Recently, the board game review titans The Dice Tower became the center of attention, after deleting their YouTube review of the critically acclaimed board game Darwin’s Journey. The reason for the deletion of the video was a misinterpretation of the game’s rules by Dice Tower founder and host Tom Vasel. He has since made a formal apology and statement via YouTube:
“If you are wondering where the Darwin’s Journey review went, I’ve deleted it. We made a pretty big rules mistake which is my (Tom’s) fault for teaching it that way. We will replay it with the correct ruleset and re-review it in the future.
I apologize to the publisher/designer for this mistake on my part. I have no idea if this will change my opinion of the game (which was positive anyway, but not THAT positive), but I suspect it might.
I try not to have errors in our gameplays, but this one is on me, and I’ll work hard to avoid this in the future.”
Owning Up to an Honest Mistake
The statement and apology were favorably met with a lot of fan support. It’s important to remember that we are all human and prone to error, and as confirmed by Vasel’s statement, the game will be replayed and re-reviewed after the rules are properly understood, to avoid any judgments that may have stemmed from the incorrect rules reading.
Such corrections are important, as The Dice Tower has over 323,000 subscribers, and game review accuracy is a must. However, the channel still has Vasel’s rating and a short opinion of the game is still present in the form of The Dice Tower’s Week in Review video on their YouTube channel.
For those of you unfamiliar with the game in question, Darwin’s Journey is a worker-placement Eurogame that has players play through Charles Darwin’s memories of the Galapagos islands, which attributed to the development of his theory of evolution.
Players will have to train their workers in various disciplines and perform actions such as exploration, correspondence, and others, all for the glory of progress. The game has various objectives, both short and long-term, to help players achieve their goals. After five rounds, whoever has the highest victory point score wins the game.