Favorite Game for December 12th

#13 Obsession

  

  

In Obsession, players are families competing to gain the favor of the Fairchilds. The Fairchilds are a well to do family of the highest reputation and the most eligible son and most eligible daughter in all of high society. Obsession is basically, "Pride and Prejudice" the board game. Think of Downton Abbey or Bridgerton and you get the idea.

Your family are social climbers. You have an estate and some reputation. But, you are going to need to do much better, if you want to attract the attention of the Fairchilds. You do this by improving your estate and at the same time, enabling yourself to host activities that will create social contacts for you. The more and better social contacts that you have, the better your reputation. 

The better your reputation, the more likely one of the Fairchilds will take notice of you. The game is played over a number of rounds. Some of these end with a social event that can see one of the Fairchilds showing an interest in your family. This adds a Fairchild card to your personal deck of contacts, and that can be very powerful. In the final social event, winning a Fairchild will add the card to your deck for final scoring and these cards are worth a lot of points.

  

  

Obsession is a heavier, meatier experience. The game play centers around your ability to host events and to do this you must manage your staff, your maids, butlers and other servants. This is very much like Downton Abbey. The servants are meeples, the family and their guests are cards. These components combine together seamlessly to create an amazingly thematic experience.

Obsession is kind of a masterpiece. It has the best integration of theme and game play of any game that I have played. Everything works, and everything makes sense. The game's components are not the prettiest. The designer/publisher is not an artist. The cards make use of public domain images of all the different peoples of the period, and that's fine, but these are then enhanced by amusing factoids about each person that elevates every card. Every component in this game is somehow better than it should be.

I love Obsession. The game play is intuitive and engaging and fully supported by the game's theme. This is a fully immersive experience that I somehow manage to play well, while also losing myself in the story of the game. That's how good this game is. The story of the game makes me want to compete. It makes me want to gain the favor of the Fairchilds. While I'm losing myself in its story, I'm also playing the game well. That's the best kind of game!