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The world of Glow has been steeped in darkness. The light of the world has been dispersed. The colour that once enriched the world has been stripped away.
It is your job, as one of the seven trained adventurers, to collect the scattered shards of light. Every generation there is a new assortment of adventurers chosen and trained in their respective fields. They are sent off on an eight-day adventure to gather as many shards of light as possible. Whoever brings back the most shards will have their names written in history and bring the light (and presumably colour) back to the world.
This is an incredibly well written concept for what is in essence, an abstract dice rolling game. But does the game itself measure up equally to the interesting theme?
The Circle Is Again Reborn In Plight
So, I already alluded to what type of game Glow is. It is a complete and utter dice chucking game. A game where luck extends its icy grasp and drags you down into the RNG graveyard. Luck is usually the mistress that turns me away from games. Luck is never on my side. Like, EVER. I HATE luck driven games.
To send this review on a slight tangent in order to highlight my history with the RNG gods, here is a short story:
My friend was recently introducing me to Escape the Dark Sector, another luck based, dice chucking game. A story driven game where you flip a card and react to dangers by rolling and assigning dice as required. I presume. I never got passed the first card flip. You start the game with 12 health -if my memory serves- and we were facing a sentry gun. The gun shoots you for 1 damage every time you failed to roll and assign one of the correct dice needed to destroy it. I rolled the same results on my handful of dice twelve times in a row. 15 minutes taken to learn the game, a whole 10 seconds to luck my way into an incredibly early game failure.
And now back to Glow. Given my admittance of hate towards the dark mistress of luck, and my penchant for only attracting luck of the negative kind; would it be surprising if I told you that I love Glow? Because I really do. I LOVE Glow.
Lest The Unique Adventurer Here Stands
Everyone starts the game by selecting one of the seven aforementioned adventurers. This will also dictate what colour you are playing as, and your starting set of dice. Each character has a unique elemental attribute and corresponding ability trigger. The dice in Glow have 5 different symbols on them, depicting different natural elements. The colour of the dice determines which symbol will be represented twice on it. Five of the characters have a natural affinity of fire, water, air, rock, or plant.
For example: Moloc’h -the chonky-boy stone adventurer- will begin the game with 2 orange dice. The sides of the orange dice will have 1 of each affinity symbol on them besides rock, which will have 2. So, you will know that rolling for rock abilities will be easier for you to achieve if you have orange dice. Or at least more likely. Which matters for companion selection and map progression. More on those soon.
2 of the characters do not have elemental guidance. One of them has purple dice that allows them to progress quicker on the map. And one has yellow dice that can straight up net you victory points. There is also the character that starts with the red fire dice. They do not have an ability trigger, but they start with 3 dice instead of 2.
If all of this went straight over your head, don’t worry! It is all straight forward and intuitive when you get your hands on the components themselves. Long story short: each character is different, but not too different. They are each interesting to play and offer different approaches to the game.
To Regather The Forgotten Shards Of Light
So, what do you do in Glow? Mirroring the theme of the game itself, you will be playing over the course of eight days (rounds). During each of these days your simple task is to collect as many shards of light as possible. You will get the chance to recruit a new companion every day. They each come with their own triggered abilities and some come with extra little tricks and treats. Also, at the end of the turn, you will be travelling across the journey board. The abilities you trigger, and the route available to you to travel will both depend on the dice results from your roll.
Half of the fun in the game comes from the companion board. There are 5 locations on the board, one for each attribute. At the start of each round a random companion will be placed under each of the locations. At the game set up (and each round start) the active player is going to roll a handful of smaller dice. Or ‘diddy dice’ as I like to call them.
They are then placed on the companion board based on - you guessed it! – the results of the roll. Each player will get to take one of the available companions each turn, and consequently, take the dice in the same location. And that, dear readers, is the crux and the curse of the game.
Do you take a companion that compliments your character and companion’s abilities? Do you take one that triggers on certain symbol results because you have nothing for that symbol yet? Or do you simply take the one with the most diddy-dice on them for the chance of triggering more abilities? Because here is the kicker. Abilities trigger as many times as you have rolled results for. And the dice faces are not just single use, they trigger for every companion that requires that result. Even if it isn’t a result you want.
After all your abilities are triggered, you will then get to travel on the board. The further you get, the more end of game shards of light you will be able to claim. You have the option of travelling down different paths, towards different goals. And to travel down these paths will require you to roll certain symbols. This often causes you to need to either roll for abilities or for further movement.
With The Power In Elemental Hands
Rolling dice is all well and good, but there needs to be a healthy heaping of mitigation to pair it with. Luckily, Glow delivers on this front. You will amass re-roll tokens that will allow you to, well, re-roll some dice. These tokens are absolutely necessary in helping you roll exactly what you need. Or avoiding results you don’t need.
The icing on the cake is a nice little push your luck element to the game. This comes in the form of allowing you to backtrack on the score track to use a re-roll even if you don’t have any tokens. And you can keep going back further and further if you really need a particular result. And the further you get on the score track, the more and more sparse these re-roll tokens become.
There are also some neat little twists and turns in the game too. There are certain companions that will trigger spells to befall your opponents. There are companions that will trigger big point boosts but will cause their own demise. There are companions that will give you a new permanent big-boy dice, but they are also prone to dying.
There is a companion that introduces a new black diddy-die that will throw out a curse that will hinder any who take it (but you are immune). Taking certain paths on the board will have you sacrificing companions, blocked off if you have rolled certain symbols etc. There are even two sides of the board, each offering completely different gaming experiences.
As if there wasn’t already enough for you to consider during this game, there are also fireflies you need to collect. Some companions will come with fireflies and some will grant you tokens if you roll their abilities. Having fireflies equal to or exceeding the number of companions you have at the end of the game will net you some extra points. Why? Who knows?
The Darkness Before Us Slowly Expands
Every facet of Glow is dictated by luck’s icy embrace. And that is one of the key features of this game that might put some people off. Going into the game knowing it is essentially a luck mitigation game does help though. It can be disheartening to push your luck in a game that isn’t purely designed for the mechanic. Going back on the score track several times in a row is very tempting, and if you simply don’t roll what you need, it can leave you trailing behind for the rest of the game.
I am struggling to think of other possible negatives for the game. I guess you will just have to play it and find some for yourself!
The End Of A Journey
I think it is fairly obvious that I love this game. Even though I typically can’t stand luck-based games. Go figure. There is plenty to love in Glow. You can tell that it is a game that was very well play tested as all the small minute details and mechanics do well to enrich the overall experience. Six of the cards are taken out of the companion deck each game to form a slightly different game each time. Which pairs perfectly with the fact every companion is unique.
The two sides of the board are totally different and play out in interesting ways. The artwork is so stylistic and engaging. The components are of absolutely superb quality -cough- best dice in a game ever -cough-. Each of the characters are interesting to play as. Every combination of character and companions will give you a distinct experience with each play.
Two final little points to make in order to round off this review are as followed.
One: Considering I tend to avoid most games with dice, I was especially happy that I could even use my Zatu dice tray for this game. It was great to finally put it to some good use.
Two: (and more importantly) I reached out to Cédrick Chaboussit (the game designer) before writing this review to tell him he did a wonderful job with Glow. He replied and thanked me, (which really humbled me), and he informed me that Glow has done really well and so they are developing expansions for the game. Which I am already dying to get my hands on!
There is so much to write about with this simple little game. Writing any more might give my editor a headache however, so I will wrap this review up here.
Glow has a very agreeable price point and is definitely a game worth checking out!
