Welcome to the whimsical forest of Nocturne, where magical foxes collect enchanted items to earn prestige. A clever combination of spatial puzzle, bidding, area control, and set collection, Nocturne plays 1 to 4 players in about 45 minutes. It’s designed by David Iezzi, illustrated by Beth Sobel, and published by Flatout Games.
David is a full-time game designer for Funko Games who also supported development of Calico (CBG review) and Cascadia (CBG preview). He previously served as a designer for Magic the Gathering, Spellslingers, and Margraves of Valeria.
Gameplay
Players cast spells, represented by numbered tokens, attempting to claim desired items in the forest, out-bidding each other on adjacent items until all other players pass. These item tiles have two scoring values: collecting sets of item types, and using the ingredients on those tiles to generate concoctions.
Once a tile is selected, the highest-bidding player’s token becomes part of the grid, and thus part of a secondary area control scoring opportunity.
Nocturne’s end game scoring will be familiar to Flatout Games fans, as you pull out a familiar-looking score sheet with 11 different opportunities to gain points.
While some elements of Nocturne will not be new to those who have played other games from this publisher, the “orthogonal auction” mechanism is unique. I’ve never played a game quite like this before, and I really enjoyed it! In addition to multiplayer, solo and family variants are in the works for the final game.
Visual Accessibility Review
Flatout Games has a strong track record of producing accessible games, caring for colorblind and low-vision players with carefully-selected color palettes, high contrast graphic design, double-coding, and properly-sized text and icons.
Cards and Tiles
The ingredient icons and scoring elements look great, including good size, clear graphic design, and excellent color choices. Illustrations and flavor text throughout support the theme and setting without distracting from gameplay.
Spell Tokens
The spell numbers are high-contrast with background shadow, making them easy to see on each token. Even the lighter-colored green and orange, which could’ve been more difficult to read without the drop-shadow, look great.
Player spell token come in four colors: green, orange, teal, and pink.1 Additional shadow tokens, used during the midnight round, are dark blue. In real-world conditions the green/orange and teal/dark blue combos are a little tough for me to distinguish from one another.
Tokens have subtle double-coding, as the designs behind the numbers are slightly different for each color. I’d prefer the graphic design vary more between colors, but the coding is serviceable for this purpose. Unfortunately, this double-coding is not carried over to the back of the tokens, and there are times that upside-down tokens are scored.
I also noticed the front and back side of a single token did not match itself. It seems the printing is full art (versus just adding the number and pattern), so when the token is flipped over its front doesn’t quite match its back.
Nocturne’s pre-production tokens won’t win any accessibility awards, but the color palette and front-side double-coding will be sufficient for most low-vision and color-deficient gamers. I would recommend the following improvements:
- Tweak the color palette to add a little more separation. Tone (brightness) is one way to make this change.
- Make the double-coded patterns more prominent so it’s easier to distinguish the tokens from one another.
- Use double-coding on the back of the tokens to support accessibility in all game phases.
- Ensure the front color and back color of each token match.
Conclusion
Nocturne continues the Flatout Games thinky puzzle tradition while adding an interesting new spatial bidding mechanism. It will be accessible for most colorblind and low vision gamers out of the box, while a few might need minor tweaks to distinguish all colors.
Nocturne will be available on Kickstarter in Fall 2023. Follow updates at the Flatout Games website.
Disclaimer: Colorblind Games received a complementary pre-production copy of Nocturne for this preview. Components and final art may change in the published version.
Image Credits: Box cover images by Beth Sobel and Flatout Games. All photos by Brian Chandler.
- Only orange, green, and teal are identified in the current version of the rules. “Pink” and “dark blue” are as close as I could get to identifying the other colors. For all game publishers, I recommend naming all gameplay-relevant colors as part of the Components or Setup section of the rulebook. ↩︎
Colorblind Games 