There is a sweet spot with cooperative games. Once you've removed competition with the other players, the challenge comes in successfully ganging up on the game itself. If the game is too easy there's no challenge, but if it's too hard it can be frustrating -- no one likes to lose all the time. Of course, difficulty is subjective, but the best cooperative games occupy that narrow Goldilocks "just right" zone.
Oltréé is just such a game. It's a fantasy adventure game co-designed by Antoine Bauza (creator of Tokaido and rapidly becoming one of my favorite game designers), based on a French roleplaying game first published in 2013. Players take on the roles of rangers charged with reclaiming the land after a devastating war, with tasks including rebuilding a central fortress and wandering the nearby countryside investigating strange incidents and assisting the local inhabitants. At the same time, the events of a predetermined scenario play out, giving the players additional tasks to perform and also acting as a built-in timer for the game.
At the start of the game, the players each choose a unique Ranger character to play, and are then given an Assignment which gives them a series of tasks to perform and determines the particular mix of Incident cards that will come into play throughout the game, offering further challenges and rewards.
Central to the game is the Adversity marker. At the start of each player's turn, they roll a die to see how far the marker moves along it's circular track. The space it lands on determines what new challenge awaits -- it can be an Incident that needs to be investigated, a Problem that needs to be solved, an Event that has a global effect, or the next chapter in the Chronicle, the ongoing story that plays out over the course of the game.
The game then becomes a study in crisis management, similar to Arkham Horror or Pandemic but without quite so much stress and panic. Players need to move around the board, managing the number of Incidents and Problems in play -- too many unresolved incidents will result in a loss of Prestige, which loses the game for the players if it drops to zero. Problem cards limit the resources available to the players, which are needed to add buildings and fortifications to the fortress, which in turn make solving Incidents easier.
All the while, the players' efforts are occasionally interrupted by events from the Chronicle, which usually require tasks such as a dice test or the construction of a particular building. The Chronicle builds to an eventual conclusion in the form of an especially difficult dice test, made easier depending on the amount of progress that has been made on the original Assignment card. It is the interaction between different combinations of Assignments and Chronicles that should lead to a level of replayability that story-driven games like this usually don't have.
Rating: 5 (out of 5) With its simple but elegant components (including some gorgeous illustrations by Vincent Dutrait), intuitive game play, and compelling stories, Oltréé is a joy to play.