1 Player
Designer: Denis Kurdiukov
Artist: Denis Kurdiukov
Publisher: Nuka Zombee
In Lepra, you’re trying to survive a horrible plague and find a cure before your town is consumed. Is your destiny to be the saviour or are you down with the sickness?
How to Play
To setup the game, you just need two sheets and two pairs of dice of different colors. First, you roll all 4 dice, with each color being one coordinate. That square on the map is hit by the plague and crossed. If that spot is already taken, you find the first spot without plague in each direction and cross them. Then, for free, you can quarantine one spot on the map. Quarantined squares can take one hit from the plague before succumbing to it.
Then, you can use any of the four dice to take one dice action, and you can also use resources you acquired to take spend actions. Resources other than coins need to be spent in groups, so if to earned 3 food and needs to spend 1, the last one is lost.
Each of the four areas must be filled in different ways. The cross needs to be filled from the bottom up, and only takes resources, the graveyard needs to be filled one column at a time, the harbor needs to be filled one row at a time and with values summing to a specific value, and the workshops can be filled freely, and give you bonuses for completed rows and columns.
Each area at a certain point gives you an ingredient for the cure. If you find all four you win the game. However, if you ever have a 2×8 area of a 5 square cross, you lose.
Rules and Components
I know rules for PnPs, specially ones just released, are in constant evolution, but Lepra already starts with a mostly well written piece. There are a few areas where the wording could have been better, but I do also appreciate the faq in the end. I complained about the layout of Nuka Zombee’s rules for Recycled, and I do feel like it’s much better here.
The sheets, however, are totally too dark. I understand the thematic reason for if, and while I do appreciate it, it gets in the way of good usability. Explanations on how each area works are written near them on the sheet, which is good. But it’s red on a very dark background, and while it is readable on the pdf, when printed it becomes quite hard.
Score: 6.5 / 10
Gameplay
In its essence, Lepra is a games about action economy and “just enough” spending. With a single dice action per turn, you have to be precise on when and where to spend it to get you close to victory. Since you spend resources in bunches, ideally you gather and spend the exact amount, as the surplus could be used elsewhere. That ties in, for example, with the harbor. It’s quite interesting how to obtain a good amount of a certain resource you will earn less of the other.
Some actions gives you purges, which completely burn down a house, preventing the plague from hitting or spreading from there. Obtaining those in the right time and spending them in the exact spots is crucial for victory. However, if you take too long obtaining more purges you can leave yourself unprotected from the lose conditions.
In a practical sense, it’s a very straightforward game, but it’s also one that challenges your decision making to have a chance of wining.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Theme and Art
As I mentioned, Lepra is very theme focused. All areas make thematic sense, in a super abstracted sense of course, and the visual is striking and stark, as the theme requires.
There is one area, I few, it’s quite lacking, which is the village itself. It doesn’t feel alive, or meaningful other than the puzzle that the game imposes. But it does feel like a deliberate to keep the game simple and streamlined. And, after exploring the expansions, I feel even more like that’s the case as this issue is addressed on those. In China, we have the wall parts, Africa has the wells and Aztec has the ritual sacrifices, all giving more personality to your people.
But, since we are just considering the base, I feel like it was a missed opportunity to not give meaning to your people, and that makes it trivial in a sense to put them in harm’s way or to sacrifice them. And that is so central to the theme of the game.
Score: 7/10
Conclusion
Lepra is a slow burning and tense game with a very streamlined and elegant set of rules. The challenge is that to win you have to walk on the edge of risk and efficiency, and that is exciting.
But, it’s not groundbreaking or particularly memorable. I will absolutely play this from time to time, and I feel like it rewards replay for the honing of your skills. But it’s not one that will stick with you after you put it away, something I felt on the past couple of Nuka Zombee’s games.
Rules and Components: 6.5/10
Gameplay: 7. 5/10
Theme and Artwork: 7/10
Score: 7/10
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