Considering the game itself never explains anything as fundamental as the tables used to resolve skill challenges (which are all handled behind the scenes, despite frequent die-rolling noises) or what the symbols used on the tackle dice mean, players can be left intensely confused and frustrated. While the digital version of Blood Bowl is essentially an animated recreation of the source material, this borders on the inexcusable. A link labeled “Competition Rules” redirects to a confusing six page PDF (the table of contents shows a larger document, but despite long download times, my iPad only ever loads six pages) on Cyanide’s website that seems to be a set of tournament-legal tabletop rules rather than anything specifically geared toward the iPad. This book, however, is nowhere to be found inside the game. Throughout the tutorial the casters will frequently refer to some mechanic in an off-handed manner, telling players to reference the full explanation in the rules book. While the game does sport a tutorial of sorts, the developers decided to focus more on flavor (in having it fully voiced and narrated by dual commentators) rather than function (that is, actually explaining things). This almost-familiarity players might feel is the entry point where things start getting complicated. This violent team sport, played by such Warhammer staple races as Orks and Skaven, doesn’t exactly cleave to either of those two inspirations, however. Craft a fairly robust in-game tutorial to ease new players gently into this somewhat complicated quagmire? Or just say “screw it,” assume the target market is going to be almost entirely existing fans of the product, and leave the newbies to sink or swim? Take a guess which direction Focus Home Interactive and Cyanide Studios went with this one.įor the uninitiated, Blood Bowl is what would happen if somebody tossed American Football and Rugby into a blender and poured the resulting slurry through a filter made out of the Warhammer fantasy universe. When translating a nearly 30 year old tabletop game like Blood Bowl into a digital format, the folks in charge have to make some decisions.
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