Origin historian Pix has finished his playthrough of Joseph Propati’s board game remake of Ultima 1. He was able to rescue a princess and ultimately dispose of Mondain with what seemed to be little in the way of difficulty.

His final impressions of the game aren’t wholly positive, though he seems to be impressed by the thought and effort put into it:

Judging the game in it’s current state, I certainly went into this wanting to like it but in all honesty I’d never have made it to the end if I wasn’t obliged to Joseph having promised to playtest it. You have to respect any fan project where someone has put this sort of effort into something just for the fun of it but I’ve simply spent way too much time pushing bits of coloured glass around this last week for my liking.

It’s perhaps the solo nature of the game as much as anything. I always think of board games as a communal activity. Spending this much time playing one on my own doesn’t strike me as something I should be writing about in public. I can’t honestly think of anything I would ever actually do that would be more embarrassing to have to explain were some random stranger to catch me in the act.

That isn’t to say I’ve not had some fun out of it and the time has passed strangely quickly whenever I’ve been playing. It doesn’t even come close to the more arduous games I’ve blogged through on here but I have been taking more and more shortcuts as the novelty wore off. The ability to change the rules is certainly one advantage of this form of gaming.

No one will be surprised that I’m not about to recommend that every Ultima fan should rush off and play this. I expect any reader will already know if this sort of game would appeal them and if it does sound like your thing then once it’s had a few tweaks, I don’t think you would be disappointed. As for myself, I intend to steer clear of anything to do with dice for the foreseeable future.

I have to offer a huge thank you to Joseph Propati for being generous enough to send me this and of course creating the game in the first place. Whether it’s my cup of tea or not, I simply love the fact that this exists at all and it’s projects like this that have kept Ultima alive for so many years.

Do read the whole thing.