The Grizzled is a fully cooperative card game by Fabien Riffaud and Juan Rodríguez, first published in France by Sweet Games, and republished in the United States by Cool Mini Or Not (now CMON Limited). While an expansion set, The Grizzled: At Your Orders, was published in 2016, this analysis will focus primarily on the base game. As I warned my fellow players, The Grizzled is notable because it encourages its players to feel things other than the joy, challenge, and pleasure people often seek from games. It sets itself apart from many cooperative games by insisting that injuries and traumas to one’s character are unavoidable, and by centering its core game mechanics on facing the effects of trauma, rather than attempting to escape or evade its causes. The Grizzled tackles a difficult subject, placing players into the shoes of French soldiers mired in the trenches of the First World War. It does not make light of its theme. The game’s insistence that players identify with their characters, its handling of injury and trauma to players’ in-game representations, and its willingness to abstract the tactical considerations of war while dealing with its human effects all combine to create a game that sets itself apart from both wargames and cooperative games in terms of its degree of affective gameplay.
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