Game Review: Fog of Love – Can Your Relationship Survive?

My wife and I walked through a game store and noticed an odd addition to the picks of the week. Amongst the D&D and Comic games sat a game from Hush Hush Projects. A white box popped out with a guy and gal on the cover titled, Fog of Love. It looked completely stupid yet oddly intriguing. We looked at the back and it looked involving at least. On a whim we picked it up and tried it out. What we stumbled onto quickly became one of our favorite games for gaming night! If you are looking for a fun game this Valentine’s Day, check this out.

Fog of Love – Packaging and Set Up

The box looks incredibly simple yet professional, and thankfully this feel carries through to its insides as well. Once you slide off the dust jacket, but box looks plain white but for the title in slightly raised white lettering. You have to tilt the box to see it. Once you remove the lid, you find an ingenious box layout. All of the cards, tokens, markers and scenarios have spots. When making a choice where you and your partner choose and reveal, they included very nice clay poker-style chips with letters on them. These are NOT cheap little throw away tokens.

The cards being used are all on wonderful card stock and the little wooden markers come with their own cases that fit in their own slots. This may not sound like much, but unless you like simply throwing games in boxes to be sorted later, this box keeps things well organized, even for the various expansions.

The board itself is rather large. It measures a lengthy 22″x22″, but the designers of this game thought out the layout and there is a place for every card or pile you will use in the game, save your hand of course. The layout may seem confusing, but the instructions do a wonderful job helping you set up the game for the initial turns to begin.

Fog of Love – Walk-through and Initial Game Play

Setting up initial games and walking through the first time can often be a pain in the ass. You do not know where everything goes and you struggle to learn rules and orders. Not here! This game created the single greatest set up and walk through I have ever experienced. Once you have the initial set up ready, you take the card stacks and look for the card marked 1. You read the back and it tells you exactly what to do and where things go. The 30 step cards walk you through your first game. They are incredibly well written and leave little room to question what should be done.

In the game, you and your partner go through a scenario and hope by the end you are fit as a couple and can stay together, but watch out. You may not be as compatible as you thought. Can you play the game while being loyal to your characters traits? Are you and your partner meant for each other or will you suffer together in misery?

Fog of Love – Setting Up the Character is Half the Fun

Essentially, Fog of Love is an RPG. Do your best to simulate the character created, and then go through the steps to see if you are compatible with your partner.

You both draw five trait cards and choose three. You might be narrow-minded, kind and patient, or maybe pretentious, disorganized and greedy. These give you goals to help answer questions. The truer you are to the cards the more accurate the game becomes.

You then draw five features and choose three, but wait! These are not your features. These are the features of your partner, not you. You fell in love with them because they have a sensuous voice, poorly dressed and have a counterfeit watch, or perhaps they are lean with shaky hands and sneaker. There is some real fun in choosing these.

Finally you pick a job and there’s your character. You then choose a scenario and paly various scenes that can be either sweet, serious, bum ba BUM – Drama! Maybe your relationship stays fluffy and meaningless, or perhaps you are a drama queen/king and love the hard life. Watch out – your choices influence your relationship.

Fog of Love – Overall Thoughts

I suggest taking this game in three phases to start. The first time through use the walk-through cards to show you how to play the game. They do allow for choices along the way, but the steps are mostly predetermined.

Step two – play as you truly are. It really helps to take the first game and play with choices you want to make. Otherwise you may find yourself struggling to let go in later games. From then on BE the character created, not yourself. You need not become overly dramatic to have fun, but the more you can be the character the more fun you will have.

You get lots of interesting cards and questions that cover the gambit, but in the end it’s amazing how hard it can be to make a relationship work. The goal is always to stay together, but sometimes you are just too different.

The game is only designed for two players but already has a number of expansions. The only draw back is this works best with you and your partner, or perhaps a friend that likes relationships. This doesn’t really fit in with a guy’s/girl’s night out and gaming. For any interested, while the game is designed around the colors blue and pink, the character cards allow you to flip them over to show either a boy or girl. Then you just argue over who gets which color.

Fog of Love – Final Score

Is it bad I keep wanting to type Fog of War? Oh well, relationships can be hell. I highly recommend giving this game a go this Valentine’s day or any day. Its well made, incredibly well thought out, and should you like it it comes with expansion packs for further play.

You can find it at your local gaming store, or online retailer. Become the You you always wanted to be (or perhaps never wanted to be), grab your partner and have a blast!

SCORE: A-