Buffy Anne Summers, aka

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As most Buffy fans know, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a whole lot more than a television series now in syndication. It is also t-shirts, statues, comics, books, scholarly treatises, and even a game. So in the interests of, well, your edifibuffycation perhaps, here’s a brief review:

The Chosen One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, needs help against the evil minions of Sunnydale! Wanna help? Roll the dice to battle the monsters directly, or cast some mighty magic spells against Buffy’s foes. The game is designed to showcase Buffy’s toughest challenges and her greatest strengths, which are all controlled by a roll of the die. The game board features familiar characters, of course (like Willow, Buffy, Oz, Xander) and locations from the hit TV show (like the Sunnydale High School and the Sunnydale cemetery).

There are four villains and scenarios to the game: the Master from Season One, the Judge from Season Two, the Mayor from Season Three, and Adam from Season Four. Though the other seasons are not represented, the various scenarios do effectively make this four games in one, albeit very related. And of course with a little imagination, you can make up variations on the different scenarios, i.e., changing the villains, or making one of the good guys into a bad guy or vice versa.

That’s the good.

Now here’s the bad:

This game takes a little while to set up and learn the rules. Even so, in my opinion, kids will get a lot more out of it than adults will — unless you are very much the kid at heart (like I can be from time to time), in which case you may love it as much as the best show ever made for television. (Er, I’m speaking of BtVS of course.) And if you expect it to be educational, well, not bloody likely as Spike might say. It does generate discussions of the Buffy mythos, and that can never be a bad thing. But it takes several players to play it right. Either that, or some will have to play more than one character. There are resources, weapons, and help cards (the help cards are all other characters from the show) for the good characters, and evil cards for the evil team.

A couple of other minor complaints: most of the weapons are, well, different kinds of stakes. Also, the villains rarely win. That’s the way we like it in the show, but it negates some of the motivation to play on the evil team. Also, the game won’t take a lot of abuse. It might be best to play it infrequently, or simply put it aside as a conversation piece or collector’s item.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer The Game