
Tales From the Loop: The Board Game is a game by Martin Takaichi and Rickard Antroia, published by Free League Publishing. It is for 1-5 players. In this game, players take on the role of kids living in the 80’s in a strange world brought on by the construction of a particale accelerator called the Loop. They will go about living their daily lives meeting up with friends and family and going to school all while trying to uncover mysteries and secrets from this strange world. In the end, the players will succeed or fail together as a team. If they’re able to fufill the win conditions of the scenario before their time is up, they will be declared the winners.
To begin, the board is placed in the middle of the play area. The Insight and Enigma dials in the top right corner of the board are both set to 0. The Calendar token is placed on the Week 1 Monday space of the calendar. Players choose their character and take the corresponding Character Board and Trait Tile. The Trait Tile is placed in it’s slot on the Character Board, face up with the side that corresponds to the number of characters in the game. Players also take the corresponding character standee and 6 Time cubes. Players will then place a Favor cube on the Smiley face space of their Character Board’s Favor track. Players take their Iconic item from the Item deck that is listed on their Character Board. The deck is then shuffled and placed near the board. Players will then choose a scenario to play. It is recommended for the first play through to begin with the Bot Amok! scenario. The chosen scenario card is used as a reference during setup. As noted on this card, the machine figures and Event location tiles are placed on the board, using the grid. The corresponding machine sheets for the machine figures are placed dear the board with the standard response card on the designated space of the sheet. If a machine starts nearby an open location, then the response card is placed with the Routine side up. If the location nearby is not open, then the Alert side is placed face up. The Diary cards with the corresponding numbers as shown on the scenario cards are placed near the board with the red A side face up. The deck of remaining Diary cards are placed nearby. The Rumor cards have a symbol in the middle of the card that will match the symbols on the scenario card. These specific cards are shuffled together and placed in a stack on the draw space of the Rumor track. Rumor cards that are not mentioned on the scenario card are returned to the box. The School cards are shuffled together and placed on the corresponding space on the board. The Firewall tokens are placed facedown near the board. Rumor cards are drawn from the Rumor deck and placed face down on the Rumor track beginning with the first space. If there are any duplicate letter Rumor cards drawn, then they are set aside until there are four different lettered Rumor cards on the board. The cards that were set aside are then shuffled back into the Rumor deck. The Rumor tokens are placed on all the locations on the board that match the letters of the Rumor cards. Each player will then draw two Chore cards and keep one of them. The other is returned to the deck. The Chore cards and the Anomaly cards are shuffled separately and placed near the board. The Character standees are placed at the school ol location M. Any other tokens, cubes and cards from the box that are needed should be placed within reach. The first player is chosen and play now begins.

The game is played over a series of rounds. Each round is represented by a day on the calendar. Each round is divided into 3 phases; the School phase, the Adventure phase and the End phase. The first phase is the School phase. This phase is divided into preparations, the school day and machine actions. The first part of the phase is preparations. The players start off by reading the currently active Diary card so that players understand any effects for the round. Players will then replenish time by returning time cubes from their action space to the pool beside their character boards. Any Rumor cards that are currently left on the board are slid to the right to make space for new ones. If the scenario is played over 2 weeks and the current day is Monday of week 2, then each player draws two new chores cards and chooses one to keep. To start the School Day, if it’s a week day, all character standees are returned to the school at location M. The first player then draws a School card. As long as this isn’t the first round, then the player will draw a number of Rumor cards as shown on the top left section of the School card. The cards are placed face down onto the Rumor track from left to right. If there are no more spaces to fill then the cards are shifted to the right and will push off any extra. Each discarded card raises the Enigma by 2. The first player will then deal with the event on the School card. The test is mandatory and may allow the player to have help or it may even cause each player to roll the test individually. Finally the machines are dealt with for the round. If the School card has a Firmware Upgrade icon then an upgrade takes effect. Hacked machines are reset and will no longer count as being hacked. If a Firmware Upgrade was in effect or a machine was wrecked in a previous round, then the affected machine returns to play. All firewalls are removed from the firewall track. The machine is placed on it’s starting sector and the response card is set to routine or alert based on if the machine is nearby. If a sector is already occupied by a machine, then the machine is placed on an adjacent sector. Next the player checks for machine movement on the School card. The icons and arrows will show how a machine moves, either 1 or 2 sectors. It should be noted that 2 machines can not stand in the same sector. If a move would cause this to happen, then the machine only moves as far as possible before stopping in an unoccupied sector. As long as the move takes the machine through an occupied sector it can move through another machine. After moving all the machines, the response cards are updated based on the sector they are in. Now players are ready for the next phase.

The second phase is the Adventure phase. In this phase players will use their time cubes to perform actions. To begin this phase the first player checks to see if any requirements are met on the currently active Diary cards. Next player take turns taking actions. There are 3 types of actions; movement, adventure and special. There are 4 types of movement actions. Players can spend 1 time to walk from one location to another adjacent location. Players can take a bus ride between two locations with a bus stop by spending 1 time. The players will have to avoid any machines nearby, more on avoiding machines in a bit. If the player’s character has good favor with their parents, they can call them for a car ride for 1 time. This allows the player to move to any open location on the board. The player must then move the favor token one space down on the track. Finally if the player’s character controls a machine, they can spend a time token to take a machine ride. The machine is placed on a sector nearby the character’s current location. The machine will then move along the grid based on the movement value of the machine sheet. The move must end nearby another location but can pass or land on other machines on the way. Once the destination is reached, the machine and character standees are moved onto that location. Next are the adventure actions. These are scout, investigate, trade and hack. For 1 time, the player can scout a face down Rumor card on the same or an adjacent location or a machine at a nearby sector. Scouting a Rumor card allows the player to flip the card over without triggering it’s effects. Scouting a machine allows the player to place the two leftmost firewalls on the firewall track face up. For 1 time, the player can investigate by performing the test on a Rumor card with the same letter as their current location. If the card has not been scouted, then the player flips the card over and commits to the action immediately, more on tests in a bit. For 1 time, the player can allow all characters at their current location to trade items or anomalies. They’re able to exceed their item limit but will have to discard down during the End phase. Hacking costs a varied amount of time. It is a group action that allows the players to take control of a machine. First all the participating characters must be in a location nearby and spend at least 1 time. The cost to hack is the number of firewall spaces on the machine’s firewall track. The character with the most time invested is the hacker and will take control of the machine if successful. Starting from left to right on the firewall track, If the space has no firewall tokens yet, then a random firewall token is drawn and placed face up on the empty space. The top half of the firewall token is checked if the machine is in the routine mode and the lower half of the token if it is in the alert mode. A hack token is used to keep up with which firewall is currently being targeted and whether it is in routine or alert mode. If the firewall already has a token, or once a token is placed of it then the players will be able to start the hacking action. The color on the firewall indicates what action needs to be taken. The test is made just like with any other test. Other player’s characters can help, use items or combos. Tests can be a single color or tow that both need to be completed from top to bottom before being successful. If the test is successful the players move the Hack token to the next position on the firewall track. Once there are no more firewall tokens, the players have successfully hacked the machine and may use it. If a test is failed, then the machine’s response card becomes alert and the hack token is moved down to the lower section of the same firewall token. This is the new test that must be completed to move on. If the machine is already in the alert mode and the players fail a hack test, then the machine’s response card is check to see how it reacts. The failure affects all characters that participated in the hack attempt. Each player’s character that participated is moved to an adjacent location, moving to open locations if possible. Finally there are the special actions. These are rest and home for dinner. The rest action costs 1 time and allows the player to remove one condition or move the injured time cue one step to the right on their character board. If a time cube is removed from the condition, it is placed in the action space, more on conditions in a bit. The home for dinner actions is used when the player either can’t do anything else or decides they don’t want to do anything else. If the location their character is at is open, it only cost 1 time to go home. If the location is restricted, it takes 2 time. If the character is already at their home location, there is no cost. The character standee is then laid down on the location. This signifies that the kid is at home and is unable to help or participate in any further actions. If the player doesn’t have enough time or chooses to be late, the standee is left standing. The player can still help others with their tests at that location. Once players have spent all their time, the final phase begins.

The last phase is the End phase. In this phase players will perform a series of cleanup steps. They will discard excess items, earn good or bad favor, heal injuries, resolve chores and check diary cards. Starting off each player will discard down to four items, discarding any extras. The character’s iconic item may not be discarded. Any character standees that are lying down are home for dinner and they gain one favor, moving the favor token one place to the left. Any standees standing up are not home in time for dinner and must move their favor token one step to the right. If favor is ever reduced to the frowny face, then the character is grounded and must move 2 time tokens to the grounded spaces. They remain locked until the character’s favor reaches a meh or smiley face. If a character is injured the locked time token is moved one place to the right. If it leaves the last box, then it’s placed in the action space. Players then check to see if any of their current chores have been fulfilled. Successfully completed chores reward the player either immediately or in a later turn, but not later than the chore deadline marked on the calendar. If a player receives items that exceed the item limit, remain until the end phase of the next turn. Finally any Diary cards that refer to cleanup or end phase trigger at this time. Once all this has been taken care of a new round begins.

There are a few last things that should be mentioned. Earlier I mentioned avoiding machines, this is when a character enters a location with a machine nearby. First the player checks the response card to see if a test is required to avoid it. If there is a green check mark, then no test is needed. If a red block or yellow special icon is present, then a test must be made using the trait listed at the top of the card. A successful roll means that the character avoids the machine and no effects are triggered. A failed roll means that the machine’s response takes effect following the failure box on the card. Another thing to mention is insight and enigma. If a player fails at a test from a Rumor card or a Rumor card gets pushed from the Rumor track due to an excess of cards being drawn, then the Enigma track is raised by 1 and 2 points respectively. If the player succeeds at a test from a Rumor card, then the insight is raised by 1. Finally there are tests and the dice pool. A normal test or roll is made up of a dice pool of 3 dice against a particular trait. A number of extra dice are added to the dice pool if the character’s strength is used. Likewise a number of dice are removed from the dice pool when using a character’s weakness. Bonuses to the dice pool can be add by other character’s helping and/or the use of item cards. If a die comes up with a 6, then the test is successful. If not, then the test fail but the player can the result can be pushed. To push, the player takes a condition for their character, placing an unspent time in the slot of a condition of their choosing on their character board. This allows the player to then reroll all the dice in the test. If the test fails then the failure portion of the test from the card is taken.
The game continues until the specific win conditions for the scenario have been met. This is done by following the leads on the Diary cards and investigating rumors. Once the condition(s) has been met, the players win the game. However losing conditions are also determined in the same way. If these conditions are met, then it’s game over and the players lose.

COMPONENTS
This game has a lot to offer as far as components. Pretty much anything that you can think of, this game has. Everything from miniatures and standees to dice, cards and even dual layered player boards. There are plenty of cardboard pieces including rumor tokens, hack tokens, marker tokens, firewall tokens, various scenario specific tokens, trait tiles, event location tiles, a first player token, a calendar token, a magnetrine ship standee and several character standees, as well as the dials that attach to the board for enigma and insight. There are also dual layered character boards that are cardboard as well. The game comes with some wooden pieces. There are orange time cubes, black favor cubes and white counter cubes. There are plastic machine miniatures as well as 8 bright orange dice. There are 6 large machine sheets for each of the miniatures and a bunch of cards in two sizes. There are smaller item and anomaly cards and then the standard sized cards for scenarios, diary cards, school cards, chore cards, rumor cards and machine response cards. Finally there’s the game board. Phew! That’s a lot of stuff. Just looking at that huge list of pieces you’ll realize the box is packed full. The organizer in the box does a great job at keeping everything organized rather nicely. The artwork has this really retro 80’s Stranger Things style vibe to it that I really enjoy. The standees and character boards really help sell that feel too. The miniatures are really great. I noticed that my copy of the game had 2 spaces missing in the organizer that I’m guessing is for the miniatures from the 2 expansions that are available for purchase. The card quality is really good and every piece in this box is top notch quality. Needless to say, I really like the overall look and feel of the game. Like I said, you can definitely feel the theme coming out of this one. It’s really well designed and looks great. I really love it.
9 out of 10
RULEBOOK
The game came with two books included inside; the rulebook and a lore or world book. The lore book explains all about the setting of the game and even gives a timeline of how this world exists. It really helps makes sense of the game for those that care to take the time to read through it. I don’t think it’s necessary reading but it’s really nice to see it included with the game for those that want more on the world. The rulebook is laid out fairly straight forward although there are a few sections here and there that I found myself going back and forth through. I do wish that these parts had been a bit more streamlined so that I wouldn’t have had to flip pages repeatedly. The book is full of great pictures and examples of how to play the game, making it a lot easier to understand. The last page of the book has an alphabetic index of all the major topics so that you can easily look up whatever you need to find. The back of the book has a contents page with each major section of the book highlighted. The book also includes a whole bunch of variant rules for making the game easier or harder as players see fit. Everything from caring parents to erratic firmware for machines is included. I don’t know that I’d be ready to play any of the harder variants right now, but I’m glad that they’re there for when I get brave and decide to give it a whirl. Overall I think the book does a fine job of covering pretty much anything you need to know to play the game. I will say though that there are some key terms and stuff like nearby and avoid and adjacent that I had to read over several times before I fully got what it was trying to tell me. Don’t know if I just wasn’t getting it or it wasn’t explained properly. Either way, you really have to be careful and read everything in the book if you want to play the game correctly. That bothered me a bit but otherwise it was fine. Basically this isn’t one that you’re going to be able to speed read through in a few minutes and start playing the game. It will take some time to get through. Just be prepared.
8 out of 10

GAMEPLAY
As a big fan of Stranger Things and story driven games, this game immediately appealed to me when I first discovered it. However I didn’t realize just how much that I would enjoy it. Each scenario literally pulls you into this amazing world that the designers have created. Each new rumor draws your further and further down the rabbit hole, as you try to uncover the mysteries of the scenario. Of course you always have to be aware of where the machines are and what they’re doing so that you don’t get scared or injured. Being able to utilize different items and the correct traits for a particular task are key. That said, there’s a lot to enjoy with this one. With a ton of cards for each scenario, there’s plenty of new stuff to uncover every time you play the game. This makes the game highly replayable in my opinion, as the mixture of cards is going to be different every time. Another thing that makes this replayable is having a bunch of different character with different strengths and weaknesses. My first game I played solo with the Hick and the Bookworm. Thought they’d be a nice mix of characters. Seemed like on all the different videos that I watched, everyone was using the Computer Geek and I simply didn’t want to go that same route. In any event, I had so much fun leading my characters around the board and experiencing all that the game has to offer. I thought it was pretty appropriate that the Hick’s favorite cousin showed up as his first chore to deal with, while the Bookworm was really wanting a transforming toy. Guess they’ve been reading lots of comics or manga. With those first hints of story, I was hooked. The game really came to life for me. Needless to say, I really enjoyed playing this one solo. There’s lots of challenges and it was a lot of fun. Multiplayer was a little slower to play but still enjoyable none the less. My family found it a bit long, but I’ve heard that some of the other scenarios aren’t quite as long as the first one is. So far I’ve only played the first one with other players. I think once I determine the length of each scenario, I’ll be better able to figure out which ones my family would enjoy more. Don’t get me wrong, they did enjoy the game. They just didn’t like that it took so long to play. Still need to try it out with just 2 players, but I’m sure it will be much like playing the solo game, so I’m sure it’s great. Overall I think fans of shows like Stranger Things or that genre will enjoy the game world and mysteries of this one. I also think anyone that enjoys story driven games like Lands of Galzyr, Spire’s End or any others like these, will really enjoy this one as well. The game is family friendly but probably best with teens or older, just because of all the things that you have to keep up with. This is a game that I highly recommend.
9 out of 10
OVERALL
Tales From the Loop: The Board Game is a scenario driven adventure game of exploration and excitement. The game time varies based on the scenario chosen. Most play sessions last from around an hour to two and a half hours. That’s a bit longer than my normal chosen game length, but time goes by quickly so it doesn’t feel like you’ve played that long. The components are amazing quality. There’s really a lot to love here, even without prepainted miniatures. The rulebook is a bit long and takes a bit of time to read through. It also isn’t perfectly streamlined so you’ll find yourself flipping back and forth a good bit. Thankfully there’s a great index at the back of the book. The game itself is a lot of fun. With 7 different scenarios included in the box along with all the variety of cards that you may or may not see during the game and there’s plenty to keep you busy for awhile. The multiplayer game is really good but the solo is top notch. With all the amount of variability and scenarios, the game is highly replayable. It’s also family friendly but I’d recommend playing with teens or older as there is a good bit to keep up with and younger players may become overwhelmed. Fans of Stranger Things or story driven games like Lands of Galzyr or Spire’s End should really enjoy this game. This game is one that I highly recommend. You will definitely enjoy getting lost in the world of the Loop.
9 out of 10
For more information on this and other great games, please check out Free League Publishing at their site.