Quiet on the set!

📽️ Roll Camera 📽️ is a co-operative dice placement game in which you are creating a movie. You have to shoot 5 scenes to finish your movie before your time or budget runs out. That’s not all, to win your quality has to be either good enough for the movie to be a success, or it has to be so bad that it is good again. (That’s a real victory condition.) 😂

⚙️ Each round a new crisis arises in the form of a Problem Card. These have diverse effects, which seem to always be the worst thing at the worst time. 😅 Then the active player rolls 6 dice which are used to do actions. One possible action is clearing out Problem Cards.

🧐 The main thing you need to do is complete scenes by matching the patterns on the available scene cards. To make a pattern you will need to buy new set pieces, and keep moving and rotating your existing set during the game. This adds a tile-laying element to the game. If you have the shape set up, you must put dice with the correct die faces on it, then pay some money to add the scene to your movie.

📋 You have a randomly chosen script that gives you requirements - like "every 2 comedy scene adds +2 quality”. This will steer your decisions in what scenes to shoot, though your script could change during the game.

🤝 A fun action you can do is calling for a meeting. In a meeting everyone can pitch an idea by playing an Idea Card. Then you get to choose one to execute, and one to put in a “to-do” slot that can be activated by dice later.

💬The game is really light-hearted with funny texts and silly illustrations. We also found it surprisingly hard to win. Money and time are both really tight, and you keep having to try to regain some by clever use of Idea Cards and abilities. Players have unique thematic actions too that only they can do. You could have some problems with dice randomness, but there are some effects that help you mitigate it. I like that everything is very thematic and would definitely play it again. On the downside, the rounds felt a bit samey after a while.

🎬 Last but not least the box of Roll Camera needs to be mentioned as well. 😍 It has a hinged lid which opens like a clapperboard, and I absolutely love it. So fitting! 🤩