Hey, lead writer of Eureka here, first of all I wanna say how good and professional this review is, it’s almost indescribable how it feels to see our project taken so seriously and given real analysis, complete with visuals and everything! We would be super impressed and happy with it even if you didn’t like the game-but luckily it sounds like you loved it hahaha I’d also like to address a few things throughout the video, not as arguments or rebuttals, just further developer insight for everyone Re: “Urban Fantasy.” “Urban Fantasy” is basically just another term for “modern fantasy”, just a fantasy story that takes place in the 20th or 21st century and deals with the intersection of contemporary life with the supernatural, and it *might* be an Americanism, or even a Southern-ism, since it has a lot of connections and origins in the living folklore of New Orleans, so I shouldn’t be surprised it isn’t a term everyone is familiar with. Just think of it as the kind of genre where instead of the vampire living in a secluded scary castle, his name is Phil and he’s your roommate haha. What We Do in the Shadows, Shadowrun, and the World of Darkness games are all some other good examples of “urban fantasy.” Re: Scooby-Doo. Oh we would LOVE for you to run a Scooby-Doo-like wacky mystery with Eureka. Even though the main tone is dark and gritty and noir, we did intentionally build it so that it could run more lighthearted stuff as well! There’s even a few Scooby-Doo references to be found throughout the text, and if we hit a certain stretch goal on the Kickstarter, we’re going to be adding a bunch of Scooby-gang-inspired traits, including the option to play a Talking Dog! Re: Combat being the largest section, even larger than Investigation. First of all, that’s kind of an illusion that is the result of the game being unfinished. I have a tendency when I write rules to use really long sentences, overexplain things, repeat myself, etc, and that dramatically bloats the rules text and page count, but that’s why we have an editor! She goes through after the fact and trims most of the fat off my bloated writing style to make it flow smoother and read faster, and take up less space. The PDF that was read for this review has had the Investigation chapter copy-edited (and cut down in size by about 25%!), but the editor hasn’t gotten to the combat chapters yet, so they still have a hugely inflated page count. When she’s done with them, you can expect each combat chapter to also be cut down in size by about 25%, so they won’t be nearly so large a chunk of the book. Secondly, I’ll explain our reasoning for why the combat chapters and advanced combat rules are such a big chunk of the rules text, it’s intentional design which I will now explain. If anyone still doesn’t agree with that design, that’s fair, and that’s why we made the Basic Combat Rules an option. The reason that the advanced combat rules are the default, and the reason they exist at all, is because it incentivizes and rewards Investigation. If combat is super deadly, it makes Investigation, snooping, and spying more appealing than kicking down the door and getting your head blown off. But of combat is super deadly, it also needs to be very deep and tactical, because if it’s deadly but shallow, then there’s no player agency. “Combat starts, roll some dice, okay your guy is dead.” That’s no fun. So by adding rules and modifiers for cover/elevation, distance, the difference between a pistol and an assault rifle, etc. we make it so that not only is combat its own high-stakes puzzle, but make it so that when the PCs HAVE to engage in combat, all their investigation can really pay off and save their lives. Spying on a building to find out the number of goons stationed there and how they are armed helps you plan and assess risk, stealing the blueprints to the building helps you know how to get the drop on the goons, and know the best places to attack from so that they are stuck out in the open and you are not, etc. and having rules for those things means that all the PCs’ snooping and planning makes a real mechanical difference in whether they live or die. That’s just my opinion though, and one of the biggest reasons WHY we decided to write the combat with as much depth as we did. Anyway, thank you again for this review and analysis of our project, our Kickstarter jumped up by about ten more backers in the evening when this video went up after several days of no new backers, and we have to assume we have this video, and all of you watching and reading this, to thank. You’re really making our dreams come true. :)

I love this channel. There are so many games I'd never hear about if I hadn't found this channel.

Thanks for this. 👍

Interesting take on an investigation game. I often think that an investigation scenario is fun but many games that aren't designed for it don't really do it all the well. Like I like the Traveller scenario Murder on Arcturus Station but traveller isn't really designed around investigative SciFi

Do you have any Call of Cthulhu reviews coming up?

Interesting game. What's your opinion on Gumshoe?