Players: 2-4
Time: 1 hour
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)

The Components

Gloom comes with a set of 110 cards and a rulesheet in a double-width tuckbox.

The Cards: Here's the first important thing about the cards in Gloom: they're transparent. You can see right through the cards (or, rather, you mostly can because there's a texture on the cards which very slowly opaques them as you stack more up). This is used to good effect in the game, because you have modifier cards that you stack on characters, and those modifiers appear in different places on different cards, thus you get to use whatever modifiers are still visible at any time.

The cards being transparent plastic have a couple of different side effects. First, they're flimsier than typical playing cards; I was a bit worried about this at first, but they shuffled fine when I had the whole deck, and just a little awkwardly when I had to reshuffle fewer cards during the game. A bit more annoyingly, some of the cards (the untimely death cards as it happens) feature black text on a white background; this is slightly hard to read because the black text on the back of the cards show through, but it was an aggravation, not a serious problem. There's a similar problem for event cards, which feature white text on red background.

Moving on to the cards themselves, there are 110 total, divided into 4 types: character cards, modifier cards, untimely death cards, and event cards.

The character cards are the only one that feature much artwork; they're pretty much entirely "color" cards, showing the members of 4 different families, and telling a little bit about them.

The modifier cards stack on top of these, and have three different spaces for modifiers and one space for attributes. They also sometimes include special effect text and always have color text. The modifiers are sometimes good and sometimes bad, and these are each clearly marked (red for negative, white for neutral, black for positive), which makes it extremely easy to get a general sense of how a character is doing from across the table. (Unfortunately counting up totals is a bit harder because the font used on the modifiers is mostly visible at 5 feet, but not necessarily at 10.)

The untimely death cards likewise go on top of characters. The way that the character, modifier & untimely death cards combine on the table, with cards blocking some but not all aspects of previous cards is entirely cool. It works well, it looks great, and it allows for some unique gameplay aspects. It makes the decision to use the transparent plastic cards well worth while.

Finally, you have the event cards, which are just played for special effects.

One unfortunate decision in all the card types is that the text is all very small. I could read it, but other people had problems, particularly against some of the background colors. Backgrounds colors, now that I mention them, are (well) used to separated the different types of cards: there are black backgrounds for the text of chararacter and modifier cards, white backgrounds for untimely death cards, and red backgrounds for event cards. Unfortunately the combination of font colors and backgrounds makes some of the text hard to read; I already mentioned the minor problems on the event and untimely death cards that result from the transparency. Much worse is the red text that appears on the black modifier and character cards, which is very difficult to read; fortunately, it's just the color text (the special effect text on those same cards is in very clear white).

Despite the various problems mentioned with the text, I find the game entirely playable, albeit with a little squinting at those red-on-black text; I may not when I'm 40.

Before closing out on the cards, it's worth discussing their mood and theme. They're all three-colored, white, black, and red, and that helps kick off the gothic mood of the cards. The pictures & names on the cards are positively Gorey-esque. You have characters like Darius Dark, the sinister ringmaster, and Balthazar, the unfaithful hound, and when you play modifiers they say things like "was startled by snakes" and "died of despair". Gorey's world of ominous Victorian horror is extremely well evoked; I'd go as far as saying that this is one of most thematic games I've played.

Rulesheet: A small folded up rulesheet, black and white on glossy paper. It's illustrated, and the rules described herein are pretty simple. The rulebook is unfortunately not that well organized. Worst was that there was no actual section on ending the game; that info was scattered across the sections on the "Untimely Death Cards", "Strategy", and the introduction. The rules would have been a big problem if the game wasn't so simple.

Card Box: This game unfortunately is packaged in one of those double-width tuckboxes, which means that your two piles of cards are going to get all intermingled during storage. Worse, the tuck is on the side, so you have to slide the first set of cards down, then the second. I know this kind of box is still relatively common for card games, but it's still bad as well.

Overall Gloom gets huge Style points from a number of areas, including: a very innovative component design that allows for innovative gameplay; well-designed cards that are easy to understand and easy to use; and terrific theme & color. My only major complaint is the readability issues, particularly on the color text, but to a lesser extent on any type. On the whole I've given Gloom a "4" out of "5" on Style; if not for the typeface size (and sometimes color) it would have earned a perfect score.

The Gameplay

The object of Gloom is to ensure that the most terrible tragedies befall your family before their untimely deaths. Because suffering insures great rewards in the afterlife.

Setup: Each player takes the 5 characters forming one of the families of Gloom and lays them face-up in front of himself; each player also takes an initial hand of five cards.

Play: Play is simple; each turn a player can take two actions. On the first action he may play any card or discard a card; on the second action he may play any card except an Untimely Death cards or discard a card. Then the player draws back up to their hand limit (initially 5, though modifier cards may increase this or decrease this).

There are three different cards that players can play: modifiers, untimely deaths, and events.

Modifier Cards. These are the heart of the game. They have little bubbles on them which give players negative pathos points (which are good) or positive points (which are not). The cards are laid out so that there can be up to three bubbles on each card, top, middle, or bottom. Each card covers the bubbles on the cards below it only in those spots where it has bubbles. The card distribution is also set up so that the topmost space is pretty common and the bottommost space pretty rare.

Just to be clear: you want those terrible negative pathos points in the game, because suffering is good! Thus, you lay negative cards on yourself and positive cards on opponents who have overly pathetic characters.

Some modifier cards also have "story icons", which give various attributes (e.g., beast) which might be used by other cards, and most frequently give bonuses for certain types of death (e.g., a character who is "torn apart" gets bonus points if they were previously taunted by a tiger or menaced by mice).

Finally, some modifier cards also have special effect text. In fact, this is one of the most clever aspects of the game design: positive cards (which you don't want for scoring purposes) tend to give you good effects, such as card draws and higher hand limits; negative cards (which you want for scoring) tend to give you bad effects, like losing part of your hand, or lower hand limits, or losing your next turn. Some of these effects are instant, while others are continuous--staying in effect until a new modifier is played, covering up the special effect text of the current one.

Untimely Death Cards. As noted, untimely deaths can only be played as your first action. They can also only be played on characters with a negative Pathos, as tragedy must precede death. They lay a character to rest, locking in their current Pathos value for final scoring.

Event Cards. These cards have various special effects, such as moving around modifiers or even raising dead characters. There are only 12 in the deck, so they're not a big deal.

Ending the Game: The game ends when one family is entirely dead; at that point each player scores points only for their dead characters. Whomever has the lowest score from their dead family members is the winner.

Storytelling: There's wonderful color text on all of the cards. For example, Lord Slogar, the Brain in a Box, can be pierced by porcupines, then married magnificently, then widowed at the wedding, then die old and alone (for a total pathos value of -45). The rules suggest you take this opportunity to tell stories as you play cards, for example explaining how after being pierced by porcupines, Lord Slogar fell in love with his beautiful nurse, but then she tragically died from a freak case of porcupine allergy. This is indeed loads of fun.

Relationships to Other Games

Gloom (2004) is a beer & pretzels game, meaning that: it has thematic, humorous gameplay; the mechanics are not terribly complex; there is a large "take that" element involving attacking other players, typically through the play of cards; and there's a lot more randomness than strategy in the game.

Previous beer & pretzels card games that I've reviewed include Battle of the Bands (2004). the Portable Adventures (2003), and Dungeoneer. Like many other recent beer & pretzels card games this one seems to have much better constructed mechanics & much more carefully considered gameplay.

The Game Design

To be clear, Gloom is a beer & pretzels card game, and that means that it has some elements that "serious" gamers won't like, including that it's chaotic, it's random, and it's got a pretty low strategy factor.

However, given those attributes of its genre, I think it's a very well-designed entrant to the genre. Here's some of the elements that I liked:

Point & Attribute System Innovative: Though this is mainly an aspect of the components, I'll reiterate that I think the way that you sum up 3 Pathos point values, and also consider one attribute is very well done. It's simple, but allows for some interesting gameplay. The fact that different things remain in effect when you cover a card also allows for some interesting tactical choices.

Balance of Cards Very Interesting: I love the fact that the cards are somewhat balanced, so that "bad" cards that you play on your opponents often give them some benefit, while "good" cards that you play on yourself often give some penalty. This takes a lot of the sting out of a "take that" attack and makes Gloom one of the only card games I know of where you might consider playing one of those "bad" cards on yourself.

Take That Play Well Controlled: All the modifier cards that you play tend to stay on a character. This means, fairly notably, that there's a limited supply of cards that you can use against other players. Thus, as the game winds toward an end you start being able to play a little better, with a little less interference from your opponents. This is really nice, especially when compared to some beer & pretzels games where endgames are interminable because attack cards are constantly being played.

Here's some of the design I liked less:

More Chaotic with More Players: The more players you have, the more people who will be attacking your really strong characters, and this can be frustrating.

Randomness of Untimely Deaths High: More importantly, the randomness can notably affect your play if you happen not to draw untimely deaths. In the two games that I played one player never drew enough untimely deaths in each, and so they were destined to lose, with no real chance to get points. I can accept this in a fairly light game like Gloom, but it's still a definite flaw. (Personally, I'd be tempted to separate the untimely deaths into a second draw pile, and then allow players to draw as much as they wanted from either pile on their draw phase.)

On the whole, Gloom is well-designed, with some nice mechanical nuances. It plays simply and fast. It thus earns a high "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Gloom is one of my favorite beer & pretzels designs. It's light and it's random, but it also includes some well designed mechanics that were clearly carefully thought out and definitely play well. The only particularly notable complaint is in the components; though they're overall beautiful, some of the type is hard to read.

I don't play a lot of beer & pretzels for recreation, but this will be one that I do.