TA TALKS BACK: REVIEW OF THE TWILIGHT BOARD GAME
TA member AddictedToEdward has written a review of the Twilight board game and shares her opinion:
After my second time passing by it at Target, I caved and purchased Twilight the Board Game ($15). Last night I finally had a chance to play it.The first thing I noticed about the game, when I opened the box, was how cheaply it was made. The box is made from a flimsy, thin cardboard, not the sturdy chipboard that is usually used for game boxes. The cards are also embarrassingly thin, and the corners bend easily. On one side of the card is a small picture from the move, one trivia question, and one challenge. The other side is just the picture of Edward and Bella from poster. A wasted opportunity there – how awesome would it have been to have a still from the movie on the back of the card! The eight game pieces are cheesy pieces of thin cardboard with the Cullen Crest on different colored backgrounds. Talk about another wasted opportunity. The Cullen family + Bella = Eight. Plastic or pewter game pieces in the shapes of the characters would have rocked my world!
Let’s talk about the actual game. The game board is set up in sections for scenes 1-8. Each space has a picture from the movie and is themed from the movie. Some spaces include “Gymâ€, “Cafeteriaâ€, “Phoenix, AZ†(the starting space), and “Edward’s Bedroomâ€. Some spaces have special instructions, some of which we didn’t understand and weren’t explained at all in the directions. So we had to guess. Each card had a challenge and a trivia question. Depending on which space you landed on, you had to either complete the challenge or answer the trivia question. I thought this was a great idea. I know Twilight inside and out, and I would be hard-pressed to find someone to play the game with if it was based on all trivia questions (all my Twi-hard friends are online). The challenges give other people who may not be as familiar with the movie (the game was based on the movie, not the book) a fighting chance. Unfortunately, this was a great idea implemented badly. The challenges were entirely stupid and not entertaining at all. Some involved rolling a die and some involved guessing something about another player. The box says “ages 10+†and I think they really catered to the younger crowd (in the group of us playing our ages were 19-33). I thought the trivia questions were fairly easy – there was only one asked the entire game that I would have gotten wrong – but again, being the huge fan that I am, I don’t know if I’m the best judge of that.
So how did our game go? There were five of us – my husband, my sister-in-law M, my sister-in-law J, J’s boyfriend, and me. J and her boyfriend had seen the movie once but were not big fans. M considers herself a Twilight fan. My husband has seen the movie a few times. I’ve seen the movie (and read the book) more times than I care to count. Since J and her boyfriend weren’t really familiar with the movie, we put J on M’s team and her boyfriend on my husband’s team, and I played alone. The game wasn’t designed for teams, and some of the challenges didn’t work well with teams but we made it work. The results? M and J took off running and were at the 2nd-to-last spot for most of the game. At that spot, you have to complete a challenge AND answer a trivia question. They kept missing one or the other and couldn’t progress to the final spot. My husband and J’s boyfriend slowly made their way around the board and eventually caught up to them. As for me – almost every single spot I landed on was challenge spot, not a trivia spot. I think I had one trivia question the entire game. The guys ended up winning, with M and J coming in a close second. I will still stuck in the middle of the game, unable to complete the challenges. That’s definitely a testament that those who don’t know the movie well can hold their own in this game. It was completely frustrating that with all my Twi-knowledge I got stuck early in the game because I couldn’t completely (mostly) luck-based challenges. I was hoping the game would be accessible to the guys, but I also hoped it would have been a little more balanced. M and J would have won very early in the game if they had been able to complete a card, but it took them several tries.
Overall, I was disappointed in the game. I would have gladly paid up to $20-$25 for a higher-quality game. I’d love to see another game come out with a focus on the older Twi-fandom (ages 20+) that had more interesting challenges. One thing I’d love to see is a set of Twilight-themed (for the books and all the movies, once they’re done) cards for Trivial Pursuit. I am looking forward to the Twilight Scene-It game coming in fall. Hopefully that one won’t disappoint as much.
Talk Back to us….what do you think?
