Obsession Review

A charming tour through high society.

Obsession from Kayenta Games has players attempting to regain their family status amongst the other influential families in Victorian England. Now I'll admit, I know and continue to know very little about this timeframe. I thought Downton Abbey was Downtown Abby the whole time and about someone named Abby who lived downtown. It's a plausible premise for a show. Anyways, each player controls one of the 6 different families. Over 16 or 20 turns if you're playing the long game you'll be purchasing new rooms for your estate and activating them by playing cards from your hand and assigning the necessary members of your staff that are required for them. You'll flip the tiles to their activated side and depending on the cards played, you'll collect some cash, increase your reputation in order to purchase more powerful tiles, or pick up new gentries (cards) to your hand. Players will also be competing for the affection of the Fairchilds. At certain points in the game, an event will occur where players will be able to attain one of their cards to their hands. After the final round, you'll score points based on various requirements including your tiles purchased and flipped as well as the cards in your deck.

There is also a great solo mode to the game. There are twelve different opponents that can choose from to compete against. The game plays mostly the same but at each courtship event, the opponent has a set number of tiles that you must try to beat in order to win the courtship event. You'll also roll a die in order to determine what tiles they will be taking on their turn. It's all very streamlined. Each opponent has a varying score/difficulty level that you'll be attempting to beat.

The Good: I 100% see why this climbed the BGG ranks so quickly. Every single aspect of the game is carefully thought out, all the way to the organization system (more on that later). Every turn will move you in the (hopefully) right direction in some way or the other. You need to be careful with the cards you play so you have the right staff at the ready to fully take advantage of your turns. A game of this scale and magnitude seems like it would take hours to get through and your first game or two might take a couple but the more familiar you are with it the faster it plays and it always feels completely different.

This might be the most thematic game I've seen. It does such a great job of attempting to transport you to Victorian era England and it does it with mostly empty tiles and black and white headshots. This should say a lot about the overall design of this game.

The overall organization system is spectacular. Each family gets their own box that you put their starting pieces in and there are additional boxes to hold all of the other tiles and cards. It can even fit both expansions in the base box with no difficulties. I told you it's all very well thought out.

Here is normally where I'll put The Not So Good section but in good faith, I can't. Games that I thoroughly enjoy I'll write up a nit picky complaint but I'm really racking my brain to come up with one. Obsession is such a clean well designed game that deserves every ounce of praise that it gets.

Upstairs, Downstairs and the Wessex Expansions: On top of the base game, I was also sent the expansions for Obsession to share my thoughts about. The Wessex expansion is very straightforward. It adds another family, the Wessex family, and all of its components as well as additional gentry cards and solo cards. It doesn't necessarily change the game but it gives more variety.

Upstairs, Downstairs is a much larger addition to the game. Similar to the Wessex expansion, it gives another new family and its bits and bobs and more cards and tiles but it also adds in additional game modes and if you really want to get weird, you can play with up to 6 players if you have both expansions. This also includes new staff that can be used to enhance certain abilities as well as stand in for certain staff members if they are unavailable. The new game modes are competitive team play, solo estate challenge which makes it so courtship doesn't matter and you are trying to upgrade your estate instead, and the final mode is Tableau Obsession. This is somewhat similar to the solo estate challenge but with multiple players. It removes some of the randomness of the game.

Final Thoughts: The website for Obsession has a specific section for whether or not you'd like the game and it lists some variables that may steer you away from it. I fell into one of those variables where I may not enjoy the game and maybe I'm an outlier but obviously, I love the game. Every aspect of this world that Dan Hallagan has created is so detailed and made with love and it shows.

This is unrelated to the game but he also has to be one of the most transparent publishers that I've ever seen. If you explore the forums on BGG he is all over it and letting people know answers to things and providing updates. I'll leave it at this, if you are on the fence about Obsession and think that it looks good but the theme doesn't resonate for you, I'd take the chance. Downton Abbey has nothing on Obsession. Neither does Downtown Abby for that matter.

A big thanks to Kayenta Games for providing me with a review copy.