Set a Watch: Digital Edition review

There is an art to digitizing a board game. Often, I see attempts at adaptation that try pure representation of playing the physical version, or ones that go out of their way to obscure that what you're playing was a board game in the first place.   Each of these approaches has their own merits and drawbacks, but I often find that the best ones pull from both ends of the spectrum, making decisions appropriate for the game and experience they want to create. Set a Watch takes this path, and - on top of being a brilliantly designed game - offers up a version of it I will probably never be good at or play in real life, but actively enjoy playing on iOS nonetheless.

Roll for initiative

Set a Watch is a game about fighting against overwhelming odds. You build a party of four fantasy adventurers as they journey across various locations to eventually face a horde of enemies. To represent all of this action, you have sets of dice, decks of enemy cards and locations, and a campsite board.

Each round begins with a bit of upkeep and preparation. You roll all of the dice for your adventurers, select one to stay at camp to "set a watch," and then choose from a handful of pre-combat actions that might just make the difference between success and failure.

Once that is done, your remaining heroes face a lineup of enemy cards that you can fight and defeat either by applying your adventurers' dice to them to deal direct damage or spend dice on abilities that might increase your combat effectiveness, perform unique actions, or just deal more damage than the dice might otherwise do.

Live by the die

At every decision-point in Set a Watch, you have to make some kind of sacrifice. The tools you have at your disposal are simply not enough to beat your opposition. Inevitably, party members get hurt, your bonfire weakens, enemies steal your dice, etc. There is simply no option to succeed in the game that does not feel like scraping by.

This is by design, of course, but it also makes for a game that is brutally difficult. In my time with the game, I have yet to win a run that wasn't the tutorial level. That said, I am barely ever discouraged because Set a Watch's dynamics and interlocking systems make figuring out new strategies and facing new, emergent scenarios fun to experience, even if they ultimately doom you to failure.

Relieved re-rolling

If you've already played Set a Watch in its physical form, this digital version can act as a familiar companion to that experience. Every game piece is more or less rendered as it looks in the board game version, with the digital enhancements only really coming in the form of a 3D rendered background and a lot of automated upkeep.

Set a Watch does a great job of focusing your vision on certain aspects of the game when you are in a specific phase, but also provides options for you to pop out of the action to examine other key pieces of information, just like you can when playing any physical board game.

The main convenience with this digital version comes in the form of managing all of the game's upkeep, which seems like it would be a pain to manage otherwise. There are just so many dice rolls, cards moving from different decks into other decks, removal actions, etc. and seeing those happen without having to do your own rule interpretation or busywork seems like a huge relief.

The bottom line

The core game of Set a Watch is so simple and focused that it is easy to parse outside of its native, physical form.

Part of this has to do with how intentional developers Acram Digital were with focusing the action without obscuring key information, but also - and more importantly - it's a key indicator that this is just a really well designed game.