An Unpleasant Game in Pleasant Company

I got to play a game on Sunday with friends that, if I had to describe it succinctly, I would say "It wants to be Nethack: The Board Game." For a slightly more helpful way of describing it, I would say that this is a game for people who enjoy both the gamebooks of the 80s and 90s (like Fighting Fantasy or Wizards, Warriors, and You. If you're not familiar with the idea of the gamebook, you can peruse Joe Dever and others' gamebook series called Lone Wolf for free at Project Aon) and the way that Nethack, as a game, expects you to learn about its mechanics and progression by trying things, failing at them, and dying. A lot.

The game is called Sleeping Gods (link to a non-spoiler review of the game) and I played it with a couple of friends for a few hours, because one of those friends was writing a review of the game. The premise of the game is that 1-4 players control an adventuring party of 9 (a captain and eight adventurers) as they sail in the world, having adventures and trying to collect proper artifacts to be able to reach one of the endings of the campaign.

( It has promise in the premise, but the mechanics are not promising at all )

A good premise, and some interesting decisions for mechanics, but the game designer could have made a better game from the beginning by giving the PCs a fighting chance for the early parts of the game and making them have to decide between succeeding at the small things or strategically failing at some of the small things so as to be able to save up their abilities for handling the bigger ones. (But that means they have to be able to succeed at the bigger ones once they've gotten a little bit of equipment and abilities, which I'm not entirely convinced they will be able to do.)