The Big Wet

4.5 Stars, Easily Played Solo.

In The Big Wet, I imagine a dystopian future where the earth became overheated due to a continued ignorance of climate change, but at the last minute was saved by a shift that took place over the course of a year, maybe a bit longer... I forget. It began to rain for several weeks continuously with shorter and shorter periods of dry days. Few are left who remember the last of the dry days, but tales of them still echo in tales told to children at bedtime.

However, that’s just my take on the game, that story is not a part of the Original material.

One of my favorite features of the game isn’t really a mechanical feature, it’s the outstanding use of space. There’s a lot packed into 20 pages where practically every square inch is used. From a design perspective it’s quite a work of art. The game itself has a few forgivable quirks. For example a list a little over 100 items and their values in the ‘Stormy Supplies’ chapter, however, it’s not numbered, so you can’t really use it to roll on, which is a shame. The list from the ‘Random Search’ table is very limited by comparison. I guess you could close your eyes and point at the supplies list, but that’s rather mediocre at best. The ‘Random Search’ table to gives you some ideas of what you might find. If you’re lucky, and in some cases skilled enough. You might retrieve one of the many ‘Pre-Wet Artifacts’ worth 1d10K bullets.

The game makes up for what it lacks by providing two very well thought out scenarios that offer a lot of room for creative exploration. The first, ‘Lustrum Tower’ has you traversing a thousand miles inland to fetch a Helicopter from, you guessed it, Lustrum Tower, a 70 floor tower, partially underwater.

Overall, it’s a great game with a lot of potential as a starting point or an entire campaign. Easily played solitaire, which is my thing, and if that’s yours’ The Big Wet is worth the price.