Corny Groń

Well, I guess, it's not for me. I might just not have enough patience to "get it", but anyways, the results are still the same - me being frustrated, questioning time spent and all the praise. I've learned about the game from Bob the World Builder, and am immensely disappointed by that recommendation. Maybe this feedback will save someone's time.

• First of all, there's more lore on this itch.io page (that lore is still vague, there's not much to it except "yeah, it's Polish"), than in the game itself.
  
  Like, who am I? What goal do I pursue, except "crafting six special abilities"? Consequences of what events pushed me into this endeavor of getting killed in the mountains?
  
  There's no fluff, no narrative value, no cultural value. I've learned nothing about "Polish mountains" and "culture and art" of highlanders, except several Polish words - and even those have no transcription, so I can't even read them properly. Futile effort.

• Second main issue is, the roll values and difficulty ratings are broken, and not supported by any thought or game sense. To unlock even a possibility of beating the game, one needs to roll 12 on 2d6, which is a 2.7% chance to start with. Hell, that's half of the chance of rolling natural 20 on d20! 
  
  Rolling 2d6 also gives not a linear chance, but a Bell's curve, meaning that most of the time new locations would be either Deep Woods, or a Meadow, with these two locations having almost 65% chance of all possible rolls (values of 6 to 9). And these two give us just an Encounter, and three out of six Encounters are the ones that deal damage either by the trap or by the combat, even if choose to avoid the combat (yeah, Meadow lets escape with no damage taken, that's not the point). Forth option is a riddler, who, if you decide to play, with 50% chance will smack you in the face too! That's like 66% chance of getting punched in an Encounter!
  
  In other words, rolling for a new location has a ~33% chance that the player just gets punched in the face (~45% if you try to solve the riddles, too), with nothing to it. No progression, no choices, no gains, nothing!!!

• Not to mention that the combat itself is described as vaguely as it can be. It is implied to have rounds (named turns), and it's kinda implied that the enemy does no actions, only reactions as a consequence of bad rolls, or... start of a new turn (Undine). 
  
  To quote ("Enemies", page 11): "Failure means that the Enemy deals damage to you – subtract the points from your HP."
  
  So does "Hajduk (court guard). 3 points, deals d4 damage" deals 3 points of damage, fixed? Or does it rolls d4?

Everything else doesn't matter, at this point. After giving it a good hour, I give up. I've gained nothing, I've learned nothing, and get quite the opposite result from the expectation of "exploring mountain wilderness and weirdness... [with] ...the atmosphere of folk tales about outlaws and knaves from Polish mountains, their culture and art".

It definitely doesn't help that I must constantly turn the pages from locations to encounters, to enemies, to items and prices, back and forth. The rare case of printed booklet being less satisfying and useful, than the digital version opened on the phone.

Honestly, one simple rule could make this experience so much better - ability to see what lies ahead by rolling locations right after rolling for available paths, with maybe exception of Deep Woods. I might give this game a second chance with this ruling, but considering everything, I doubt it, honestly. 

My honest opinion - this game should be coded into a simple single-page app, with all its binary logic "if this then that" fitting perfectly for the medium, having no variability or narrative choices in it. Yeah, me too enjoy myself some fiddling with pen and paper, rolling physical dice - but not to the extent of doing it just for the sake of doing it, which this game mostly is about. I guess, it's not for me at all.

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With all the best regards to the author and the team. This feedback is not a personal attack, it's a critique of form and rules of the game. I appreciate the people, the effort, the goal, and the craft of this game, and am only unsatisfied with the game itself, as a final product that I've experienced. <3

Love the vibe! This is the second solo TTRPG I've played and I've really enjoyed where it's taken me. Good map-making mechanics!

I'm partway through my first game and I'm absolutely loving this!

The map drawing mechanic is so simple and yet so enjoyable!

This was brutal. I got the physical version through the Beyond Corny Gron kickstarter and before checking the big book I decided to give it a go to the solo booklet. I was pretty lucky on the beginning, 5 locations with a merchant, 2 riddlers (one I got the good result, the other didn't) and just a Scanty enemy. Thought this was going pretty good and seemed kind of easy, even. Then a bear killed me, even though I cheated and redid the fight because I had forgotten that I had some scrolls.

No notes, really solid quick and easy little game

PD: Just doind a second run and realized that you can also run away. Oh well

I'm not a big fan of solo role-playing games, even if I'm looking at it more and more as the years go by. I must say that I have a few in the cards... In the meantime, I discover this game inspired by Polish folklore, with beautiful engravings as illustrations and a way of playing not far from the stories you are the hero, with a little more randomness. It's still a survival and combat game, which is not really my thing at the moment, but the format is really nice.

Terse, yet rich and starkly beautiful. This is a wonderful solo adventure with a glorious, unforgiving environment to explore with enough depth to be used as a setting/ point crawl for other games. 

I can't wait to play again and bring others to Peak Black!

Also, the soundtrack is amazing!

I’ve already played twice and now I have two new point-crawl maps to use for other games. This is a fun little roll-and-draw!

Love the European-folklore atmosphere.

Love the illustrations.

Love the solo mechanic, simple but at the same time having varied and descriptive encounters that make the exploration experience much more immersive, narrative-focused and emotional compared to the usual cold and boring solo crawlers (the kind of crawler in which you always encounter generic and flavorless rooms comprising monsters).   

highly recommended! 

I didn't try the game but i just checked quickly the pdf and the illustrations are really beautiful ! It motivates me to try the game ! Thanks a lot for your work :D