We just returned from our first trip to New York City, and all over town, there were signs and ads for The Great Gatsby on Broadway. On the taxi ride over, the Taxi TV featured an interview with the cast in a speakeasy bar somewhere in NYC. How apropos was that? It just so happened that I had I brought with me a prototype of a game from Subsurface Games called PUPPETS IN HIGH PLACES that is hitting crowdfunding this month.
Puppets In High Places is a tug of war style game designed by Amanda Vallerand set in a fictional city filled with the actions of the underworld. Bribes, intrigue and palm greasing are all the order of the day in this game, and it is set in the familiar world of With A Smile & A Gun, Subsurface’s first game that we featured back in 2019 and was successfully crowdfunded. Puppets In High Places is designed for two players, but Vallerand has a solo mode in the box, too.
The premise of the game is straightforward. Each player is trying to score 25 points by bribing, influencing and cajoling big VIPS (very important people) into handshake deals. Honor among thieves only requires a handshake, right? The VIPS are represented by three colors of six-sided dice in the middle of the tug-of-war board. Getting the dice to your side of the board and across the handshake bar is the key to scoring those points, but there’s a fun process to get there.
The game is divided into two parts: the street phase and the speakeasy phase. The first one is the one that is the most familiar, although there is a little bit of a tweak that elevates it a bit. During the street phase, the players take turns moving a car on a tableau of cards representing different buildings near the downtown. Players do this to gather the bribes and influence they need in the speakeasy phase to push VIPS and seal the deal.
But I like the twist that players have two parts to each location during this phase — not only do they grab resources along the way, but they also have a cadre of goons that they can loiter at each location. If they get enough goons at the location, they can spend those goons to activate the bonus tile on that location.
So, it’s not just a fight to move the car to the best spots, it’s also about spreading your goons around the city for the best bonus actions. That’s a cool iteration on the typical move-the-meeple action, and it feels thematic to have a bunch of your goons hanging around the pool hall putting the squeeze on the local establishment to give up some contraband. We’ve seen those movies before.
The second phase happens when one of the players decides to park the car at one of the two speakeasy locations on either side of town. We’ve gotten away from the bright lights and late nights of Manhattan, and we’ve arrived at one of the seedier areas of town. Slip past a door, and the VIPs are waiting in the bar for us.
This part of the game becomes a quick back-and-forth action sequence, each player taking turns to ‘motivate’ one VIP die to come closer to the players side of the board. You can spend the cubes you’ve gathered in town to move the VIP one space closer, or you can spend smile tokens you’ve earned to move them and increase their value. Remember, the value of the die corresponds to the victory points you get, so those smile tokens are important. Plus, there are gun tokens you can get — this is a mob game, right? — and those move the VIPs two spaces, but decrease the value. I’m guessing that the little flower shop owner doesn’t like a lot of metal in her shop when your goons wave them around.
When someone passes, the handshake bar is moved a bit closer to the center, making that player’s next speakeasy phase that much easier. The players then return to the street phase and start gathering up the goodies again until someone reaches 25 points triggering the end of the game. Most points wins!
That’s a pretty high level overview of the game, and it feels like a lot gets done in only thirty to forty minutes for each game. It’s easy to set up and tear down, so it makes a great game for playing after dinner with your partner.
I really enjoyed the decision of how far to push the car around, what locations to influence with my goons, and keeping track of what my opponent is doing. You have to know what colors the other player is focusing on, so that you can not only take the easier VIPs when you can, but also put a kink into their plans. If you just let the other player run away with all the 5s and 6s, you will be swimming with the fishes pretty quickly.
And of course, there’s a little bit of lagniappe in the campaign. First, there’s the obligatory solo game, where Vallarand has added some cards that trigger what your opponent bot does each round. As you know, I am not much of a solo gamer, so I have not yet tried this part yet.
Second, there’s also an additional mode of play that the designer recommends players wait to try until they have the game mechanics down. The game also comes with “keys” in each player’s color, which can be used to modify the neighborhood cards that surround the downtown and in between the speakeasy cards. The game starts with “basic” neighborhood cards, and using keys will remove one of those neighborhood cards to add one of the more advanced neighborhoods, or even just move it to a more favorable location to you in the orientation that you want. I can see some shenanigans being made with those keys, and it also mitigates situations where you don’t really have a good play this turn. Turn that frown upside down by using a key to get a better location out of the deck!
Note that the game we have displayed is still in prototype form. The real game will be a full production a la Subsurface Games’ first crowdfunding effort. Subsurface Games is developing a reputation for very thematic games that still have euro puzzly goodness, so if that is the kind of game that sweetens your cannoli, you should take a look at Puppets In High Places.
Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo
** A copy of the prototype was provided by the publisher. **
Board Game Gumbo 
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