Those who aren’t fans of the show have a harder time. First, since they don’t know the lore, it’s harder to get into the game. There’s a lot of, “Wait, who is this person?”“What does this mean?” and “Why is this important?” questioning that goes on. Also, non-fans seem less tolerant of the game’s breezy play style. They seem to expect something deeper, more challenging, and thinkier and are often (in my experience, anyway) disappointed with Buffy. Worse, it feels like a game that hasn’t realised that games about a franchise should be about the franchise and not about the fandom. All the framings in Buffy are intensely targeted to the jargon and language of the fanbase, rather than the language and stylings of the show. The ‘big bad’, the ‘monster of the week’, the ‘townies’. It’s all part of the metatextual terminology of the fans and I find that off-putting. Ironically, this could have been a fantastic feature of the game because the television show was nothing if not knowing. It understood the ridiculousness of some of its conceits and played with them. It was self-aware of its own tropes and not afraid to make fun of them. It was cheerfully irreverent of its own mythology and that was one its most genuinely endearing elements. Here we have that laudable feature, but applied in entirely the wrong direction. It’s not fan service. It’s fan fan service. It’s one level too far removed from what would make this element extraordinarily effective. It’s bit like a Buffy game designed by a Pandemic fan that only knew the show through the conventions of its wiki.

As cooperative games go, Buffy is fairly simple and light. This is more of a beer and pretzels game, best played for the experience. It’s not a heavy, deep, Robinson Crusoe or Mage Knight type of game. Complexity wise, I’d put it in the same category as Pandemic or Flash Point: Fire Rescue, or some “experience” semi-co-op games like Betrayal at House on the Hill or Transylvania: Curses and Traitors. There are some decisions to be made, but a lot of what happens to you in the game is determined by random card draws and unpredictable events. Skillful play can mitigate these things to an extent, but there are games where you just get hosed by fate. The event cards. Where bad things happen. But if you are a fan of the show? And you’re playing with other Buffy nerds? The game is a pure blast to play. The stories and evil plots make sense. The plots, Monsters of the Week, and Big Bads are ripped straight from the show. The Scooby gang heroes have special abilities that make sense for their characters, and the Sunnydale locations offer thematic abilities, as well. It’s like playing through the show. Monsters of the Week If you were more focused on progressing the quest your attention might not linger on the core game mechanisms. One of the reasons XCOM succeeds as a game is that it doesn’t give you a lot of time to dwell on what’s actually happening. It manages to be fun through an act of misdirected attention. Don’t look at what I’m doing with my left hand, follow the right hand. Buffy doesn’t accomplish that though – it seems perversely determined to make sure you understand its fractured gameplay. It clamps your eyes open and forces you to observe until you understand. A kind of ludicovico technique. During each round, each player is given four action tokens to spend as desired to move through the town, fight monsters, conduct research, or use their character’s special ability. Players take turns using one token at a time until all tokens are spent. Players should work together to determine the best use of their actions to stave off the monster invasion and protect the townies. Plot cards for the Big Bads. Here’s the basic gist of play. You take on the role of one of the Extended Family of Scoobies. You can be Buffy, Xander, Giles or Willow as you would expect. You can also choose to be Angel or Spike if you like. Each player gets a limited pool of actions they can perform each turn. Each draws from a shared menu of abilities, but also a special Super Ability that is unique to them. Each character will also have a couple of inventory cards representing consumables. Wooden stakes, weapons, magic supplies and so on. Each of these will have some combination of additional actions they permit while you have them. They will also provide a bespoke special powers that activates if they’re discarded. If you have a wooden stake in your inventory for example you’ll kill vampires you fight rather than stun them. If you discard the stake, you’ll kill the vampire without spending one of your precious action points. Different locations in the game have different power that you can access, which makes it seem like there’s an extent to which you need to defend and optimise your control of areas to accomplish the tasks. It’s a solid pitch.

We’ll recommend Buffy in this category – if Pandemic was a bit too cruel for your liking you might find Buffy a more appropriate alternative. Physical Accessibility

Literacy is more of an issue as this is a constant requirement of play, and in contexts where players don’t have a shared language this is likely to be a deal-breaking problem. Crib-sheets or other compensations will not be at all appropriate given the amount of both required.

For a semi-co-operative game, the interaction is minimal. For the majority of the game, you’re just doing your own thing. There’s not really any reasons to need to work together, aside from just taking a bad guy each. And there’s no real way to sabotage others, making it a little unnecessary to even have a winner. This could probably just be a co-op game. Closing Comments on Legendary Buffy Buffy is a challenging game and will become more challenging as time goes on, but the challenge curve is linear. It gets gradually harder rather than rapidly escalating to a point of unfixable horror like you see in Pandemic. I’m not 100% convinced that’s a more emotionally accessible design – I think it probably comes down to individual preferences. Would you rather be instantly killed by a tiger bite or slowly asphyxiated by a python? If Pandemic is the former, Buffy is the latter. It makes the challenge more tractable but at the cost of potentially putting you in the position where you have failed a few turns before you realise it.