Escape the tornado, meet the munchkins, go to the wizard, and defeat the depraved witch of the west, all in your quest to return dwelling to Kansas.

Published by Ravensburger, The Wizard of Oz is the second entry of their Adventure Book Game line. For 1-4 gamers, it’s a cooperative recreation that may have you ever play by means of Dorothy’s total journey from Kansas and again once more.

Gameplay

The recreation is performed with an journey guide, which is split into six chapters. You play by means of the sport so as, beginning with chapter one. Each chapter exhibits you a recreation board and provides you setup directions for which character miniatures are used on this chapter, any tiles it’s worthwhile to place on the board, and the place to position them. It additionally lists the loss circumstances for that chapter, in addition to the challenges you could full with a view to beat the chapter and transfer on to the subsequent one.

There is a deck of story playing cards. At the beginning of every chapter, every participant is dealt 4 playing cards from this deck. These playing cards are available in 5 completely different colours. During the sport, you might be awarded particular story playing cards for finishing sure challenges. When you acquire considered one of these, you draw from the particular story deck, however discard any performed particular playing cards into the overall discard pile, which is shuffled again into the principle story deck as you play — that means that the story deck grows stronger as you progress. Special story playing cards are sometimes wilds that may be any shade or have particular talents reminiscent of further motion for characters or permitting a participant to attract extra playing cards.

All gamers are working and controlling all of the characters on the board collectively. On your flip, you begin by transferring. You could transfer one character one or two areas, or you could transfer two characters one area every. Next, you could take any of the next actions in any order: you’ll be able to commerce one card in your hand with a card in one other participant’s hand; you’ll be able to discard any variety of playing cards to maneuver a personality one area per discarded card; you’ll be able to full a problem in the event you meet the mandatory necessities.

Challenges will usually require a sure scenario on the board, reminiscent of a personality at a selected location or sure tiles flipped face-up. Then you will have to discard a sure variety of playing cards of sure colours. After finishing the problem, you verify the reward that comes from it (typically drawing particular story playing cards). Most particular story playing cards will be performed on any participant’s flip. Some challenges may also offer you a Glinda the Good Witch Favor token. You can spend considered one of these tokens in your flip to both draw three story playing cards or restart the chapter with no penalty.

Finally, you end your flip by drawing two story playing cards after which drawing a plot card. Plot playing cards will typically set you again or convey you nearer to the chapter’s loss situation. Discard down to 6 playing cards, if essential, and it’s now the subsequent participant’s flip.

If gamers beat all six chapters, they win the sport. If you lose a chapter, you might be supposed to begin again over at the start of the sport.

Review

The Wizard of Oz Adventure Book Game is a pleasant, low-key, cozy, cooperative recreation with some enjoyable puzzles and challenges that it’s a must to work by means of. If you’ve already performed The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game and loved it, Wizard of Oz is far the identical however with some intelligent new concepts for challenges and new puzzles launched to the gameplay. If you didn’t take pleasure in The Princess Bride, this recreation gained’t change your thoughts.

There’s a pleasant selection within the puzzles, and within the lose circumstances of every chapter. There are some parts of luck that come into play to make one thing a bit tougher or a bit simpler, however you do all the time really feel like you could have an opportunity, and that luck is the place the sport’s replay worth is available in probably the most. There are additionally some nice ‘a-ha’ moments while you understand the important thing for tackling a selected drawback.

There is one chapter through which, as soon as you determine the workaround for the lose situation, it turns into fairly straightforward and actually gained’t have any actual replay worth sooner or later. It’s a fantastic first playthrough expertise, but it surely undoubtedly is one we would skip if enjoying once more.

The recreation appears nice. The image guide is such a enjoyable element to play with and the characters are good and chunky, and (apart from the depraved witch’s broom) fairly sturdy. It could be a bit messy when multiple character is on the identical area, however it is a minor nitpick. You can usually hold monitor of the place characters are presupposed to be since everyone seems to be transferring these figures collectively and monitoring the sport state.

This is a enjoyable, household cooperative recreation. It does run a bit lengthy in the event you’re going to play it in a single sitting, however there may be fairly a simple save system for taking breaks between chapters, and because the chapters are solely about fifteen minutes every, they’re good and fast to play. It’s a recreation that’s fairly easy to interrupt up into shorter play seasons in the event you want, whereas setting apart a night to play by means of all the recreation in a single setting will also be fairly satisfying.

Pros: Component high quality, selection between the challenges and plot decks within the completely different chapters, straightforward save system

Cons: One chapter actually gained’t maintain as much as replay, it will get messy when a number of characters are on a single area

Disclosure: we acquired a complimentary assessment copy of this recreation.