Fantasy Flight Games set my heart aflutter as they announced an awesome sounding game this weekend. The Lord Of The Rings: Journeys In Middle-earth allows you to play as well-known characters and others, travelling Middle-earth in search of adventure whilst also holding back the shadow of Sauron.

This fully-cooperative and app-based game has you ranging across Tolkien's world, not only as part of a larger world map as you'll see below but also in more confined battle maps too where you deal with the dangerous foes that stalk the land.

As you can see by the map above, there are wonderful towns and villages to visit, woods and ruins to delve into and monsters to battle too. It looks like they've taken a note out of the Fallout board game book, improved upon that, and then added a layer of Descent/Imperial Assault on top of it too.

The game already had its hooks into me, especially when I saw the way that they were going to be dealing with characters and challenges in the game.

Each character you play as has their own strengths and weaknesses. Gimli, for example, is great at getting stuck into battle, swinging his axe around and hewing down his foes. Bilbo, by comparison, is sneaky and strong of will, able to spirit away from his foes and overcome the darkest of shadowy forces.

When you take control of a character in Journeys In Middle-earth you'll get a deck of Skill Cards. These are what are flipped over to see if you succeed in challenges...

...however, these cards also feature powerful abilities which can be used to swing luck in your favour. During a turn you can choose to take some of these into your hand and use them for their effects, boosting your prowess on future checks, but they are then no longer in your deck. So, if you start to take too many cards out of your deck you're unlikely to succeed on your checks as often!

This is a great way of mitigating the luck aspect of the game where you get to dictate how the cards fall. I would imagine they have taken some tips from Gloomhaven as this shares some similarities with that system.

As well as a characters own set of skills there are also additional cards available for their role within the group too. You might the Pathfinder of the group, charting your way across the land, or the Hunter, seeking out the servants of Sauron to bring them low.

The app that you use alongside the game dictates what happens when you reach certain areas of the world, offering up interesting chances for exploration and more. It will tell you how enemies react, and where the next stage of your quest lies. Of course, it also determines what happens when the enemies attack too!

I am a really big fan of app-based games, especially when it comes to tabletop adventures like this. It's always fun for everyone to be on the same page, working together against the enemy rather than hating on one poor soul!

The main game will come with a fourteen quest adventure called Bones of Arnor but, as with all things Fantasy Flight Games, you can expect a lot of replay value out of this AND more down the line with additional expansions and updates.

Will you be giving this a go? I certainly will!