What an incredible premise. What a fun game! If only it were playable without constantly referencing reams of paper on rules, errata, and commentary on the rules and errata.

Vast is admirably ambitious. It’s designed for up to five interlocking, competing, asymmetrical roles that all fit together beautifully to make this boardgame a nail-biting, neck-and-neck race toward victory. With a few important caveats, each player has their own rules reference sheet for their role, encompassing everything they could need to know in order to play the game. And with another few important caveats, everything can flow smoothly as each player chases their own victory conditions, pushing the game onward towards a thrilling conclusion.

Those caveats?

The game is not well edited. The layout is dense and wordy. Towering blocks of text fill most pages of the rulebook. There are rules, perhaps added later, which are missing from the reference sheets. Interactions between different players’ rules are documented with varying detail, and some clarifications only exist in the accompanying ”FAQ”—which is not actually formatted as a FAQ, just another rulebook you need in addition to the main one. There are lots of interactions, because every player’s rules are different. Worse, because the game is made to be played by one to five people, and some roles may need to be automated, there are also rules for automating roles sprinkled throughout and clogging up the reading experience. It’s a painful complication that only makes understanding the game more difficult.

This game should be a beautiful series of meshed gears churning at high speed towards fun. Instead, it’s one of the slowest games I’ve played in years. I was the only player (out of four) who was totally new to the game yet we had to reference the rulebooks nearly every turn. I won’t say that my family is fast at playing games—we’re not—but we’re damn good at learning game systems. Vast was just utterly cumbersome and difficult.

I felt like Vast didn’t want to be understood… or like it wanted to be understood just well enough that we could make dreadful mistakes and only realize several turns after we’d broken the game.

I think there’s a heart of gold at the center of Vast. It’s a good game. Unfortunately, its rulebook(s) are an indigestible thicket. If someone could strip Vast down and simplify its presentation without changing the game itself, this game would be brilliant.

Instead, I can only recommend this game with my own dense thicket of caveats.

I want to love it. I want other people to love it. I want people to see its ambition and experience the fun of competitive interlocking asymmetrical roles smoothly creating a game that feels greater than the sum of its parts. One player literally plays as the game board, shaping the field of play for everyone else! How cool is that?

That was me, by the way. I played the Cave. I won by the skin of my teeth. It was awesome.

Sadly, I think Vast really needs experienced players, patient players, and players willing to chew through sheaves of poorly written rules. I can’t recommend the game to anyone else. If you think you might be that player, Vast is incredible fun. Just don’t expect any game to move quickly until everyone has memorized the rules and each role’s interactions. Good luck.