Dionysia – A Greek Tragedy In Your Pocket Preview

Dionysia, the latest successful Kickstarter project from the wallet game masters at Buttonshy Games, packs a Greek tragedy into your pocket!  But since the game is all about building the most compelling tragedy possible, is the gameplay any fun?  Find out as we check out a Kickstarter preview of Dionysia!

Dionysia is a game for 2, and each turn players will draft one scene card at a time into your tableau.  This 3×3 grid represents the three acts of your play, and each player is competing to make the most impressive tragedy to win the favor of the crowds, and the gods.  Each time a card is added to your tableau, you will place it in one of three ways.

• Start a new act (as long as you don’t have 3 yet)
• Upstage a scene (place your new card overlaying a previously-placed card)
• Downstage a scene (place your new card beneath the bottom-most card of a scene)

In order to score points and win the game, you’ll need to strategically plan how the spread of your cards will score, and that is based on the top card of each of the three scenes  With the exception of a few cards that have immediate effects when played, most scene cards have 2 kinds of endgame scoring on them – a pattern of ‘element’ icons, found on each card you draft, as well as some other scoring rule, such as scoring all your patterns at least once, having the most of a given element icon, or having a particular card in a particular position in your play.

As mentioned, aside from these scoring cards, a few scene cards have immediate effects that can be used to manipulate the cards in your tableau, which are otherwise static once placed.

Jess

I know that Buttonshy’s whole deal is fitting an entire game into 18 cards, but I was surprised that there weren’t more action cards, as opposed to scoring cards.

Andrew

Me too, though I guess the balance had to shift that way to make sure that players were unlikely to end the game with an action card on top of an act, robbing them of lots of points.

Buttonshy Games are truly the masters of the small-form game delivery mechanism.  Their wallet-style games try to pack lots of gameplay into incredibly small, portable packages.  In Dionysia, they’ve succeeded in creating a little brainy puzzle that works because of its brevity and the player count – if you had to track what a third or fourth player was doing, or if your drafting choices were diluted by more players with their hands on the cards, then the simple puzzle wouldn’t be nearly as fun.

Andrew

I was a little bummed out that the theme was just set dressing – it’s a really abstract game, when it comes down to it.

Jess

Yeah, totally. Like, I found myself wishing that there was some payoff at the end where you used the cards in your play to tell a story or something. But nope, it’s just a pile of points with some sad titles on the cards.

Andrew

I mean, nothing stops you from dramatically reading your play’s 3 acts and trying to make a story out of it.

Jess

That’s true, I just wish there had been some sweet, sweet points involved!

Dionysia was just successfully Kickstarted, along with some small expansions that add solo play and some extra scene cards that feature wild element symbols.  While the campaign is over, if Dionysia’S puzzly gameplay for two sounds like your kind of tragedy, you can still add a late pledge to get the game as soon as it’s published!