cannibal Contagion

A Horrific Survival Comedy Role-Playing Game
Modern (comedic, horror, zombies)
Alliterated Games
2008
Complexity: 3

So it occurs to me that my ‘horror’ game reviews have been almost entirely focused on splatterpunk/slasher/gorefest type games and not suspenseful, psychological, ‘real horror’ games. I have no plans to change that.
Cannibal Contagion is a zombie survival game, although it specifies that it can be about other things than zombies—provided said things are effectively zombies, like the demons in Demons—but really, it’s clearly intended as a zombie game. It’s probably worth noting that while this is a digest-size book, it also weighs in at a meaty—pun intended—200+ pages.

Evil Dead: Swallow This!

[d20 Modern supplement]
Various (comedic, horror) [fan game]
Self Published
2003

BAM! Surprise bonus review—well, actually I guess I don’t really have the audience for anyone to be surprised or not surprised by this bonus review, but I’ll just pretend like I do. Anyway, I came across this document while doing research for Evil Dead D6—yes, I actually do research on these things—and it seemed interesting, so I decided to review it. But since it’s so short, I decided not to count it as a regularly-scheduled review.

Evil Dead D6

Various (comedic, horror) [fan game]
Self Published
2002
Complexity: 2

Now you may be asking why I, some weirdo on the internet, would be reviewing a fan-made Evil dead D6 system conversion from 2002 and originally distributed via a—surprisingly still operational—Tripod site, when there’s a perfectly good Army of Darkness role-playing game from Eden Studios. And if you are, then you obviously don’t understand how I do things around here.
As stated, this is a fan game, which generally means I’m going to be uncharacteristically nice in my review because the creator never expected anyone to pay for the game.

PreHysteria

Prehistoric (comedic)
Fantasy Core Games
2012

So it turns out that I have a bunch of games I downloaded and either never read, or completely forgot about. This is one such game.
As one may guess, this is a caveman-themed game—which there really don’t seem to be too many of—and also seems to be intended by the creators to be played while drinking heavily. But I don’t drink heavily so I’ll be reviewing it totally sober, which in retrospect may have been a bad idea.

The Veggie Patch

Medieval (comedic, fantasy)
Polgarus Games
2006

Introduction
If there’s one thing that grabs my attention when it comes to a role-playing game, it’s putting players into non-traditional roles—as evidenced by my glowing review of Creeks and Crawdads. Sure playing a musclebound barbarian or a suave space pirate is fun, but it doesn’t really pose much of a challenge to one’s creativity. But you know what does pose such a challenge? Playing as sentient vegetables, and as you may have already figured out, that is exactly what The Veggie Patch offers.

Creeks and Crawdads

Post-Apocalyptic (animal, comedic)
Crustaceum Games
1986

Introduction
Creeks and Crawdads is a post-apocalyptic role-playing game with a twist, no rugged armored sports car driving heroes, no scantily-clad three-breasted pyrokinetic mutant babes, no cyborg bears with laser eyes, just sapient crawdads. Yes, in this world only the lowliest creatures survived the atomic war and you play as hyper-intelligent mutated crawdads. Just to be clear here, when I say “hyper-intelligent” I of course mean by crawdad standards, by human standards they’re profoundly stupid. For example, the most intelligent crawdads have the noteworthy abilities of being able to count to 7, remember how many members are in their group and all their names, and remember things for several “sleeps.” So let’s dive in—okay I swear that’s the only aquatic pun—and check it out.

TWERPS: The World's Easiest Role-Playing System

Universal (comedic)
Reindeer Games, Gamescience
1987
Complexity: 1

Introduction
Published in 1987, TWERPS is one of the first “superlight” roleplaying system. The game was originally published in a pink 4.5×7-inch 8-page booklet—i.e. It is very very small. The minds behind this madness were Jeff & ‘Manda Dee—yes, the Jeff Dee who did some of the best D&D illustrations. So let’s get into this unnecessarily complex review of an unnecessarily simple game.