Roll Camera! Review

When I first heard that there was a board game about creating a movie I was intrigued. After I did some research on it I was in love. After playing it, how did I feel? Roll Camera! is a truly unique experience. It is a dice placement game using the dice as actions but also as set pieces. You are racing against time and budget while also dealing with a constant influx of problems that can and will make your life increasingly difficult if you do not manage everything. On your turn, you will roll the dice and based on the symbols you can add/move set pieces, solve problems, have a production meeting (more on that later), or do any of your various special player board actions. On top of that, you can film a scene. You do this by matching the specific dice faces in the middle of the board once the set pieces are arranged in a valid layout based on the scene cards available to you on the board. The game ends when you run out of time/money or after the fifth scene has been filmed. You will then score by moving the progress marker based on the scripts. You will win the game if you create a film that is a Cinematic Masterpiece or So Bad It's Good.

The Good: I really liked the way that this game plays. Maybe I'm biased because of my media production background but I think that it was done really well. There are many different roles that all have their own abilities that can help to make things easier if they're used in the right combinations or scenarios. I also loved the production meeting mechanic. It allows you to use special cards to help get you some more time or money or complete a scene easier. The way it works is really cool. You call the meeting and play one of your idea cards and then the other players will put one in as well. Three of them are added to the pool and you have to select which one to use. The only downside is that if you use the second or third one it will cost you dice or money.

The Okay: My first game was played solo so I could get a grip of the gameplay and it felt impossible to get through 5 scenes with my chosen role (Director). Playing solo could use some tweaks to help ease the challenge. There are difficulty levels that will give you more or less time and money to start. I will say that I wanted to play this again to try and get through all of my scenes. The key is to be extremely efficient.

The Not So Good: I struggled with some of the rules and was constantly looking back into the rulebook to try and get a resolution. Thankfully, there is an extremely helpful video that the designer made that really clears up some of the intricacies. One of the big challenges that I had was that I only had 2 options of set pieces and they both were bad so it was somewhat of a pain to have to cycle through some set pieces before I got better ones. This is a really specific complaint and I think there was a role that could mitigate some of this but I did not play it.

Final Score: 8.5/10

Roll Camera! was a ton of fun. It took a little bit to get a feel for how to play some of the actions but once I got them down it was smooth sailing from there. I don't usually like cooperative games because I like the competitive aspect of board games but this is absolutely a game that I would recommend if you're looking for a new co-op game. This found its way to my main shelf almost immediately after the first game.