The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game was one of my Christmas gifts. The game is based on one of my favorite movies. As a bit of background, the movie has some great scenes, quotable lines, and is a classic that I can't imagine having the same charm if someone tried to remake it, however I always thought the scenes with the grandson and grandfather interrupting the movie were pointless and annoying and were more akin to commercial breaks than characters that were part of the movie. I was surprised to see with this board game that they've included the grandson and grandfather as components in the game, referenced every turn to determine the random positions of things and potential game ending.
It seems that the game was designed to fit into the current popularity of legacy-style and co-op games like Pandemic and Gloomhaven, but on a much lighter level. The game has 6 pages in the book, which has thick cardboard pages like a pre-schoolers book, and opens up to reveal the board for the session with special rules for each "Chapter" to explain how the cards are used for each different scenario. There are miniature figures for the main characters of the movie, Westley, Buttercup, Vizzini, Fezzik, Inigo, Prince Humperdink, and Count Rugen, and depending on the scenario, certain characters will be used. There is a Special Deck of cards which is separate from the main deck that everyone uses throughout the game. By using "Miracles" and completing challenges for a given scenario, players are able to draw from the Special Deck, which give a little boost such as moving all the characters or being usable in place of any other card needed to complete a challenge.
I played this game with my wife, Beth, and son, Isaac. Our first attempt to play the game was messed up, since I had setup the "Special Deck" and the "Story Deck" opposite of what they were supposed to be. Initially, I thought the Story Deck was the set of cards where it looked like scenes from the movie were being told, but actually, that's the Special Deck. The Story Deck has the same backing, because they will eventually be merged together, but all the cards that make up the original main deck are generalized categories, basically the catch phrases that you see on the box... Adventure, Intrigue, Love, Courage, and Revenge.
After getting the Story Deck vs. Special Deck straightened out, we got into the game and were easily making progress. Chapter 1 only has Westley and Buttercup, and simply introduces us to the basics of the game. Since we've played Pandemic and a few other co-op games, it seemed like something was missing... but I'm pretty sure that was all there was to it. Chapter 2 was a little more difficult than Chapter 1, simply because the random "Plot" cards would cause Vizzini to jump around to different locations on the ship while we were trying to get him to move to a specific area.
The rules have instructions for putting the game away in between chapters and continuing another time with the Story Deck being saved with the Special cards that had been collected. Since I usually bag up game components into sandwich bags when I'm putting them away, there was just a tiny extra effort to keep the uncollected Special cards separate.
So far, I'm curious to see if the game gets any more challenging. Even my wife thought that the game seems to be lacking. Most likely, we'll play through the remaining Chapters just to see how it goes, but unless my youngest girls are interested in playing it at some point, I can't imagine it will be brought to the table.