Sanity Test for Steam Spy: Intelligence and Propaganda

Mostly well-organized.

Given in prose, which is fine.

More could be added about the world.

The rules would still benefit from an overview. Players create characters. A deck is built based on their corporate affiliations. Each player gets a hand of 5 cards. The game is played as a series of encounters, wherein... etc

Names and quantities. No pictures.

Not needed.

Character creation seems pretty clear. What are the screens for?

Ok.

Most of the rules are there. The encounter flow chart is confusing.

¶It should be stated in the rules that only M5 and Encyclopedia Englandia Corporation and Diamond Club and Das Wort are included in this set. In fact, it would be better to not go into the details of the other organizations here.

¶Skills: "However skills do need some form of game mechanic before they can be activated and used." This sentence is not useful. Either tell us the mechanic or don't mention it.

¶Protagonist and antagonist are synonymous with good guy and bad guy. If you don't want morality associated, you should use different terms.

¶The term cell is used without being defined. Are there cells in a two-player game?

¶Equipment: "no character can have more than one equipment card for each encounter type": How do we know what encounter type the equipment applies to?

¶Encounters: "Add Ons may only be played if the appropriate Equipment card is already in play." How do we know?

¶"Then the following encounter is determined based on the result of the previous result" Huh?

¶If multiple characters are intended, it needs to be explained more fully how that works.

¶Initiative: The first section of Action, including the picture, should be here (or move the Control Slider section) to more clearly explain the cross-referencing. "Each action begins with the Protagonist drawing an initiative card" Drawing is usually taking into hand. Flipping over is more accurate. It should be specified that this one card determines the trait for both players.

¶Actions: "keeps the best results" This should be specified as highest rolls. "At least one die is always a yellow "Variable Die”": How can there be more than one? You don't need to specify using a different colored die at the end of the paragraph.

¶"Note that Skills are not tied to Traits, so as long as it applies to the appropriate Action Type" How do we know? It looks like you just line up the rows, but this should be stated.

¶"If a card initiates...": Some examples would help here.

¶Story Encounters: Goals is capitalized like it is part of gameplay. In general, this should more clearly lay out the process. 1. Infiltration. If Protagonist Lead -> Chase. If Protagonist Control -> Fight. Otherwise Antagonist chooses from level 2 story encounters.. etc.

¶"If X has already succeeded..." How do we track this? This whole section is confusing.

¶"Protagonist Success - At the end of any Story Encounter...": It's easy to misread these as being the same. A picture would help.

¶There's no reason to name Immediate Fight encounter and Story Fight encounter so similarly. It's just confusing.

Adequate.

How do we track who won each encounter?

There are still some open question like how equipment and add-ons are tied to skills or traits. The encounter flowchart needs to be better described.

There are still many errors. The rules need an editor/proofreader.

Examples: Typos: "Each corporation allows unique befits [benefits] for its employees."

"They employs"

"Encyclopedia Englania" or "Englandia"?

¶Apostrophe errors: "And in controlling transportation and shipping, the Transylvanian’s [no apostrophe] maintain"

"Prim, proper, cool and intellectual, M-5 agent’s [no apostrophe] delight"

"represent that character[']s three basic approaches"

"the target of the Antagonist[']s plot"

¶Capitalization is inconsistent with regard to actions, traits, encounters, etc.

Fine.

"A Steampunk Role Playing Card Game" is fine and hits some marketing points, but more could be said.

Fine.

Very good.

The pictures that are there are very good. I'd like to also see close-ups of one or more cards. You could also take a frame from the video of people playing the game.

A good combination of background, sales pitch, and some game mechanics. The writing could use editing. For example, words are often repeated: "Steam Spy is Card Game [card-based would suffice and why capitalized?] based Role Playing game." "clash of spies clashing against spies... A world... introduced to a Steampunk world.... running through it all are all of the plot twists". Commas are needed: "Watch for set 2, Shadows and Circuits[,] and set 3[,] Action and Adventure.... Also look for the original Steam Spy short story[,] Steam and Mirrors[,] online."

The background music is a little loud, and the acting is not great, but production value is very high and content is decent.

¶It looks like they play cards to a discard pile. Shouldn't most of the cards stay in front of the player for continued use?