It sounds like one of those 1001 games in 1 devices they used to sell in the late 90's early 2000's where it was actually 10 games but with slightly different ways the game plays like speeding the cars up a bit or the ball a bit or making your paddle smaller.

This seems like it might work better on a computer, because all the fiddlyness could be automated. On the other hand it seems like, if you found a game you liked, you'd want to add your own rules. Also, an Ameritrash version of this might generate more interest in the themes: 'the world of factory-spawned ninjas who fight robots in a dungeon' might be more appealing than 'the world of pick up and deliver but there are roads'.

I mean, it's an excellent purchase for any designer. In addition to getting to see a dozen vague iterations of any early idea you might have to test and run, it is a gigantic box of components perfect for giving you better prototypes than just cut-up paper. A little tactility can tell you whether weight of pieces is important to your idea or not quite early on.

As an experiment, it is interesting. As an interesting game, not so much. I'd rather buy one really well designed and fun game then 504 variations on an incredibly mild theme.

For the longest time, I thought 504 was an elaborate parody. Lovingly poking fun at the recurring, convoluted rule- and point-salads that other games employ. I'm still not quite sure if I was right or wrong.

I purchased it more to get a better understanding of how various game variations fit together from a well respected game designer. I didn't think there would be 504 awesome games or, for that matter, even 10 excellent games. I thought there might be a rough jewel in there but I wasn't in it for that purpose. So for me, the purchase was well worth it. That said, I have friends who are selling their copies because it wasn't what they expected for much the same reasons Paul gives. I have noticed copies going on mega sale recently, so it might be worth picking up if someone is looking for a box of game bits for prototyping :-).

504 is like a buffet where the only foods on offer are varieties of raw potato. The individual elements are dull. I'd like to see an Ameritrash version of this, with less variants and more chaos and action. At the buffet I want burgers, steaks, ice cream and doughnuts! So yeah, Cosmic Encounter.... By the way I was one of the mugs that bought 504. Great for prototyping your own games though!

Ah yes, the 5 standard goods: cow, fish, log, asteroid, and breakfast 😂

No Man's Sky: The Board Game

The same gameplay with hundreds of variations that make no difference? Sean Murray would love this game!

This sounds like flux if every card in the deck was actually a 20 page manual and they were all really similar but different enough so that you would never be able to just memorize them. Even that sentence I just wrote to describe it started as an attempt to be interesting but ended up convoluted and boring.

I really don't know what to think about the boat piece. It's either a very odd expansion-proofing idea, a fiddle-with-token or an in-joke the game really hasn't earned.

I like how you threw in the boat on the gameboard! 😁💚

Yikes that has to be the most scathing review of a board game I've seen SUSD give.

If you enjoy learning new games as opposed to playing them then this is a good buy.

I'll wait for the 1008 expansion.

504 is also the area code for New Orleans!

So it's 9 rudimentary games, combined in triples. 9*8*7=504

So the most popular game in 504 is.. terra mystica..

I think this is the most confusing board game review Shut Up and Sit Down ever.

I think the main idea here is that of a modular game: the game has several parts or module, but you only ever play with a limited number in each game, and each combination is a new game onto itself. I think Dominion is a more promising realization of that concept. In each game you play with 10 module (stacks of kingdom cards), and their unique interactions make each game novel, while the common rules framework makes the whole thing a single coherent system. In some games you'll have junking attacks and no trashing. In some games you'll have amazing trash-for-benefit (Remodel) with good and/or cheap card gainers (Bandit) which you can combine to great effect. In some games you'll have no villages, or no +buy, or weak draw, and you'll have to work around those limitations in interesting ways. Or you'll have multiple viable-looking paths to victory and you'll have to work out which one is the most efficient. Now, because it's a deck builder Dominion necessarily is a somewhat limited system. There won't be any troops moving around or trolleys doing pick up and deliver. But for my tastes that's really okay, and maybe limitations are necessary to design a compelling modular game: there needs to be some kind of core game worth coming back to and/or orienting all the modules around, and if it's all too sprawly there's no coherent game but rather a big combinatoric pile of half-assed games. To second-guess myself a bit, though: "new ideas are bad" is a good heuristic more often than it's given credit for, but all progress is rooted in the exceptions. Maybe there is a good way of designing modular games with greater qualitative differences than the different types of deck manipulation of Dominion. The inherently abstract nature of deck building is also up front about not promising much congruence between theme and mechanics; maybe it removes a disappointment by calibrating expectations properly. See also: Magic's block constructed formats and the many mini-modules in the upcoming Food Chain Magnate expansion. Or Coup: G54.

I feel like right after he threw the sock at the camera he went and had the Aztec Party from the Mexica review.

i think i would only consider getting this if it was on the cheap and only for the bits to make maps for war games.

I envy Paul's myriad of bear shirts.

When he went over the 5 most important kinds of good in the world, it spoke to me spiritually. And then I had a breakfast only possible because of cows and fish : Sushi-Cereal [ The dream of the everything game continues. Theme / Setting always seems to be the sacrifice in Everything Games ]

That apple alarm ringtone is a whole other level.

6 years later. . . where is the website to find the "best of" mentioned at 4:47 ??

It is interesting how honest you are in your board game reviews. You say all the failures of the games, and the good side too. Your reviews are EXCELENT! Congratulations! :) ps: Sorry my terrible english :)

What was on that note in the cupboard

Bought it really cheap for game design parts. Couldn't be happier.

I'm also in the same boat. I like the concept but after playing by three different versions I found the games meh.

You would think that they'd learned about paper money not being a very good component to play with. It gets damaged and dirty easily, without being able to repair or clean it properly. Why not use tokens or chips instead, because this is just dumb. Also I've always been concerned about the way the variety is given to you. What I mean is that I would like to buy a box with 504 games, but seeing explanations on how the system works makes me feel more like I'm buying a box full of 504 variations of the SAME ONE game. I don't know how it all plays, but seeing videos like this doesn't make me interested in products like this. The publisher should convince game fans to buy 504 games in a single box another way than they did.

You said "rudimentary" quite a lot!

Good review, the game itself sounds horrible . Rather have 1 good game then a bunch of fails

Century is like it. It is like this. It is so much more by being much less. It is a collection of gateway games that require too much work to use for gateway games in retrospect. The bits are useful to create other games though.

Cry for help at 13:20

Ouch... that burned.

Didn't have any desire to buy this one, and this review only confirmed my lack of intent. Thanks for the honesty!

504 is the New Orleans area code.

It ended up being a gateway games engine with too much set up for a gateway game.

I wonder what Vlaada is up to lately. Hopefully he’s not locked down in a basement in Vancouver

Mess: the game.

Was this taken down before? I am getting déjà vu. I feel like I have watched this review before.

So basically kitbashed boardgames

Should have went with bear top.

NOOOOOOOOO WHY WOULD YOU PUT THAT ALARM NOISE IN THIS VIDEO SOMEONE CALL THE POLICE

we need games like these just like we needed heroquest.

And who isn't into board gaming but also roads? Nobody! lmao. Best line.

I think, if it was toned down to be more like 10 games in a box... that'd be interesting. Those 10 games would each need to be pretty good, and could individually be playtested to work well, and could have some really interesting unique features, finding ways to reimagine the rules or reuse the assets from other setups in new and interesting ways. But not having heard of this before watching the video, as soon as I saw that it was a board game version of procedural generation I knew just what to expect. In order for the pieces to work together, they need to be fairly simple and to not do anything bold, because one bold thing could easily cause conflict in various permutations. But like I said, narrowing down the focus by a great amount would do wonders to allow more fluidity and creativity. I think that instead of looking at it as having 20 mechanical pieces (or however many) to combine in order to create several hundred variants, it might be better to think of it as having a troupe of theater actors. And this troupe is talented enough that they can perform a handful or more of plays, stretching themselves to fit wildly different roles so that the villain in that play is the comedic sidekick in this next one or the friendly neighbor in that one. At the end of the day, though, to do it right would require an immense talent, and very well be too much of an undertaking for a single person to properly work out. Neat experiment, but ultimately not a successful one. Great video, Paul.

Passed on this before it was even released. 504 games in one box? When there are so many more interesting games? It came off as Star Trek Next Generation meets Metropolis. Nice there are so many integrated games. Passed that so what?

Did you guys kidnap Vlaada ? AGAIN ?

Seems like Looney Pyramids is the way to go.

This turkey never looked appealing to me. Read about it when it came out and passed.

This looks like what you wound up with when you were a kid and had a bunch of games but there were pieces missing from all of them. You'd take the pieces you had, and just come up with something to play that used bits from all of the games, so the elements and mechanics were familiar, but what you were playing wasn't really anything else. It was confusing, unbalanced, and weird, but it was what you had. 504 seems to take that and run with it.

Well that certainly was... a thing???

I've put my pants for this!

Thanks, Paul.

Imagine a game with a quintillion possibilities!

If for the price of a game they give you 10, obviously you have to learn 10 rules. I don't see the drama there. And if the game you like is 941, you can play it at all meetings with your friends. It is not necessary to change games every time. In this video aside from criticizing having to learn many rules, I did not see specific reasoning why the games do not work. I have seen, for example this video, and it looks like a perfect game for a rating of 7: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d9hnacpezd3Ygo0.html

I played this game a few times, and it just wasn't interesting or fun.

You sold me at asteroids

What a shock, procedural generation fails to produce as interesting a game as scripted, handcrafted games. Someday, video game developers will all have this concept rammed forcibly into their heads and stop making procedural generated games. Someday. I hope it comes soon.

I feel like if you talked about any of the games you enjoy or I enjoy with the same painful lack of enthusiasm it would sound as terrible as you make this sound. To be fair, the product should not be confused with the kind of game you just take off the shelf and play, and should probably have a warning label on it, the same way a miniatures game should. I mean, would you do a review of something like Warmachine or Infinity with have as half of your complaint that the miniatures need to be clipped, assembled, and painted? Like those games, the effort of preparation is going to be a big negative for most people, but just the thing for the right kind of person. This should definitely not be on most players' shelves, and I agree with your non-recommendation, but I think it's also worth saying who the game is for.

Looks like an attempt to rip off Settlers of Catan

Clean your mirror Paul!

I really dont like that guy