Paperback Adventures

I gave Paperback Adventures a good playthrough last week. Well, the digital version anyway. Straight off the bat, there are differences between the tabletop and digital versions.

Neither is ‘better’ than the other, but if you play one and expect the other to be the same you will be caught out.

Some of the gameplay changes are the top card doesn’t have to be the card discarded after the power is used. This can be set to the ‘tabletop’ or ‘classic’ mode in the options.

Other changes are some balance tweaks that have been applied. Some damage is different, or costs are changed. As I say, nothing makes one better than the other, but enough changes what you may have expected.

Now I played Paperback Adventures on the Steam Deck, and overall it works. I want to say it works well, but the text sizes and some selection areas are too small for the Deck’s screen.

The Steam Deck’s inbuilt Magnifier helped a lot with this, which let me successfully finish my first campaign! That was super exciting and unlocked the third set of adventures Plothook.

I need to set up Paperback Adventures now and play on the table with the Ex Machina campaign. That way I can do a proper comparison rather than the disconnected ‘feel’ between the two sessions.

If you are interested in Paperback Adventures, it is an amazing solo game. The only downside I can see is the length and setup/teardown involved on the tabletop side, which the Digital version takes care of for you.

Try the Paperback Adventures Demo on Steam first and see what you think of the mechanics before purchasing.

I am enjoying it, and it’s the sort of game I want to play more often. But the fact one ‘game’ is really 9 campaign missions makes the length rather formidable!

The Steam Deck was my gaming saviour this week. All my gaming was basically on Friday afternoon and evening, the first time in over a week. We have been that sick! But I wanted to sink my teeth into something that wasn’t too heavy. Hello again, Paperback Adventures!

I have been doing pretty well with Ex Machina, the first adventurer the game suggests you begin with. Paperback Aventures is still a long haul to play. You play against 9 enemies each taking about 10-15 minutes. Being able to pick up and put down the Steam Deck mid-game made life easier.

But since opening Paperback Adventures, I have wanted to get into Damsel. When playing RPGs, I love the flexibility playing a Rogue generally offers you. With this in mind, Damsel seems to be right in my wheelhouse.

It was here I found the first difference from the physical game I could find. It isn’t a huge difference but shows where the digital version branches in places. Remember, I haven’t played the physical Ex Machina on the table yet, only on Steam.

There is an ability the Damsel has where you can spend energy and skulls to damage an enemy directly. The Venom Vial card is pretty clear. Take health from the enemy, and pay the cost as per the table.

Digitally though, it doesn’t seem to quite work that way. The wording confused me at first but seemed to be a change to make the text fit without a table. Except the cost for a big hit has changed.

If you can manage to get 16 skulls on an enemy, you can hit for 16 and pay 4 energy and remove 4 skulls in the physical version. Same scenario digitally and you have to pay 6 energy and skulls – quite a difference!

This is a balancing tweak for Paperback Adventures. I am not trying to say the change itself is bad – Venom Vial saved me quite a bit in Paperback Adventures. But if you played one version and jumped straight into the other, you can get caught out pretty easily.

But I am enjoying Paperback Adventures as I thought I would (it’s why I backed it on Kickstarter). I keep leaning towards the digital version being my preferred platform.

I might put this to the test by playing the next few games only on my desktop. Not because it needs a powerful PC to run, but because it removes the ease of access and portability of the Steam Deck. That could be swaying my opinion. It will be interesting to see if it affects my perception of Paperback Adventures.