Overboss Review

• 1 - 5 Players

• 20 - 30 minutes

• 8+

Boss Monster is a Tile laying and drafting game by Brotherwise Games (Boss monster, Call to Adventure), with nostalgic 8-bit video game themed artwork. One of the first things the game reminded me of was one of the first Legend of Zelda games on the Nintendo Entertainment system, with its pixelated art, the overworld map from the game, and similar terrains to explore.

Gameplay Overview:

In Overboss - "A Boss Monster Adventure" players are competing to build the best and most powerful over world.

Every game uses 5 sets of random terrains, or for your first game you can choose to only use the simple terrains, and matching monsters. Four random Terrains and monsters are chosen to create a constant marketplace accessible to all players.

On your turn, you draft a 'set' compiled of a random Terrain and monster token. More often than not the monster token will not match the Terrain it is paired with in the market, both these tiles are placed immediately onto your board and the market is refilled ready for the next player. Turns go by in this manner, until enough tiles have been drafted to fill your board, ending the game.

At the end of the game, the player with the highest overall score is the winner and the Overboss of the best world.

There are a few different ways to gain points throughout the game. This is where the strategy comes into the drafting and placement of your tiles.

• Each Terrain has its own specific scoring objectives. Making you think about your choices, is it worth taking a Dungeon to try and surround with 4 other unique terrains but forfeiting your monster into your lair (or an empty terrain if you have any). Or maybe you'd be better off taking a summoning portal and activating its power to swap the monster token it comes with for any other in the current Market place.

• If your monster token is on its matching terrain, you gain an additional victory point for each matching one. It seems simple enough but as we mentioned earlier, its rare the randomly chosen monster token matches the terrain you pick in the market. There are a few ways around this, choosing terrains that can't hold monsters, like the dungeon, or ones that have crystals or portals underneath them, leaving the terrain blank and open for future monster tokens you pick up. Or using portals which allow you to change the location of up to 2 monster tokens.

• 'Sets' - Despite the terrain, if you have sets of monsters, you gain victory points depending on the set size: 2,3 0r 4.

• And finally, Crystals: Any crystals you have score one victory point per the matching terrain it represents on your board.

The game itself is a simple one, but the scoring system brings strategy and the opportunity to mess your opponent's next action up especially with the use of the special ability monster cards, creating for a fun, world building game suitable for families.

I like the depth given to the various levels of complexity in the game. Starting from the bare basics of the 5 standard tiles (recommended for your first game), then 5 advanced terrain tiles, 10 boss cards and even command cards to mess your opponent's game play plans up even more. One of the best things about the varying levels is you can as much into the game as you want each play. If you want to make the terrains better than just the basic 5, choose 5 random from all 10, but that doesn't mean you have to include a boss card in your game.

The Boss cards give players an individual, one-time ability and their own scoring objective, adding to your strategy, game play and twist to the game.

Our Thoughts on the game:

Overboss has been a big hit with my family, my eldest (7) picked up the game instantly and remembered the scoring mechanisms for the basic terrains the first time he played it. My youngest played it with us as well (4) and besides needing a reminder of how each terrain scored, she also picked up the drafting and tile laying mechanics of the game very easily. She understood she had to put the tiles down in the best places suited to their scoring objectives but didn't quite grasp the concept of the monster token 'set' scoring.

Little Geeks Thoughts

• He liked the simplicity of the game, layered with the different mechanisms and scoring tactics, especially the camp terrains. He enjoyed building the strongest world he could and the fact the turn-based system meant there was never much opportunity to plan too far ahead, but at the same time you could potentially mess up your opponent's next turn by taking a tile they were collecting.

So Many Tiles

With so many tiles and tokens, but only 5 sets ever in use in each game, Overboss had lots of replayability, however, with that comes the downside of the game. Teardown. The game is lovely, fast paced and ends in around 30 minutes (maybe longer with a 4-year-old playing), but the teardown is probably another 10 minutes on top of that once the game is over.

The game is stored perfectly in a GameTrayz component tray, with individual compartments for each terrain set and its matching tokens, but because of this after the game is over, you spend ages separating every used terrain, monster token, crystal and portals back into their original compartments again. Obviously, this makes game set up much quicker than if you didn't do this, but if we are pushed for time on a school night for example, it brings consideration to whether Overboss is the chosen game or not.

Overall, Overboss is a great game and a big hit here with adults and children alike, with plenty of replayability due to the variety of scoring options through the various tiles.

High points

• Multiple variations of gameplay in the box, including solo mode making it a game for everyone.

• Fun, retro 8-bit art

• Easy to learn rules

• Simple drafting and tile laying mechanics

Low points

• Teardown at the end of the game is quite tedious

• Shuffling 60 tokens at the start of the game is no easy task.