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Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr
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Description
Your latest patient has been rushed in following a serious heart attack on a flight from Sydney to London. That patient is Billy Kerr, he is 60-years-old, and he has been given days to live. Billy is left clinging to life by three memories that must be uncovered before he passes away. If you can connect with Billy, he might begin to share his stories and reveal the secrets of his past, ultimately allowing him to pass away peacefully. Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr is a co-operative game, from HUB Games, for 2-4 players. Players must work together to provide Billy with care, responding to medical emergencies while gaining his trust and providing palliative care. In each game you will need to piece together a lifetime of memories while being drawn deeper into Billy’s troubled past. You need to balance your time wisely, providing medical care at least once each round, but also spending time to talk with Billy to reveal his memories. The memories are illustrated by fantastic, evocative artwork. You’ll first reveal a partial memory – a blurry image to place into one of the timelines of Billy’s life. You’ll only see the full memory, in its complete detail if you press Billy for further details about that timeline. Of course, Billy might choose to tell you completely different rambling information – he can certainly be a little frustrating at times! The box contains 10 scenarios with ever increasing difficulty, and you should aim to succeed in each scenario to reveal the next step of the story before moving on. The game’s mechanisms develop as the story unfolds, introducing some more complex elements and plot twists. The game is fully re-playable by you or another group. Player Count: 2-4 Time: 45-60 Minutes Age: 14+
Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr is coming from Hub Games, the designers and publishers of Rory’s Story Cubes and Untold Adventures Await. Telling stories through games is something they’re known for, but the theme of Holding On seems like a huge step outside of their previous games.
Gamers should not be concerned though, as Holding On has been demoed at the UK Games Expo, Origins and GenCon with amazing feedback and is a hotly anticipated game for us as a result.
The Gameplay
Holding On is a co-operative campaign game, where players work as nursing staff tasked with providing care for the terminally ill. Your latest patient has been rushed in following a massive heart attack on a flight from Sydney to London.
When the game begins, all you know is this – his name is Billy Kerr, he is 60-years-old, and he has been given days to live. The co-operative mechanisms of the Holding On game are light, but you are working against a deck of cards which will throw you medical emergencies as well as opportunities to talk to Billy about his memories and try and piece together his past.
You gain partial memories throughout the game and piece them together as a jigsaw, and eventually you find the right lucid moments to push Billy to tell you the full memory. The art style for these memory cards is fantastic with the full memory revealing the clear picture from what is a board brush stroke, fuzzy image in the fragmented memory.
There are 10 scenarios in the full game and each promises to build on your knowledge of Billy’s life as you learn more throughout the game.
Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr – Coming Soon
After playing the first scenario at the UK Games Expo I’m really eager to try out more and find out more about Billy. Holding On does a fantastic job of enabling you to get invested in the character and I’m interested to see how new game mechanisms unfold to allow you to piece together his history.
If you’re a fan of co-operative games, legacy-style games or narrative games, or if you want a refreshing experience in terms of the game’s theme, then Holding On is definitely worth looking out for during Autumn 2018.
