The Demon Went Down to London
A review and game design study of Eleventh Beast
Introduction
Eleventh Beast is a gorgeous game about hideous creatures. The concept of this solo journaling game by Exeunt Press is that the year is 1746, and you are part of a secret order of demon hunters commissioned by the king to track down and kill monstrous beasts that arrive in the city of London every 13 years.
Eleventh Beast caught my eye with its striking red cover while I was browsing the Exeunt Press shop page,1 and after reading about the game’s premise, I purchased a PDF copy. Captivated by the book’s beautiful design and compelling theme, I was excited to be immersed in its darkly intriguing world.
Eleventh Beast packs a lot of style and ambition into one slim package, and playing it inspired me to think more deeply about solo tabletop game mechanics and the ways in which they can interact with a game’s narrative goals.
To commemorate my time with Eleventh Beast, I’ve written a brief review of the game, along with some lessons I learned from analyzing its game design.
Is This Game for You?
If the idea of being Van Helsing2 in 18th-century London excites you and you have the desire and creativity to journal your experience, then you should consider giving Eleventh Beast a try. The PDF version is only $5, which is a fair price for a digital copy of a lovely game booklet and the opportunity for a thrilling adventure.
On the other hand, if you don’t enjoy journaling, or if you want complex game mechanics or a richly layered narrative, then this one may not be for you. Eleventh Beast is, at its heart, a fairly simple game, and you’ll need to use your imagination to create a story with the basic ingredients the game offers.
I had a very satisfying first playthrough of Eleventh Beast. The dice and cards landed in just the right way to give my story a dramatic buildup and climactic ending. You can read my actual play to see if Eleventh Beast might provide the kind of game experience you’re looking for.
Lessons from the Game Design
Eleventh Beast is a small but thematically ambitious game, and I learned a lot by not only noticing what the game does well but also examining a couple points of friction that I experienced while playing.
1. Maximizing the Value of a Minimalistic Ruleset
Eleventh Beast’s gameplay loop is admirably simple. The game plays fast, the rules are quick to read, and the mechanics are intuitive and easy to learn. The game packs a surprising amount of depth into a concise set of rules.
It’s impressive how the game is able to evoke the thrill of running around London, interviewing witnesses, and hunting a terrifying monster using nothing more than a basic map of interconnected nodes, a couple of dice, and a deck of playing cards.
The efficiency of Eleventh Beast’s ruleset was a helpful reminder to me of the importance of making the most of each mechanic you add to your game.
2. Oracle Tables as Fodder for the Imagination
This is a minor issue, but due to space constraints, the oracle tables for NPC names in Eleventh Beast are quite small. With only six different first names and surnames to roll for, my generated NPC names quickly got repetitive, which was a bit immersion-breaking (my version of 18th-century London sure had a lot of Isoldes).
At one point, my game almost had two Bartholomew Aldworths, but rather than take a mulligan on the name, I decided that I had first met Bartholomew at Coxes Wharf but later ran into him again at the Burying Ground. Bartholomew also happens to have a sister named Isolde who lives near Billingsgate Dock.
The oracle tables’ brevity is understandable, as Eleventh Beast began life as a one-page RPG, but experiencing the repetition in names made me realize the value of providing players with a large variety of raw materials with which to construct their world.
3. Mechanical Depth as a Source of Player Engagement
There is a crucial balance to be struck between simplicity and complexity in a game’s design. Complexity affords a player choices and challenges. Too much complexity, and a game may feel overwhelming. Too little, and the player won’t feel engaged.
Eleventh Beast, with its succinct set of rules and short list of player actions, tends toward the side of simplicity, which is good for many reasons. However, there were times when I wished that the game had slightly more intricate mechanics. I sometimes felt stymied by the limited action options I had, which often came down to simply taking the Move action twice in one round.
More complex mechanics could also reduce the game’s susceptibility to unmitigated randomness (randomness that isn’t affected by any other part of the game state or anything the player does), which can lead to narrative outcomes that feel arbitrary and missed opportunities for purposefully ramping up tension in a game.
Conclusion
From what I’ve seen, Exeunt Press’s games are crafted with artistry, passion, and care, and Eleventh Beast is no exception. The game book is dripping with style, with theme and visual design integrated seamlessly on every page.
From the stylized fonts to the line art illustrations filtered in bold shades of red, orange, and yellow, every part of the rulebook evokes the game’s historic European setting and occult theme. I would be happy to display a copy of Eleventh Beast on my shelf, and while its mechanics may not have the depth needed to grant endless replayability, I’m glad I could experience the game’s unique premise at least once.
Do you have thoughts on Eleventh Beast or any of the game design topics I discussed above? Share them in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.
I’m not affiliated with Exeunt Press and earn no commissions from this post.
And by “Van Helsing,” I, of course, mean Van Helsing from Universal Pictures’s 2004 action horror film Van Helsing, starring Hugh Jackman.