Spy Guy’s latest outing is into a fantasy setting that’s quite often explored on the boardgame. Rather than Pizza and Traffic Cones, SpyGuy Fantasy has you collaboratively searching out Potions, Coins and Arrows.
Before I start, I should clarify that this is a review for the SpyGuy Fantasy boardgame and not the relatively recently released digital version of it. While I’m sure the digital version is just great, there’s a lot to be said about the collaborative rushing, elbows on the table and tactile-nature of the physical board game that’s likely not replicated in the digital version. In fact, I think my favourite bit about SpyGuy Fantasy is the shuffling around the board that everybody does as the very limited timer ticks down.
Setting up ahead of play is incredibly easy, three standees (SpyGuy, a Dragon and a Treasure token) are assembled and ten magnifying glass tokens are popped out and scattered around so that players can find it. From there you piece together the playmat and shuffle the cards into a deck. That’s it.
As all of the players are working as a team, the only player rotation comes down to who gets to reveal the next item that everybody collaboratively searches for. The card that’s flipped also shows the number of moves that the activated dragon will take once the player’s have moved SpyGuy. However, the dragon will only activate one SpyGuy has collected the treasure. This is a phenomenal way to get players warmed up before ‘the chase’ begins.
Now, there’s various reasons why SpyGuy Fantasy is great, from the aforementioned warmup, the languageless play to the fun of shuffling around the board looking for the items; But something that I really, really think is especially well done is that the dragon has little shortcuts around the board, which really make it look like the dragon can catch up to you after a few bad rounds. In actuality, these often only shave off one or two tiles, and most of the search cards only have the dragon moving a handful of times, but it’s a clever design that gives a little bit of tension beyond the hourglass sand.
SpyGuy Fantasy is a great little twist on EyeSpy which is perfect for all ages and incredibly quick to pick up and play. I hope to see more releases in the series.
SpyGuy Fantasy is available now from Amazon.
