- I enjoyed Reactor 21 a lot. While the mechanics foil down to basic Blackjack, the mechanics added to the base game allow the concept of Blackjack to take an entirely new shape.
- Every decision needed a debate in Reactor 21 because the game is quite unforgiving. In our test, we had to make it slightly easier to account for the bad card luck.
- As someone who understood blackjack, it made understanding this game easier. However, Reactor 21 adds much more meta-game to the original blackjack formula, which took a bit to learn.
- The game, like blackjack, is entirely luck based. However, Reactor 21 gives you some breathing room to make mistakes and forces you to make otherwise bad decisions to risk reward.
- The stress of each decision and relief of a card that saved the game made the setting so much more real. It almost felt like we were balancing real nuclear reactors. The game does really well in balancing risk and allowing players to take risks to get a better result.
- A problem we ran into was not enough chances to recover in the event of too many “dead draws”. Even if you played perfectly, you could draw a max of 3 bad cards before you lose. This made the game really tough to win. We then expanded the limit of “instability” points to allow more breathing room.
- In my opinion. All the game needs is some theming and places to put points.
- Yes. Even for non-blackjack players, I think the game stands well enough on its own to be a complex game of risk and luck that requires decisions at every turn.
- In act one, players draw their first card and need to choose which reactor to add it to. In the second act, players have stabilized their reactors or have rising instability (depending on their luck). By the third act players need to make tough calls to balance their reactors.
- The game is entirely collaborative. A decision can greatly change the outcome of the game in the unforeseeable future, meaning every move counts. We were excited to see cards and devastated when we drew bad ones.
- The game has a nice theme about balancing nuclear reactors that are one wrong move away from destruction. I am not sure if any other game could highlight that stress as much as blackjack. The gameplay and setting blend seamlessly I’m my opinion.
- Hectic. Hard. Chance.
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