14 DAY TRIAL // This particular Qvadriga race has been going well so far as I managed to accelerate smoothly before the first corner, then blocked off one of my rivals that ran in the lane on my right and then moved ahead of him after some judicious use of the whip.
One of our opponents in the four chariot race has crashed out and I need to avoid one portion of the track to make sure I do not hit his debris and I need to decide whether I want to move to the innermost track for the last two corners or move to the outermost one.
I tend to be a risk taker in Qvadriga, so I take a hard left and align my chariot to the inner wall and I issue a stabilization order to make sure that I manage to take the turns correctly.
Unfortunately, the extra pressure put on the chariot means that it finally breaks from the stress and I find myself once again losing a race that I thought I controlled.
To make things worse, my auriga is unable to escape the track and is killed by one of the other competitors, in one of those acts of brutality that makes perfect sense given the setting of the title.
This small snippet of gameplay underlines the main question that players need to ask themselves while playing Qvadriga: is the risk I am about to take worth the potential reward?
The game never shows the dice rolls and the calculations that take place behind the surface and only allows players to issue orders at certain times during the race, which means that a player is never able to entirely predict what will happen in the coming minutes.
This creates a nice layer of tension after issuing orders and ensures that each race is unique and the game always has a clear set of stakes.
It often makes sense to play for second place or even third in Qvadriga as long as you can ensure that the chariot and its driver safely reach the end of the race and can compete again in a few days.
Recovery times matter and I often regretted pushing too hard only to find that repairs and medical attention often took a big chunk out of my prize money.
Modern gaming tends to make players feel safe and Qvadriga is a good game because it subverts those expectations when it comes to the price of winning.