Discmaster

Genre: Board Game / Card Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Discmaster, released on Nintendo Switch in 2020, is a game with Board Game and Card Game elements, which underneath its whimsical medieval fantasy-themed exterior, largely boils down to an attempt to update a game whose roots are as old as Ancient Egypt – Tic-Tac-Toe.

Any school child could probably tell you the two main game design issues that plague Tic-Tac-Toe. One: the center square is clearly the strategically optimal position to take, and as a result players will overwhelmingly be drawn to taking that square first. And two: the game is so simple, and the board fills up so quickly, that virtually any game between two opponents of even moderate-level intelligence will end in a draw. As such, any game seeking to update Tic-Tac-Toe will inevitably have to address these issues.

Discmaster does this quite elegantly, with both of these issues being addressed by one simple solution. Rather than placing a simple passive symbol on a 3×3 board, players place a randomly-drawn token from a “deck” of tokens, and rather than being only a passive marker to claim a square, these tokens actively attack and defend against adjacent spaces each turn based on the positioning of symbols on that token. As such, pieces are being removed from the board nearly as often as they are placed, making games last longer and rarely lead to a tie. Also, while the center square may be optimal for claiming victory, it’s also the most vulnerable spot on the board, and placing a token there too soon will almost certainly lead to it being destroyed.

Unfortunately, this solution is only half-finished, and this feels more like a proof-of-concept than a complete game. Players can choose one of three different characters to play as, with each character associated with their own unique “deck”, each with a signature special ability. Unfortunately, you have no way to see these decks, no way to change them, no way to influence which pieces you draw, and you can only ever have two of these pieces in your hand at a given time, and only see one of your opponent’s pieces. What’s more, many of the tokens you draw are absolutely worthless to do anything, save for taking up a space on the board.

As a result of this, all of the wonderful potential strategy this game could have had goes out the window, as your fate is all too often in the hands of the random number generator deciding whether this is the turn where you draw the token you need, or if you instead get a piece that does nothing but sit there and beg the opponent to easily kill them.

It’s a perplexing omission, and one made all the more confusing because the game’s presentation seems like it could have easily led in a deck-building direction, or even potentially the direction of a Collectable Card Game. The characters depicted on the tokens and in the game’s artwork speak to a fantasy kingdom peopled by anthropomorphic animals, like a Harry Potter-esque wizard pig and a sneaky ninja cat. The action is backed by a cinematic-style soundtrack, and there’s short little grunts and shouts as the characters attack each other. It definitely feels like someone did try to put some effort into this game, well beyond what the $2 price tag would seem to call for.

Yet, in other places, this game just comes across as frustratingly amateurish. This is one of those games that refuses to let players use a Pro Controller, forcing players to play with a single Joy-Con for no reason – it’s not like there’s motion control. In handheld mode, game has some touchscreen support in menus (in fact, at times it forces you to use the touchscreen) but doesn’t let you place discs using the touchscreen, something that seems obvious. Also while in handheld mode, you cannot use the left Joy-Con’s directional buttons, you have to use the analog stick.

In the game’s single-player campaign, players need to re-play levels repeatedly to earn enough “chests” to progress, something that just makes everything more tedious. There’s also cross-chat between the characters before each fight, but there’s nothing even close to resembling a compelling story here, so it just feels like the game wasting our time.

Like I said, Discmaster feels like a game that was only half-finished. The artwork and presentation is good, and the core gameplay concept is excellent, but the game doesn’t build on that core concept to make a compelling gameplay experience, and the game’s structure and control issues are just terrible. It’s games like this that really disappoint me – not games that are awful from top to bottom, but games that clearly could have been so much better, but never got that extra care they needed to become the better game they’re on the verge of being. What a shame.

tl;dr – Discmaster is a game that combines Card Game and Board Game elements, updating the classic game of Tic-Tac-Toe with fantasy characters with pieces that attack each other on the game board. This is conceptually an excellent idea, but the execution here is terrible, not only failing to build on that core idea, but surrounding it with poor game design and terrible controls. This really had potential to be something great, but as-is, it’s just a waste.

Grade: C-

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