Nu of Nooit

Keep Exploring Games is going to publish Nu or Nooit, the Dutch version of Now or Never. In this asymmetrical competitive game for 1-4 players, players will adventure, build engines and read stories.

Those who have already played Above & Below or Near & Far may already find this somewhat familiar, as Now or Never is its successor. But while the theme is similar, the gameplay is not.

On your turn, you can either do a specialist action or a hero action. Specialists are friendly creatures who can perform a specific action for you. And the hero, that's you. When you do a hero action you must first move, and then you can visit a location and perform the action depicted on it, go fight with a monster or investigate a location. In the introduction you do this by turning over a token, but you can also play 6 chapters where you read the stories from a storybook and in doing so can make choices that have all sorts of different consequences for the game. You can also get missions in this game, and when you complete them you can turn them in at a location for rewards.

Battles are simple in Now or Never, but with a twist. You have four slots for attacks, which you can upgrade during the game. During combat, you throw a D4, and that determines which attack you perform. In addition, you have four slots for permanent bonuses that always apply to combat. Monsters only have a value for HP, an attack value and a reward when you defeat them. So by upgrading these slots, you can make your character strong for battles. And if you win a fight, you often gain experience, which you can use to unlock those stronger attacks. Each character has a unique set of attacks. But this is only one of the pillars of the game.

You also get an empty village board at the beginning of the game, and on this you can build buildings for villagers to live in. You're going to need this to produce goods, which you need to pay for those buildings, for example. And goods you can sell for money, with which you can buy specialists, for example. You will also sometimes need goods for mission cards and always for orders.  You will also do a lot of adventuring around the board to visit the various locations where you can exchange resources, lives, coins, mission cards, experience, orders and other aspects of the game in certain proportions, for example.

So you can specialize in fighting monsters, exploring locations, constructing buildings, populating your village, recruiting specialists, or mission cards and/or orders. But you already feel it coming, you are never going to get good at doing everything, you will have to make choices....

After six rounds, the game is over. You then have to throw out all your money and all your resources, and then the game will look at how good the engine you built is. You then produce (just like every round) one more time, and you can then sell your produced resources for money. Each coin then translates into a victory point, which you add to your other victory points from buildings, missions and orders to determine the winner. You can play a chapter separately or knit together in a campaign, which also tracks your reputation throughout the campaign. You can also play underground on the back of the board, and finally, a solo mode is also included.