Insta-Impressions are a series of raw initial observations about games over on our Instagram account. Not intended to be highly complex or nearly as comprehensive as our standard reviews, these offer up visually fun and timely feedback of games hitting our table that may take months to get reviewed in full, if ever.

Happy Friday! It’s been a little lighter week coming off the post Gen Con enthusiasm, mostly with replays of games already shown off. Still, w’ve amassed our assortment of Instagram-based mini observations of games played over the last week to share with you here. You can see more of these and other photos over on Instagram.

Mansions Of Madness: Second Edition

Mansions Of Madness (2nd Edition) is a Lovecraftian, narrative-driven game set in an old mansion – yeah, it was basically designed for me. The second edition incorporates an app to do most of the heavy lifting, which I had mixed feelings on. It was fun, but also difficult for all players to see and engage with. Still, I enjoyed the game and I want to give it a shot with fewer players. That might solve some of the logistical difficulties. – Erin

A photo posted by Cardboard Republic (@cardboardrepublic) on Aug 19, 2016 at 8:57am PDT

Ryan: Admittedly we’ve only played the first tutorial-style episode thus far, so it’s always a little tricky to get a comprehensive feeling for a game just from that. Curiously though, even after just one session our play group was decidedly split on their feelings with the app and I…came down on the pro side? Yeah, I’m a little surprised myself.

The app really is the central component to the new edition, and I think it does an admirable job replacing the Keeper role, of which I never was a huge fan personally for metagame reasons. Now, one can make an argument that they may have moved too much of the gaming experience to the app, but it definitely provides a cleaner, tighter feeling to the game overall. I’m interested in exploring more of this version of the mansion, which I’m sure Erin will like to hear.

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