Obsession

My year started well: I finally got Obsession, a game I had been chasing for quite a while, to the table, along with all the expansions and associated comforts. The first encounter was a little chaotic, though. The faux-Victorian aesthetic spreads everywhere, from the components to the rulebook, and once you decide atmosphere comes before readability, the rules start paying the bill. The player aid does not help much—really, it is inadequate—so that initial disappointment is quite real.

In Obsession, each of us takes charge of a Downton Abbey-style estate and tries to rise socially by hosting more impressive events than our opponents. At its core, it is resource management and worker placement: I manage guests and staff, arrange my events, and try to turn the right choices into reputation, glory, and money.

That money leads me to better rooms, better rooms unlock better events, and those events in turn let me attract higher-quality guests. Interaction is mostly indirect, very much a multiplayer-solitaire affair: I do not feel like I am especially fighting the other players, merely trying to make my own estate run more efficiently than theirs. In the base game, this system is tight, thematic and, most importantly, it works.

I played one short base-game session with five players and liked it quite a bit. In the second, with four players, promo tiles, the additional Upstairs/Downstairs staff, and the long game, things deteriorated: the game felt wordier, less compelling, and far more dependent on what happened to come my way. The expansions also worsen the already troublesome task of interpreting the iconography. I would play it again under the right circumstances, but I would not recommend buying it with all of that included. The base game by itself, maybe.