“Rehearse, play gigs, get a record deal and become the most famous rock star of 1977.”
Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/402679/rock-hard-1977
Playing Time: 45-90 mins
Weight: Light-Medium
Genre: Worker Placement Rock & Roll Simulator
Designer: Jackie Fox
Players: 2-5
A fairly lightweight worker placement game where players take the role of a struggling musician working hard to quit their day job and work their way up to playing their first colosseum gig. Designed by formers “Runaways” bassist Jackie Fox, this rock and roll life simulator just oozes authenticity.
The ‘day job’ element is definitely novel – each player starts with a job, which earns them a modest amount of money — assuming they go to work. But you can’t do everything you need to do if you lose time to work – and you can only skip work 3 times before your fired. By then, your rock career needs to be moving.
But the real element that your table will be talking about is managing your drug — sorry, ‘candy’ addiction. Sometimes you need to take two turns in a row, which you can totally do if you indulge your sweet tooth. Candy gives you a variable number of extra actions (usually 1 but sometimes 2 and sometimes 0 – your dealer gave you some bad sweets). But also, every time you use ‘candy’, you do a die roll, a roll that gets riskier every time you do it. This press your luck element can result in you losing a turn as you dry out in rehab. It’s an artful, thoughtful acknowledgement of how drugs impacted the music culture back then, and how its risky.
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