Board To Death

One of the last times I went out was to a local thrift store in town, and while there I was absentmindedly searching the board games, looking for things my girlfriend and I could do together to kill time at home since all we have to do otherwise is game or watch TV or read, and after a while those options become rather monotonous. Anyway, while there my eyes landed on something I couldn't believe...a near pristine, complete in tin edition of the Wonderful World of Disney Trivia. This was a game that I actually owned growing up, and I had honestly forgotten about entirely until seeing it there. See, my family took yearly vacations to Disneyland (I admit, I grew up in a fairly well off household, which doesn't make the trauma I endured any less horrifying but still), and we usually got souvenirs, One time that consisted of a rather pricey board game titled The Wonderful World of Disney Trivia. We must've played this game a billion times, and it was something I was particularl...

Without having ever played Forbidden Bridge, I think I can still adequately claim that it's also fair to be called the poor mans Fireball Island. It so clearly wants to be in the same category, just looking at the visual and the overall concept, but it's so watered down, so very simple in comparison, that it's like Baby's First Fireball Island in comparison. This is likely the meanest thing you can say about it, however, so that's good. Much like Fireball Island, you play an adventurer seeking to liberate a jewel from an angry idol, and much like Fireball Island the whole thing inevitably takes place on a large 3d printed board game set in a jungle of some kind (where these sorts of things invariably take place). When the idol shakes, the bridge can break, and the player can topple down to the board below, or players can switch with other players so they don't fall off, or steal one anothers jewel if they land on the same space. It's fairly basic, it's f...

In what is possible the lamest of all the haunted house board games we've covered here lately, Ghost Castle (yeah, even the name doesn't really do much for it), is about as bland as they come when compared to the others we've looked at. Okay sure, we've only looked at two others and okay sure one of those was based on pre-existing IP (The Haunted Mansion) but still!Ghost Castle is still the most childish and least visually entertaining of them all. That isn't to say it doesn't have its good points, though, because despite its massive shortcomings design wise it still has some pros to it. Let's discuss the artwork. While it's nowhere near as visually neat as Haunted House - because it lacks an actual model - and The Haunted Mansion - because, well, it's not the Haunted Mansion, it still merits some points for the artwork within it. Even though the "castle" in this sense of the word is nothing more than painted board pieces, those painted boa...

Chutes & Ladders, Snakes & Ladders, Eels & Escalators, whatever you wanna call it, is one of those few board games that felt old when I was a kid. While most board games are relatively ancient, they at least never felt that way, or at least were modernized often enough, given a slightly fresher coat of paint, to appeal to younger audiences. But Chutes & Ladders never did, or if it did it certainly didn't work because nobody I know has ever played this game. It's almost as fake as Jumanji in its existence. One we've only heard whispered about but never witnessed ourselves. And yet, it is a real board game (also like Jumanji, amazingly; thanks marketing!) that you can go buy right now at your local superstore, on the shelf next to - frankly - more deserving games, like literally any of the ones I've talked about on here thusfar. Turns out my intuition about Chutes & Ladders being ancient was not actually all that far off. Chutes & Ladders (whose re...

Boy, growing up in the 80s/90s, as I did, if you asked where girls lived, you'd often get the response, "The mall!" because people just thought teenage girls lived and died at the mall. And while I did visit the mall a lot as an adolescent, I assure you it wasn't to take advantage of THESE GREAT LOW PRICED DEALS! It was more to either buy a book now and then, or escape my family, and often much more the second than the first. It wasn't about social interaction or spending money, it was about having the chance to actually get out of the house and away from the people who constantly wanted to hurt me. So to make a board game based on a mall, something that, these days, seems to sort of be in its death throes, is a pretty great concept that I'm all for. Even as much of a stereotype as "girls love the mall" might have become, let me tell you, as someone who was once a teenage girl, it's 100% true. See a stereotype is a stereotype often because they...

If ever there were a game that was somehow simultaneously super famous and yet not famous, it's Clue. Despite having, just like Monopoly, a million versions published all because each IP that exists demands their own, despite having a goddamned feature film, despite having a whole ass musical and despite being one of the most famous board games of all time...it also has surprisingly little relevancy in the modern world. Maybe it's just because of the slow death of the "mystery" genre, when it isn't a mystery wrapped inside another genre, like science fiction. Nobody reads mystery books anymore, and outside of Knives Out - which, in all fairness was almost a parody more than it was an homage, not that I say that as an insult - there's no mystery movies anymore. Sure, Columbo has made a comeback during these uncertain times, but there's not really anything modern that's pure mystery as far as television goes, and especially nobody attends weekend murder ...

Okay, I usually don't do similar games back to back, and I generally try and steer away from games based on things, or from external media (Jumanji was an outlier, obviously), but this one that cropped up while I was doing last weeks post really caught my attention and demanded I discuss it, so here we are. Because, look at this, and I mean just look at it for a good solid few minutes before we continue. There's so much to appreciate here, and that's just aside from the fact that it actually exists, ok?  Released in 1972 and published by Lakeside, 2 to 4 players attempt to move their Doom Buggy throughout the Haunted Mansion. Meanwhile, there's large swaths of the game board which feature rotating discs that regularly change the path your Doom Buggy can or cannot take, which is an extremely neat idea. It also means that if you land on a spin stone via these discs, you'll activate the spooky ghosts you're trying so hard to avoid, so there's a whole other leve...