The Connection Machine

We tried to play it but the game didn't work 100% for us. Since we liked a lot of the premise, and the parts where the non-focus players collaboratively contribute to the description of the zone (really creepy and surreal scenes here!), I hope I can offer constructive advice.

Firs of all, I think we needed some examples of play. There are some phases where we didn't exactly know what to do - like when you re-enter a Zone and the Memory "plays again". What does that mean? Also the four activities that you can choose to move forward weren't self explanatory and could benefit from a list of examples.

We also had some questions, like: who gets to write down the Memory? Wouldn't it be better to specify it? (the focus players, the player sitting on the right of the focus player, or something like that). Also, when re-entering a Zone, the game says to write new sensory details. Does it mean that the sensory details *add* to the former ones or do they *replace* them? We went for the first interpretation but I still have doubts.

The thing that broke our game apart was its duration. After two complete rounds (each of the 4 players being the focus for two times) and 2.5 hours of playing, we had failed the roll just two times. This way we had just two ticks on the Collapse clock and the end of the game seemed very far for our time slot, contrary to the "1-3 hours" label on the cover. We had the doubt that the game intended us to mark one tick on the Collapse clock *for every scene*, and just further increase this rythm when the focus player fails the throw, but we didn't find this info anywhere.

Also, in the end we felt we lacked some focus. Some of the characters had a social objective that you can get only when meeting each others - but after eight scenes we where still apart and no one had met any one other. Generally speaking, all the players seemed to perceive that the only active choice was "holding on until the Cube collapses". The fact that the PTSDemons weren't based on the traumas of a single character but were generic incarnations/metaphors of toxic behaviours made us play the game as a long nightmare - which in the end was entertaining but, as said before, lacked some focus.

Finally a question about the play aids. What's the Map of the Hypercube? Is it the upper part of the character sheet? If so, what do the little hexagon with "1 tick", 2 tick", ecc. represent...? We didn't understand.

Since we liked the premise of the game, we have some suggestions. :)

- list the Negative beliefs on the character sheet so that every player can easily read them;

- separate the map of the cube from the character sheet, and specify somewhere the 4 types of activities to move forward (not just the name and the type of roll, but at least the same subtitle from the game manual); also, add the Collapse clock to the Cube map;

- give players the chance to actively explore the cube, be it selecting the next zone (maybe everyone bids secretly) or rolling to obtain tokens/points of some kind that you can accumulate to try and escape the cube before the collapse (but of course some character could stay inside to help others escape);

- if the zones merge, make the PTSDemons appear together instead of merge them (to make them interact against the characters instead of just flatten them).

Thanks for reading all of this!