Sanity Test for American Pandemic: The Party Card Game

Follows the expected sequence. The narrative is not "exceptionally clear and concise", which is what prevents a "9" score. The components are listed on the cover of the rule book.

Listed on the rule book cover.

The introduction clearly sets the expectation for what the players are supposed to laugh at.

The object is to celebrate being the worst off.

Concise bullet list on the rulebook cover.

Component pictures are present in the separate "Player-Layout" document.

Pages 4 and 5 describe the setup in detail. However, it does not mention the duplicate Hoard, Escape, and Quarantine piles for a 6-10 player game (as shown on the handout).

The Player-Layout document shows this quite well.

--Page 6: the Survivalist Game changes the rules for 2-6 versus 7-10 players. Yet the layout changes for 2-5 versus 6-10 players. This might cause confusion. Do the breaks have to be different?

--You should make it clear that the Pandemic card counts as one of the first-round cards. Instead of putting it on the "January" headline in setup, how about just putting it on top of the headline deck face down after shuffling? That makes step 2 of the setup section much simpler - the sentence "After determining how many rounds to play, flip additional headlines as needed" can be safely deleted.

--Second bullet of page 7: "Headline cards effects" should be "Headline card effects".

--The bottom two paragraphs on page 7 are redundant and may be safely omitted.

--The End of World Journal page 15: "Foods Cards" should be "Food Cards".

--There are quite a few complex rules in the "End of the World Journal". When the Game Play section says "For More Information", consider instead "For Important Information". Without learning the entire Journal, game play is more confusing.

--If I read this right, doing healthy things (like staying at home or using PPE) makes you LOSE this game. Wait, What?

--The Player-Layout illustration shows toilet paper covering the entire headline. In actual play, this should only cover the Reward section of the card, or perhaps be placed underneath it. Otherwise, later players in the rounds have to move them.

--"While this card is active" means what? During this round? For the rest of the game?

--The last sentence on page 11 is unnecessary and can be omitted (since Winning is at the top of the very next page).

--Do you make change if you put 5 Bad Luck points on a 4-point PPE card? This seems obvious, but is not specified.

--The Example Escape Phase is good - consider referencing it on page 8.

Pictures throughout the rulebook and journal explain things generally well (except for the issues mentioned above).

Final phase: consider changing the first sentence to "Total your Crazy and Sick Bad Luck Points together."

These rules are VERY long.

I can only give this 0 or 3 points. If I could, I would award this 2 points.

The Graphics and layout are clean and easily readable.

Leading with the Kickstarter success is a good idea. However, if they read that a retail copy will be $20-$30, I'm not so sure they will want to pay $80 for a GameCrafter version.

The backdrop fits the overall aesthetic. However, the placement of the Escape card is unfortunate because it collides with the logo.

It's OK - but it would be more effective if the backdrop were edited to move the cards over.

You have plenty of shots of people playing. Some of them need the exposure adjusted. Replacing one or two of them with closeups of some of the components would improve this section.

The description is well-done. The disclaimer about the pandemic's death and disability is important, but considering that half of the memes involve getting sick, I'm not sure how accurate it is.

The Kickstarter videos are no longer applicable, so they should be replaced.