BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER BOARD GAME

Product Information

As such, when Mrs Meeple sees a game and says ‘Buy that one’ I take it seriously. That’s why we ended up with a copy of the Buffy board game during our last visit to the UK Games Expo. The nature of a co-op game is that they tend to be quite resilient to intersectional inaccessibilities because the burden of interactivity in play can be allocated where it is most easily handled. I would be more critical though of the game’s accessibility in the event that a visual impairment intersected with a memory impairment because of how much additional burden that would put on comprehending game state. Aside from that, I’m not sure there are any specific accessibility intersections that aren’t already adequately covered by the teardown text. For those familiar with Eldritch Horror, one look at the board will have you making direct comparisons between the two. The design of the Sunnydale board bears a lot of similarity to Eldritch’s board. Eldritch is by far the heavier (and longer) of the two. Buffy feels a bit like “Eldritch lite,” though. You’re moving from location to location, resolving events, and dealing with baddies. Both are good games but given a choice, I’ll take Buffy due to the theme, lower complexity, and shorter play time. Just be aware that, despite the looks, Buffy and Eldritch are two very different beasts. In the Buffy episode, “End of Days,” Spike says, “We’ll go be heroes,” as they head off to defeat Caleb. That line should have been the tagline for Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game because you (the players) are off to save the town of Sunnydale from the Monsters of the Week and Big Bads. As a member of the Scooby gang, you’ll fight to slay the baddies before they kill all the townies (or you)! Given this is a co-operative game it’s also quite flexible when it comes to players dropping in and out – someone can simply action their characters on their behalf. Conclusion

Cards make heavy use of icons and text. The board uses art and text. The standees are differentiated primarily by the characters, and each of the different tokens is adorned with descriptions. Each player has a standee which gives a way to tell the difference between Scoobies and other characters. However, individual Scoobies cannot be told apart by touch – only that a player character is to be found in a particular region of the board. The layout of the board should eventually become familiar because it never changes, and the effects of each of the locations are not especially complex. Some reminders will likely be required but those can be built into the strategy discussion.Despite great artwork (art was used over stills from the show, but it’s slo close to the real thing that there’s not much difference), much of the theme and the immersion in the game comes from players filling in the blanks. A board game can only cover so much ground, so when you’re playing with people who can recite lines from the show and know why certain thematic elements are used, it’s much more fun. The standees, start player and Monster of the Week tokens. The good news is – it isn’t a cash in-board game! The bad news is – it’s uninspiring for other, more fundamental reasons.

Literacy is more of an issue as this is a constant requirement of play, and in contexts where players don’t have a shared language this is likely to be a deal-breaking problem. Crib-sheets or other compensations will not be at all appropriate given the amount of both required. Now another Buffy gaming generation is born, but is this first offering from that generation better than its predecessors? That doesn’t mean it’s dead and buried though. It can still rise if it can make a strong pitch as a game with meaningful accessibility credentials. I have my wooden stake handy as I sit by its coffin. I’ll tell you one way or another if I have to use it. Colour Blindness As is often the case in co-op games you all win together or you all lose together. The cause of success and failure in Buffy is hard to pinpoint because when things are bad it’s because the group as a whole let them get bad. That means nobody can point to a particular player and, fairly, say ‘this is all your fault’. That’s great. While this is sufficient for a number of games (I’m not bored, yet, after 20+ plays), true Buffy fans are going to long for more content to keep things interesting over the years. There’s plenty of room for expansion here and I hope the game gets its due. The Buffyverse needs Cordelia, Oz, Anya, Tara, Dawn, Dark Willow, Faith and so many more to feel “complete.”We can start off with good news here. Nothing in the game uses colour as its primary channel of information. And even that’s not necessarily enough to destroy a game. If that cycle of activity was inherently enjoyable then it wouldn’t be that big a deal. The real problem with this is that the repetition of core game loop increasingly reveals just how unsatisfying all of the game systems are. It’s a combination of staid predictability of the baddies and a stochastic inconvenience of the plot related-enemies. It forces your attention to return, again and again, to a part of the game that might have been able to survive shallower exposure. The more you come to it though, the rougher the game appears. The more you have to grind away at the board, the less fun you seem to be having. That’s not an epiphany a designer should be looking to make inevitable. Here’s the basic gist of play. You take on the role of one of the Extended Family of Scoobies. You can be Buffy, Xander, Giles or Willow as you would expect. You can also choose to be Angel or Spike if you like. Each player gets a limited pool of actions they can perform each turn. Each draws from a shared menu of abilities, but also a special Super Ability that is unique to them. Each character will also have a couple of inventory cards representing consumables. Wooden stakes, weapons, magic supplies and so on. Each of these will have some combination of additional actions they permit while you have them. They will also provide a bespoke special powers that activates if they’re discarded. If you have a wooden stake in your inventory for example you’ll kill vampires you fight rather than stun them. If you discard the stake, you’ll kill the vampire without spending one of your precious action points. Different locations in the game have different power that you can access, which makes it seem like there’s an extent to which you need to defend and optimise your control of areas to accomplish the tasks. It’s a solid pitch. We’ll recommend Buffy in this category – if Pandemic was a bit too cruel for your liking you might find Buffy a more appropriate alternative. Physical Accessibility