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The king is mad. By day he succumbs to the rot that works its way ever deeper into his mind. By night he slumps beneath his cloak, a regal pool, a silken puddle. Every evening, the disease burrows further. Every morning, another decree, crazier, more taxing than the last.The king is also a lion, incidentally. At least I think he is. I'm not good with animals. Armello is much better with them, however, whether it's this big royal cat, pacing the halls of his castle, or the bunny, the rat, the bear, the wolf, all vying for position in the landscape beyond that castle's walls. The bunny is a dandy, a courtesan with a parasol and ruff. For some reason, I have the bear pegged as a noble layabout, carefully, tactically industrious in that clever way that only the truly lazy have mastered. They all live together in a world of real poise and delicacy. Look at the bright light of magical combat as it ripples off of the coal-black walls of the dungeons. Look at the manner in which each player's turn shifts the sun in the sky further along its invisible rail, making every round a day. Or a night.
Armello is a digital board game, and it's very much the genuine article. It could function as a physical board game - I gather it would slot into your quiet, thematically-organised stacks somewhere near Mage Knight - but it works so much better digitally. The pieces have life and character: they are no longer just pieces, in fact. The maths, while simple, is all taken care of. The king, though? The king is the real reason everything fits to snugly. The king is not just a tumbler of dice and a series of hasty trips back to the rule book to see how many cards get dealt. The king is a real king here - really mad, and really dangerous. "The question for us during development wasn't whether the game would work, because we've been prototyping it on paper for eight months," says the gloriously named Trent Kusters, the boss of developer League of Geeks. "The question was: can we bring a board game to life?"
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