Matt Wagner's masked crime lord from the long-running Dark Horse comic is heading to your game table this summer. Grendel: The Game of Crime and Mayhem, the asymmetric crime game from Off the Page Games, lands at retail on July 1 after a successful Kickstarter last year.
The premise is simple and delicious: Grendel has assassinated the leaders of New York City's 23 most powerful crime families, and now four factions are scrambling to fill the vacuum. What makes this one stand out is that each faction plays with completely different mechanics. Grendel uses bag building to spread fear across the city. Argent, the werewolf hunter from Wagner's comics, deck-builds an arsenal and pushes her luck to ambush opponents. The Mob rolls with dice allocation. And the Police patrol a rondel to make arrests. A clever see-saw tower mechanic tracks the city's rising aggression, adding a physical tension that tips the game's balance.
Designers Alara Cameron and Sen-Foong Lim bring strong track records to the project. Lim is one half of the Bamboozle Brothers, the design duo behind Junk Art and Belfort. Cameron and Lim previously collaborated on Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time. Wagner himself contributed original artwork for the adaptation, so it looks the part too.
The retail edition supports 2-4 players with a playtime of roughly 30 minutes per player. For anyone who enjoys asymmetric games like Root or Vast but wants something with a grittier, street-level edge, Grendel could be a strong pick for summer game nights.
Sources: Off the Page Games | Big Comic Page | ICv2
