Infinite Revolution (Part 2)

Should the stars go out too?

You can find part one here.

5. Disassemble Engine

Games have a flow, which, when you hit, the game pretty much runs itself. It is extremely satisfying. After examining the interactions of game elements, we single out the most important - the one that sets the pace of sessions, or even campaigns. We focus on how that engine works, how it makes the game move along, and what to do to make it do what you want to do - and how to keep it running clean.

Lhuzie

Infinite Revolutions falls right next to some of my favorite engines — a game engine powered by stress in a mission-based structure.

Except that is not what is driving the game. Oh, no. Combat and combat tactics are the burning heart making Infinite Revolution happen. Stress, often so key in defining what characters can do, tracks the cost of what they do.

It is all about the joy of pulling tactical brilliance in combat and being rewarded for it. Because of this aspect, Speed is the primary way the engine of Infinity Revolution interacts/interacted with the rest of the game.

Speed is everything: position, Hit Points, armor, range. It is how you read the patterns of weapons and powers. Where most games with mechanical interesting chooses give you multiple levers with you can pull to divert resources one way or another, connected to different things, in Infinite Revolution everything connects to Speed (with or without Stress involved).

This singular focus on Speed produces two interesting effects. The first, is that the game is extremely light in cognitive load — whatever you do, you can get an immediate read on Speed and how it is affected, no need to juggle different trade-offs. The second is, a clever investment of those “cognitive credits. Where most games when simplifying give in to the tendency to keep simplifying — ultimately making one wonder why bother — Infinite Revolution takes that cognitive load it just freed from players to increase the complexity of interactions between weapons and powers.

The result is a fast-paced, error-proofed, yet extremely satisfying tactical game. The importance of Speed for combat makes the comparison to Flying Circus’ Energy system mandatory. Indeed, there are a lot of similarities that highlight how different the game these engines produce is. Infinite Revolution offers an almost “arcade” version of Flying Circus, like the difference between being a plane in a bullet hell shooter and in a flight simulator.

Brad

As someone much more brilliant than I once put it, the cost of going fast is the lack of control. Speed rules the roost in Infinite Revolution, you need to go fast to do anything, a slow Revolver is a dead one, so for the sake of humanity you better go as fast as you need to. As a GM this was an interesting thing, because the Veil immediately says they have a minimum speed of one, due to not caring about Newtonian Physics.

Now speed merely is the primary force here, but the level of customization from what seems at first to be a very basic pattern system didn’t fail to intrigue and seeing how they could further interact with the rest of the pulsing engine created by your Drives are where the real flavour starts to pour in.

6. Essentials For Session One

So, you got this game; you are going to play it, but you don’t have the time to read everything. Or even worse, you have read it and now it is all jumbled together. Here we break down the things that you absolutely want to get right and/or hit during your first session, so you get the feeling for what makes this game stand out from similar art.

Lhuzie

The game does not need much to bring to the table. With little prep and for a shorter session, I would recommend you lock down on some key points:

• Even if customization is part of the fun, for a one-hour-prep one-shot trial of the system, the facilitator should prepare a few Revolver “builds” ahead.

• Prioritize Combat Play, with just enough dipping into Crisis play to give the game structure.

• Read how Combat works.

• Disregard Cradle Play

• You don’t have to worry about Deep Support.

• Pick some simple Veil enemies like V-Seeds and Blooms, making one of them a Boss.

Brad

The Veil are an antagonist group that you are going to make interesting as the GM, you are gonna have to sell these unknowable horrors are a threat to these knowable heroes and I would honestly have some interesting short-hand present (I chose a list of common laws of physics to snap in their presence.)

Always be Pushin’ Your Limits, the game pops when it is about desperate heroes drawing greater and greater energies into themselves and damn the engines, keep the pressure up and remind players that is a powerful theme in the game.

I wrote up a quick and dirty cheat sheet of conditions, and I recommend you do the same.

7. Playing The Game Wrong

Games are played wrong. Rules will be misunderstood, interactions will be confused, the importance of certain tech disregarded; etc. This is good, and it is good to acknowledge for: you cannot have the designer at your table, and even if they were, they would be just another player - and entitled to play it wrong. After identifying stress points of the game, things that don’t connect that well, we think of the things that are more likely to be (or have been) “played wrong”. What happens when you forget a line on page 273 clearly saying this is impossible?

Lhuzie

All this time, Saves felt like a placeholder, weirdly disconnected from an extremely tight game engine. They work… fine. But it never feels quite right., it is like having an overclocked, custom-built, gaming machine but then you play with a 2 buttons 5 bucks mouse.

The “can only burn brighter, can only go faster” element has become a bit diluted through game development. When you go through accumulation of drive stress and eventual drive burn — and the climatic blaze of glory BURNOUT — it just becomes ticking segments in a clock. Where this element was always at its best when you Push Your Limits, so it is better to do it so. No matter the outcome, make every single decision to Push Your Limits or use a drive power be pushing yourself faster and Infinite Revolution will sing masterfully.

On the same topic, it may be that the burning up of your Revolvers is too random, and is messing up the pacing — I found it is quite awkward to introduce new squad mates to replace the One Of A Kind Legendary Hero late in a game. Failsafes, Failsafes, Failsafes. This is how you make sure BURNOUT are climatic and not just duds. Do not miss opportunities to do so during Cradle Play.

Crisis are not intuitive to integrate with the rest of the game, but add a lot. They were well worth figuring out and finding the best way to introduce them within the group.

The relationship with the Veil (and Veil enemies) is a bit lacking compared with the Revolver and the Drive. Considering that it is one of the three edges of the triangle supporting the stories of collaborative storytelling, the triangle may be a bit loopsided. Be prepared and alert to support it in other ways.

Brad

The more you understand tactical combat games, the better you will feel. I struggled with conditions and templates at first, but I think those are easily fixable as long as you come to the table with the tools to adapt¹.

8. What to Steal

Experiencing good art is the most important step in making good art. We look back at the things that worked and did not work about this game, see what we learned for design work, interesting tech and just a general overview of things that we will take from this game and bring into others. Or more honestly: since many of us may not play this game and we have it in our library, this way we can get some use out of it.

Lhuzie

Infinite Revolution can be used to tell two tales.

Originality is overrated, and too many games fall in the trap of hurting what their game is about chasing after originality-for-originality shake — making contrarian decisions, going against the grain for no reason. Infinite Revolution is brilliant and innovative almost exclusively on its mastery of its design foundations and how other games did their things. Skill and competency at implementing something familiar has an originality of its own.

For each time Infinite Revolution is brilliant, there is another time where it takes a safe choice; it is quite risk-adverse in its design choices. Despite that, it is still a special game because it leverages full-knowledge of every “safe choice”. Even when games suffer from chasing after originality, it is those failures that often give them an unique character and make them remarkable. They overshot their ambitions, their aptitude was still not there, but they tried to do something new in the artform. Good students can learn a lot about the high ambitions of others and where they failed — and wise students can learn they don’t need those ambitions to make their game work the way they want it to work.

But not everyone is a critic, is it? I like interesting failures and stress points because they make me think about design and give me material for a critique; when designers take big swings and miss due to their ambitions, the critics write themselves. However, most of you will rightfully read this conclusion as “the biggest stress points of Infinite Revolution are safe, well-tested design”. And you think you think that’s a wonderful “flaw” for a game to have and consider it a near perfect game.

And you know what? There’s a lesson there too.

Brad

Infinite Revolution is compelling and confounding. It is a game that is truly finely designed, tuned and capable of making you feel the ups and downs of its fast moving kinetic combat. But I always felt in control; never once did I live up to that quote in the engine section. I think that is a good thing, a game that does exactly what it says on the tin and with a design focused and powerful in bringing those things about.

You should absolutely absorb that fully, and learn that you can do just that, but as my co-writer mentions, it is a weird feeling to sit here and say “A perfectly fine game, that is a little safe” as a an argument against, after all, my group loved Infinite Revolution.

I think that’s going to be my conclusion: master the basics, but don’t be afraid to take a big, crazy swing. If you are good at the basics, the big, crazy swing can only be mediocre at worst. However, to end on another famous athlete quote, I fear not the person who has used 10,000 mechanics once, but the person who has used one mechanic 10,000 times.

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1. Longtime readers will point out that I always make handouts.