The Wretched by Chris Bissette is a role playing game supplement published by Loot the Room. This is a self-contained solo game.
The supplement is available from DriveThruRPG as a 20-page PDF for $10 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front and rear covers, five pages are the front matter, including two quotes, and another two pages are taken up by the rear matter.
Who? explains that you are the sole survivor of the salvage ship The Wretched. The rest of the crew was killed by an alien lifeform that you launched out of the airlock (one of the opening quotes is from Alien). The creature is still alive and is trying to get back in. Your ship’s systems are failing.
What? explains that the game is about human resilience in the face of overwhelming odds and certain death and gives the inspirations.
How? explains that to play the game you need a standard deck of 52 cards, a six-sided die, a tumbling block tower and ten tokens. The game can be played without the block tower but is better with it. You also need a way to record a log; audio and video are said to be the best but anything can work. There are two possible positive ways out; activating your distress beacon and surviving long enough for help or fixing the engines. Failure comes in many forms.
Begin: starts the game. The block tower is erected, d6 is rolled and that number of pulls are done. The tower is the current state of your ship. If it falls, your ship has suffered catastrophic failure and you are dead. If you lack a tower, ignore the times when you are told to pull a block and your ship will never be destroyed. The deck of cards is shuffled and details for recording the audio log are given.
The Day explains that the game consists of days and the day has tasks, which involve drawing a number of cards based on rolling the die. Each is turned over and the instructions for that card followed. Cards are discarded unless told otherwise. Then the log is recorded.
Operations Manual is on the card deck. Each suit represents something different; ship’s systems, physical structure, memories of the crew and the creature. What each card means is then covered. Each has different meanings and some require blocks be pulled from the tower. Tokens are put on the Ace of Hearts when it is drawn; this is the distress beacon and has 10 tokens placed on it. Each time a 6 is rolled, a token is removed.
Debrief is the game ending – essentially, winning the game is really difficult bordering on impossible.
The Wretched in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, although it is quite short, they would have been appreciated. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a single column format and appeared to be free of error. There are a couple of stock black and white illustrations. Presentation is okay.
This is definitely not a game to play if success is desired. The way it is set up means that it is nigh-on impossible to actually succeed. With a block tower, the likelihood is that the tower will fall. Without it, the creature will get you. Losing isn’t exactly assured, but it is extremely likely. At full price, this is also an extremely expensive game for the amount of content, though it may be a, not exactly fun, diversion. The Wretched can be found by clicking here.
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