Reload is a game that strives to tread rare ground within the games scene, as a battle royale adaptation that can take cues from Fortnite. It has a clear goal in translating this popular style of gameplay, and mostly pulls it off, with a colourful map and round-limited action that forces you to make hard decisions about where your player character will move, and how they’ll tackle various threats around the main board.
But you will find multiple hurdles holding Reload back from as being a truly great game – many of which feel like rudimentary missteps. The first is going to be most obvious to English-speaking players sitting down to learn the game the very first time.
Reload: Setup and How to Play
Precision is key when teaching players about how to play a new game. There will always be countless rules to be detailed, mechanics to become explained, and usually multiple stages to the action. Any misstep in explaining these details, and players is going to be left feeling confused and unsure what direction to go.
Unfortunately, this is a cardinal sin of Reload. The sport was originally written in French, and it has since been translated – however the imprecision from the language in the English version renders a few of the game’s main mechanics difficult and time-consuming to understand. (You’ll need around 1-2 hours free to read through the game’s relatively short, but explanation-packed manual.)
The combat system (pictured above) is particularly odd, and features three giant pages of text that over-explain complicated player vs. player scenarios in painstaking detail. Even after parsing these instructions, you’ll have to constantly consult the manual to re-remember and know how the game works.
How to experience Reload
In Reload, you play as a character entering a battle royale fight, so that they can win fame and defeat rivals. The backstory is rather Hunger Games; inside a dystopian near-future, you are a fighter trying to prove your worth to a terrifying government by facing off with other powerful fighters on strange planets. (Notably, only one from the four playable characters is a woman – and she’s hidden behind an alien guise. The rest are ‘action hero’ type men.)
Each fight happens with an variety of hexes – there are multiple planets to fight on, each having a different hex arrangement – and 2-4 players will fight battles on these tiles.
Fame can be earned by initiating battles, and forcing characters to ‘die’ (Reload), by claiming prizes in Events, by picking up certain items, by nabbing loot drops, by landing on certain tiles.
Every round, players can pick from the selection of actions – moving, fighting, picking up items, deploying traps. To invest in these actions, dice are placed on the character board, and considered face a corresponding number.
At the final outcome of every round, an Event is drawn, resulting in alterations in the map, new dangers, along with other surprise happenings. When all event cards are drawn, or a player reaches the goal for fame, the game ends.
Combat is a major bugbear in Reload
Once you’ve gotten with the Sisyphean task of studying the Reload rulebook carefully, working to understand and absorb every quirk in the language, you are able to eventually get a real flow going. With snappy movement and exploration mechanics, along with a colourful tile-based map to understand more about, early rounds are a complete joy. The different options are your time and effort romping through forests, uncovering special items that add to your fame score, and contending with new events because they appear.
Each location has a unique quirk or discovery to be found, and claiming item tokens keeps rounds feeling competitive and fast-moving, a lot like digital battle royale games.
But then, eventually, someone will draw a weapon to initiate combat – and it’s here that pace screeches to a standstill.
As mentioned, combat is a very complex system in Reload. To fight another player, you’ll have to be within the same square, or an adjacent square having a ranged weapon. Then – and here’s where it gets confusing – you have to roll some shooting dice, and incorperate your spent action dice to some ‘defence pool’ to initiate a comparative head-to-head.
The attacked player also organises their dice in this manner, comparing their defence pool (made up of action dice only) with the other player. All those who have the greatest number in each defence line around the character cards ‘wins’ that row. Should there be any extra dice on the ‘attacker’ side, the attacked player requires a specific amount of damage (small or large, depending on the number on the dice).
When a player takes multiple counts of harm, they're instructed to ‘Reload’ and lose their held items, similar to inside a video game battle royale. The victorious player can then claim their victim’s items, and build power by defeating more foes.
There are three whole pages to explain this method – company, it remains as confusing and slow as it sounds. The whole process is sluggish, in fact, however, you will need to go through it to earn fame points and succeed. (Avoiding it entirely helps make the game more enjoyable, but also lessens the stakes and slows the pace of earning fame.)
Potential buried in hex tiles
Reload‘s opening rounds are breezy and delightful. The game is colourful, gorgeous, and the events system ramps in the tension to make each turn feel meaningful.
Items drops are often exciting, and enhance your potential on the battlefield. There’s also lots of replayability in Reload, with tiles capable of being exchanged for brand new maps every session, and both item and event pulls adding some opportunity to all the games.
But the primary element which makes battle royale games so appealing is combat – by introducing such a complex system, Reload dampens the fun of battling.
After multiple rounds, the quirks of the game’s combat are clearer, however it remains a lengthy and thought-intensive system that feels at odds with the remainder of the game’s simpler mechanics. With some trimming, the combat could shine – however in its current form, it dulls an inspired experience.
There’s certainly potential in this game (and custom rules can help streamline gameplay), but as it’s intended as played, Reload is a lukewarm experience. Still, its bold attempt for translating the gameplay of Fortnite into tabletop form will be commended – and there are certainly bright, creative ideas hanging around that shine through in rare moments of flow.
3 Stars: ★★★
Reload (Game)
Designers: Fran
