Genre: adventure game

Number of players: 1-4 players (optimal – 1-3, best – 1)

Year of original release: 2017

Rating on BoardGameGeek: 6.9

1114th place among all games on BoardGameGeek

Time per game – 2-4 hours

Publisher in Russia – Hobby World

Played – 7 games (5 solo + 2 cooperative)

Desktop Fallout was the first “big” adventure game I bought. I was driven to its purchase by my love for the Fallout universe and the game’s surprising components for me at the time. The double-layered player tablets, the gorgeous figurines, the unusual cubes and hexes of the playing field depicting iconic locations all piqued my interest in this game. Unfortunately, gameplay-wise, the game didn’t live up to all the expectations placed on it, but let’s talk about everything in order.

Basic Fallout.

The base game contains five “unique” characters, a bunch of playfield hexes, a set of tokens, a pack of cards, and four scenarios that serve as the primary motivation (and possible conflict) for the players.

The characters represent different survivors, who are massively different from each other only nominally – and that’s the game’s first (but minor) flaw. The only difference between the human characters is the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. starting characteristic and the starting item. Nevertheless, the game offers a pleasant surprise here as well – as a playable character you can choose a super mutant and a ghoul, whose abilities somewhat slave the usual gameplay as a human. (Warning! It may cause dissonance, because it can be so that for the Brotherhood of Steel will be a gul, a supermutant and an outcast of the Brotherhood).

Base Game Characters

Character progression occurs after killing enemies or completing certain quests. The leveling system is designed to reflect the increase in experience required as you gain levels. Items, companions and equipment are dropped when completing quests or exploring locations.

The base game scenarios offer adventures based on the Fallout 3 and 4 games: the Brotherhood of Steel and Anclave confrontation in the Capital Wasteland, Pitt’s slave rebellion, the search for (or assistance to) escaped Sintas in the Commonwealth, and the conflict in Far Harbor. Each scenario offers a different line of quests, through which players assist one faction or another.

The scenarios indicate how to prepare the playing field by laying out the “green”, “red”, and iconic terrain according to the layout plan on the back of the scenario card. All that remains is to lay out the decks of cards, set the characters up at “Camp at the Crossroads” and begin your adventure!

Fallout. New California.

The first (and only major) addition to the Fallout tabletop expands the game. This add-on expands the game with two new scenarios based on Fallout 1 and 2 – a cooperative scenario about fighting the Anclave and the Brotherhood of Steel’s confrontation with the Unity, new playfield hexes, and reworks existing ones, expanding the available game map.

Another five characters appear in “New California,” including Mr. Helper, An Enclave Outcast, and a merchant, each with their own interesting abilities.

Fallout. Atomic Ties

The second addition to the tabletop Fallout offers a different perspective on the game – it allows you to go through all the scenarios in fully cooperative mode, choosing in advance the faction you want to support.

It also brings to the game “social” chips borrowed from Fallout 76 – building and upgrading C.A.M.P. camps with the ability to quickly move between them.

Directly Reviewed

Desktop Fallout allows for some more expansion into the post-nuclear adventure universe while trying to maintain the games typical atmosphere. Players can go through the main chain of tasks, helping factions, and can take on side tasks – exploring sealed Volt-Tec Sanctuaries, contacting an extraterrestrial civilization, or simply helping individual settlements.

The quest system in the game is represented by a deck of tasks – “archive”, from which players get cards according to the scenario or find adventures on their ass while exploring the Wastelands. With all additions, the archive grows to more than 250 task cards – and not all of them you will meet, even after going through each scenario once. And forks and faction support allow you to take multiple paths through the same quests, increasing replayability.

While adventuring in the Wastelands you will meet many different enemies, which are divided into types: creatures, super mutants, bandits, robots and small creatures. Enemies appear in the game randomly, on already explored locations, which means that you can meet a super mutant bestiary and a glowing goblin literally at the very beginning of the game, which can infuriate people playing for the first time. And the artificial intelligence of the enemies leaves much to be desired – most of the time the enemies move towards the players, and the more the playing field is explored – the more enemies appear on the map.

Battles in the game are represented by the classic mechanics of “ameritrash” games – throwing cubes. This mechanic is now considered outdated, however, the tabletop Fallout slightly changes the approach to throwing – you always throw three cubes, which simultaneously show both damage to the player and damage to the enemy.

Still, the game’s most annoying mechanic is the scenario timer. The thing is, the scenario progresses not only as a result of player actions, but also when enemies are activated – if you get too involved in sidequests, the game will “run itself through” and the winner will be the one who greased up to the winning faction in time and the game will end. This built-in “timer” adds crisis to the party by preventing players from straying too far from the main quest chain, but its progression is often too unpredictable. The timer is the game’s most pressurizing mechanic, preventing you from quietly engaging in secondary tasks, and the biggest downside.

Conclusions

Desktop Fallout is a good, solid game that nevertheless has a number of significant minuses. Despite all the disadvantages, the game can give more than a dozen hours of exciting play, and for fans of the series will be a real gift.

Pros:

• The components of the game – excellent character figures, a scattering of tokens and lots of cards
• Plot and secondary quests
• Simple rules
• Variety of scenarios
• Character progression

Cons:

• “Stupid” AI of enemies
• Pressure on players by timer
• My evaluation of the base game – 7/10
• Evaluation of the game with add-ons – 7,5/10