Thorgal blends adventure with clever tile placement mechanisms for a satisfying experience

If you’re a fan of Portal Games’ Robinson Crusoe, then perhaps their latest release — Thorgal — might also appeal to you. This solo or cooperative game charts the adventures of a lesser known Belgian cartoon hero (the titular Thorgal), but where you might be expecting a traditional action game, Thorgal is actually a clever puzzle that blends resource management and tile-placement mini games to unique effect.

Thorgal includes seven adventures that are loosely connected, but which are not mandated to be played as a continuous campaign mode. This means that (much like in Robinson Crusoe) you can just jump in, play a game and then either replay the same mission later or move backwards or forwards to whichever adventure you fancy next.

Adventures are all themed around Thorgal’s comics (although I’ve not read them myself) and include quests such as preventing an evil priest from building a temple to some heretical power, or in doing battle with pirate raiders across a contested strait. Each adventure is presented as a double page spread in a ringbone book, with several locations for each quest and any specific rules printed down the side.

In addition, a separate book (known as The Book of Tales) features story text relating to each quest, always providing an intro and an outro, and often adding interesting and well written narrative at key moments throughout the quest. I wouldn’t call Thorgal a choose your own adventure as such, but there are different ways for each quest to end, and some of the endings could be considered more good (or bad) than others.

There are a few mechanics at play in Thorgal and perhaps the most interesting of these — tile placement — is used in quite a unique way. Firstly, tile placement is used as part of a journeying mechanic, which basically means that the active player will use tiles of different sizes and shapes to move from left to right across journey cards. Some spaces will result in wounds — whilst others will generate resources such as wood, stone or similar.

Tile placement of a similar sort is also used in both combat and when dealing with wounds. If a player finds themselves in a fight, they will draw a card from the appropriate deck, and then depending on their combat proficiency (which can be enhanced in various ways), they’ll place those tiles onto the enemy card until all of the “hit” spaces are covered. In doing so, they may also cover spaces that return wounds or increase the threat level.

Finally, when taking a wound, a player will take a token of the size indicated by the wound, and then place it onto their own player board. If ever a wound cannot be placed – that player dies and all players lose. Small wounds are easy to place, but annoying to remove (as if you do heal, you won’t often want to waste it on a small wound) whilst obviously larger wounds are the inverse of this.

These mechanics are inherently simple, and I like how Thorgal uses the same tile pieces for each of these different elements. There do look to be a lot of pieces at first, but when you realise that this is purely a volume thing and not a complexity one, Thorgal starts to show its clever simplicity.

In between fights and exploration, players will also move around the map taking part in quest specific activities. Some of these are as quick and simple as taking a number of resources depending on your proficiency in a certain thing. On other occasions, you’ll trade resources one way or another — this could represent arming a slave rebellion, or bribing a guard. The flavour text associated with each area will usually explain the context, and whilst I’ve made it sound quite transactional, it’s quite thematic in practice.

Thorgal, whilst not outrageously tough, can be difficult at times and I’d say that for a cooperative game it’s about the right level. Some of the quests seem ridiculously challenging at the outset, and there can be real thought needed to plan the first three or four turns. Another interesting system in Thorgal is how you actually take actions — which is by using thick plastic chips that are placed on quest-specific action cards to claim them.

With these, any number of players will place one chip at a time until four in total have been placed and a new round begins. This means that in a solo game, the lone player will take all four actions — whilst in a two player, they’ll get two each and at four, just one. Don’t ask me what happens at three because that’s not a count I ever play at, and I didn’t think about checking the rules before I started writing this!

Part of what makes this interesting is the way that actions get more powerful depending on the number of chips placed before them. As an example, the gather card might allow the active player to take one resource from their space, plus one extra resource for each chip placed on cards to the left. This adds a level of tactical nuance to the play, and drives conversation and collaboration between players.

Whilst I am not familiar with the history of Thorgal’s comics or the original art, the game Thorgal looks really nice laid out on the table. The map book is filled with bright, intricately detailed images that pack a lot of interest into them. There’s a clear style here, and it carries off the maps and onto player boards, action cards and everything else. The graphic design is fairly good too, with lots of clear symbols that are easy to interpret, albeit occasionally a bit smaller than I would like in some cases.

All said, Thorgal is a pleasant surprise. The basic mechanics are solid across the board, and I enjoy both the variety of them and the simple consistency across multiple aspects of gameplay.  I also really like the overall look of the game, which links to the source IP nicely and brings the story of Thorgal and his friends to life. It’s a unique and challenging cooperative experience that does a lot of new and enjoyable things. If cooperative games are your thing, then Thorgal makes a pretty good case for itself.

Thorgal is available now from Amazon.