A product of Japanese game design, a vibrant cooperative in a retro gaming universe that challenges you by limiting not only your freedom of action but also your communication opportunities. Level 10 is an ideological successor to The Game – it is more cheerful on the surface, yet maintains the tension and teaches how to understand each other without unnecessary words. Embark on a joint journey through virtual reality and help brave Izzy save the Country of Voe from the minions of Lord Duun, turning the deck of cards into a chronicle of pixel worlds!
Level 10: a bit more about the game
Level 10 is a whimsical card puzzle disguised as a portable game console. But unlike the Game Boy, which can only be played alone, here a company of up to five people can take control of the character. Our hero is set for his first adventure, and he needs you! For Izzy to overcome all five worlds, you need to play level cards in a strictly defined order, trying not to make a mistake and get into a dead end.
The first step in any tabletop adventure is to study the rules, which here are quite short, with a significant part occupied by illustrated examples, so there should be no questions remaining by the start of the game. In a single deck, you will find forty world cards, each represented by numbered levels from one to eight in their color. Three pause cards help adjust the difficulty - the more you have, the easier it is to play, while pros tackle it in nonstop mode.
Using discard cards, organize the first column, marking the beginning of our little hero's journey in each of the worlds, deal the necessary number of level cards to players, and confidently hit “start”. On their turn, the active player has two options: they can either move Izzy forward, i.e., play a card from their hand on the table, or reset progress by using a discard card from the beginning row. If they cannot do either, your team immediately loses.
As the game progresses, a matrix of the multiverse forms before you, where each alternative version of Izzy lives its own story: battles villains, seeks treasures, and finds friends. Essentially, you are collectively assembling a table where rows and columns operate under certain laws. The rows are dedicated to unique landscapes and colors, levels increase, and each column must contain a discard card. At any point in time, only one column is active, and until you fill it, you cannot proceed further.
All the while, you cannot share truly important information with each other - naming the ordinal numbers on your level cards or giving hints about their values. However, you can communicate that you have, for example, three purple cards, and you want to play one right now, or request a break for Izzy in the desert world, subtly hinting that you need to get rid of a couple of eights in your hand.
At first, it seems that getting through the game is a piece of cake - just slam the cards on the table and kill time. But as you go along, you realize that it’s not always necessary to play them in perfect sequence, and how difficult it can be at times to choose the player responsible for reloading the world at the final stretch. You must constantly look a couple of steps ahead, as even an innocuous but poorly timed pause can cost you victory. Yet when the solitaire comes together, the feeling of shared triumph will be your true reward.
