ILLUMINATI Reviews

Fnord The negative reviews must continue, to prevent this from becoming noticed and enjoyed by the uninitiated. What the negatives fail to see is that this is not a game. It is a training package and modelling software. There is no tutorial because you don't need one - at least not if you are a genuine user of INWO. You might have seen that acronym bandied about. It is the acronym of their megacomputer. Fnord. The game is not random (as it cleverly appears to be). But it is actually relaying real world events and connections, collected from online newsfeeds etc (hence needing to be online to play and the heavy data collection that is occuring). As any certified user knows, INWO allows you to 'model' the actions of your group, to the detriment of those other groups. These results are then fed back to INWO, and if highly successful ('Victory') they will be used as part of future strategy. Frivolous, unintentional, unauthorised, use is likely to have dire real-life consequences. Fnord.

Illuminati captures the spirit of mischief of the original game, including the original cards plus some really clever new ones (Meme Lord as a retread of Freaking the Mundanes is *chef's kiss*, I think I spotted an /r/place reference, too). While the stated goal of Illuminati is world domination, which is, y'know, fine, I guess, the REAL fun is seeing how absolutely bananas you can make your conspiracy. Usability polish and the Tutorial really make a big difference in the experience and I hope it continues. This is clearly a labor of love, and as someone who has a box full of INWO cards around here somewhere, I really appreciate it. Now that Illuminati has ascended into the digital realm, there are a lot of paths forward. I wonder what they're plotting next? PS- Not for nothing, but OMCL should have some MTG Card crossplay. I mean, it's RIGHT there.

Longtime Illuminati enjoyer. It has always been difficult getting my friends into the game as I am not very good at explaining rules and the like, however if they had this? Hmm. It's a faithful and well done adaptation. I have hopes such as conspiracies from the game being added in, like the U.F.Os and the Assassins Brotherhood. I was surprised by their absence. Maybe some future original expansion content? but that's getting in the territory of daydreaming. The game as is, is pretty good already if you like the tabletop game. Now with online!

it runs worse then minecraft before microsoft bought them. which is insane because it just displays cards. the ui looks like shit and isn't clear how to play. the AI always plays as the same conspiracy. and the price makes no sense. I actually like it though, it's fun to describe what's happening out loud. I would probably give it a recommend if it was $1 instead of $25.

Good thing they didn't put in a real tutorial. Otherwise, I would never have thrown it into the backlog. The first thing the game didn't do was save my credentials for the Epic Game Store. Who wants that?

While I happily paid $25 USD for this game, to support an effort 40 years in the making and all of the insanely fun nights it has brought me playing the card game version with friends and enemies alike (this game will teach you which are which ;)... ...this game is a failure in it's current condition. The only reason I'm not demanding my money back is because SJG continues to make installments in its board game format which gives me hope that this version will evolve into something playable. Notable omissions: - NO MONEY... I mean, there is NO ILLUMINATI without MONEY. Imagine Monopoly WITHOUT MONEY... (it's that dumb, yes.) - The absence of controls over so many aspects of this game, like delegation of transferable power, well that's a logical challenge, I guess, but do I really need to hit a function key every time I play just to fit the game into fullscreen mode? - The turn-event system which went from being the central focus of play to being a barely comprehensible mess. - Only 5 Illuminati groups? C'mon man... I've got at least ten in my tabletop set which I only recently purchased. I could go on, but I need to address what this game got right so you understand WHY I'm not asking for a refund. I waited for months to buy this game based on the current reviews, but I've been playing the card game again lately and I'm jonesing so hard for this right now. What makes this version so promising: - We have the cards, the full set from 1984 to 2020... allegedly anyway. I haven't actually seen any 2020 edition cards in the 2020 play setting, but there are the NWO edition cards from the 1997 set, which are really nice to see. I wish I could say more. I'm just going to have to hang my hat onto my hopes that you make good with my money that I've invested here and elsewhere and make this game work with ALL the Illuminati groups, for a full group of players who have money and (yes make the balances visible to other players, it's much better that way, I promise), a working UI, a power structure management system true to the original games, optional rules and ALL of the original rules. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE MAKE THIS HAPPEN!!! Edit: Okay, it's about ten months after I wrote the above review and there was an update I missed, so I jacked in and played a couple more rounds. There are noticeable improvements and this makes me happy, although I can't remember what they were atm. It just seemed playable, as opposed to my prior experience. I will play it more now, at least until I'm burned out on it's limitations, but I'm still disappointed at the lack of money, number of Illuminati groups and the fact that there only seems to be one edition of the cards despite the claim that there are multiple editions included. There also seems to be an issue with using event cards on the second attack, but I'll have to do more play testing to figure out if this is a me issue or a THEM issue. Overall, less janky than before.

There's a good game under here somewhere... But someone needs to come in and wrangle that UI. There needs to be a consistent way to access info about cards/plots/etc. For example, you can left click a card to get info on it, but if you left click a "Plot" you get a buzzer error and no info. The plots in general are extremely opaque. They aren't displayed openly and you can't just left click to read them. New players just end up treating them as wild cards. Sometimes you can hover over card characteristics to get info and other times not. Sometimes the tutorial forces you to read text that is of no benefit, other times it zips past things and info just disappears. Knowing the sequence of what to click for a given action is very confusing (select A, select B, select a spot C where it should land). When is the user in the middle of an action and when are they just clicking things for information? What is proximity? What are the benefits to stacking cards underneath each other? There's not enough visual feedback on the turn structure and whether you're leaving actions or plots on the table. Why isn't there an indicator for simple things like whether a card has played its action? Even little things like the way "Controlled"/"Destroyed" are rendered at the top left are just off. Like reading left to right you think "Destroyed X" "Y Controlled". You have to look at the color to understand that simple bit of data. The core cards themselves seem to mostly behave in sensible ways, with decent mouseovers and visual indicators (like the down yellow indicators indicating available child slots). I have no clue how the rest of the UI is so off...

I do not understand the trend for games to require my birth date or age in order to play. This is a clear invasion of my privacy. I just want to play a game. Also this games requires the Epic game launcher in order to play (If I knew that I would not have purchased it) I love the card game and have been playing it for many years. I took me three three tries to finally launch this game and get it to work only to be faces with a screen requiring my birth date. Their excuse is that they require it in order to provide a safe game for me to play. WTF??!! Do they think I might get a paper cut from the virtual cards? This is pathetic. The game is no longer asking for my birth date That is good. I still do not recommend this game, in fact, consider this a warning to NOT BUY THIS GAME. This game is unplayable. I keep getting a "Resolution Not Supported" message from my monitor and I can't change the settings to find a resolution that is supported. The game also totally screws up my icons on the desktop and changes my display settings. How does crap like this get out of QA? I feel as though I have been robbed.

I wanted to play this game so much that I kept it past the refundable time limit. This game goes back to my years growing up with friends, playing Illuminati (the physical version when cheating was "allowed"). I would so love to see this game turn around, but as it is, my personal experience with the game has been too unpleasant. I do commend the Discord support person(s) I chatted with. I'm sure they want to be helpful, but there are just too many issues for me for any real quick fix. 1) I had to manually log into Epic EVERY time I started the game. 2) The UI is just not friendly or intuitive. Figuring out how to REORG a card was itself a special treat. The convention for picking a the card who will pay for the move is not obvious and not like any other action in the game. 3) I can't start or join a multiplayer game. When I go the screen to host or search the program just hangs and I have to restart (and log in again). 4) This is minor, but it seems to have issues with my monitors resolution (super-ultrawide) and whether I'm in FUllscreen or Windowed mode, changing the resolution in game has absolutely no effect. There may be a few other less significant issues, but I could live with those and enjoy the game. However, the above issues just break the game for me. Now, my friends aren't interested in getting it because of the reviews and because of my experience (and feeble attempts to defend the game) despite really being interested in the game concept. If these issues get worked out, I'd be ecstatic to come back and update this review. Edit: In response to the developer; To 1) and 3): I have always launched it through Steam. I've never NOT launched it through Steam. I am logged into Steam every time, and I still have to log into Epic at every start. This has never been an issue of me not being logged in, or of me launching the game outside of Steam.

The theme and outcomes of a game are great it's one of the reasons I love the table top game so much. It's faithful to the tabletop game and play seems to follow the rules and functions correctly, But (and I respect that this is a two man team but it's no excuse): - There needs to be a lot of UI work done to this title before I can recommend it to anyone. - The flow of the game is interrupted by the UI having to scroll around your pyramid of power is just....not good, not being able to see both you and your opponents structures on the same screen is bad. - I can not stress how bad having the cards as a list instead of showing them is. The cards are the star of the game. Illuminati was never a ground breaking design it was the theme that carries it. - Not having a full and ready tutorial for people on launch is death. - Windows mode needs to be an actual window this is a game people can/will play while doing other things, the fullscreen windows mode that it does have is not functioning correctly. At least not in windows 10. Please make your game pleasant to play so I can recommend it. You are charging a premium price for something that gives me a headache to use. With design like this you're only going to get people who love the tabletop game/theme to buy. If it feels cheap people will perceive it as cheap.