Stone Age

Prehistoric (fantasy)
Self Published
2010
Complexity: 4

Stone Age is—unsurprisingly—a prehistoric role-playing game, which is a setting that seems like it would be interesting, but is extremely underutilized. It’s also another 24-hour RPG, which as previously stated I like reviewing because they tend to be short and interesting. For a 24-hour RPG it’s also a bit… let’s just say “ambitious,” and you should keep the time restraint in mind while reading this review because me doing so while writing it would be unfair to other games.

[New Size Labels]

Greeting obscure role-playing game enthusiasts! I have now added a size label to all reviews indicating the length of the document in pages. You can now browse reviews of games that are 1, 2–29, 30–100, or over 100 pages in length. The new labels can be found on the sidebar with all the others.

Technical stuff: Page count is based only on "content pages" excluding covers and character sheets or similar pages (that's how I was qualifying things as one page, so I'm sticking with it). Also, any digital documents laid out in two-page spreads will be categorized by laid-out pages, not by PDF page count.

Update: changed the labels a bit, now they display in order and all of them actually work.

Above the Earth

Modern (superheroes)

Innocence Games
2004
Complexity: 1

Above the Earth is another 24-hour RPG, which I tend to review a lot of because they’re generally A: Free, B: Short, and C: Based on more experimental ideas. It’s also a superhero RPG, which just happens to be the most broken and unbalanced genre of role-playing game since, let’s be honest here, there is no way Batman and Superman are anywhere near the same power level, but in comics they are. This seems to be the problem that Above the Earth tries to solve.

Aki

A cute little role-playing game
Modern (anime, social)
Rävsvans Förlag
2004
Complexity: 1

Aki is a game inspired by slice-of-life shoujo manga… alright, well if anyone’s still here it’s a gave about ordinary life and social interactions--they are very clear on the point that there is nothing extraordinary and/or exciting, just relationships and stuff like that. It’s also apparently a “Triple Dogma award winner 2004” for best rules, most creative, and best graphic design. I can’t really find any information of the Dogma awards, but I assume it’s just a Swedish thing. Oh yeah, this game is Swedish, probably should have mentioned that. However I will be reviewing the English version, since as far as I know I do not speak Swedish--I do like Donald Duck though.

Awaiting the End

Universal
Future Proof Games
2014
Complexity: 1

Awaiting the End is a game about “a group of people awaiting a doom in an unpleasant place,” which makes it only slightly more uplifting than Camwhores. It’s also a GM-less game focused almost entirely on storytelling, which is the sort of thing that usually end up being a bit too role playing and not enough game for my tastes.

Hogwarts

Hey look another fan-made Harry Potter RPG. Since the official one continues to not exist.

Frogger

Modern [fan game]
Self Published
2006
Complexity: 1

So I decided to cover another video game-based game, one that seems to be from the same 24-hour RPG challenge as the DDR one. Now you may assume that this is a game based on the 1981 arcade game Frogger, and that’s a pretty fair assumption to make. It is called Frogger, and uses themes from the game Frogger--plus I already reviewed a game based on Dance Dance Revolution, so it’s not like that would be outside the realm of things that exist--but it is actually a game which uses Frogger as a metaphor.