We Could Be Heroes

There are a vast number of games based on pre-existing film, television and literary properties. The most successful tend to have distinctive settings with large casts of characters, such as Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, but what about the more character-driven franchises, where the action tends to be led by a single hero through multiple adventures? There is always going to be a problem answering the question "who gets to play the hero?"

Age of Conan solves this problem by having players bid for the right to have Conan lead their armies, while the short lived Conan Collectible Card Game just lets every player have their own version of the Cimmerian hero when it's their turn, and Monolith's Conan adventure game balances Conan against a wide variety of arguably more interesting playable characters. Planet of the Apes divides lead character Taylor into four separate psychological aspects (with only limited success).

The designers of Samurai Jack: Back to the Past, based on the Cartoon Network animated television series, faced a similar design problem, and they found an ingenious solution. Players take on the roles of various colorful characters Jack meets along his journey, while Jack himself is a non-player character who adds an interesting layer of complexity to what would otherwise be a simple "race to the finish" game.

The game board consists of a trail of tiles representing different types of locations such as jungle, fields, or desert. Players play Movement cards to move along the trail, collecting Support cards along the way which will be spent at the end of the trail to fight one of several villains. The better your specific combination of Support cards, the more points you'll earn from the villain, so a lot of the game is looking at which cards are available at which locations, and planning your moves in order to beat your opponents to the cards you need for the most points when facing the villain.

This alone might be an okay game (if a little simple), but in addition to the player pieces, there are two non-player characters moving along the path, Samurai Jack and his nemesis Aku. Jack moves along the path first, his movement determined by drawing a random card. Then the players all move, and finally Aku moves using another random card. A separate board keeps track of Jack's sanity, and if he is on a tile by himself or with Aku, he moves a step closer to madness. If his madness tracker gets all the way to the end, all the players lose the game, so in addition to gathering the cards they need to win, players have to keep an eye on Jack, and occasionally come to his rescue.

The game manages to combine several different mechanical elements without any of them seeming out of place, and the graphic design and game components are miles ahead of what I would expect for a relatively inexpensive game like this: full color plastic miniatures, what looks like original illustrations rather than just screen captures from the show, and a sharp design sense overall. It all comes together to make a game that, while fairly simple, is entertaining to play and very true to its source material.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) a little on the simple side, but nevertheless an excellent, well-crafted game.

• Samurai Jack: Back to the Past official website
• Samurai Jack: Back to the Past on Board Game Geek