Pandemic Legacy: Season 0

• Designers: Matt Leacock, Rob Daviau
• Publisher: Z-Man Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 45-60 min
• Times played: 5 so far with review copy provided by Z-Man

OK, so one of the biggest conundrums I have as a review is how the heck to review games with spoilers. Part of my is bursting with excitement to tell you all about the cool things that I discovered in the game, but the rational part of me realizes that I can’t do that – because if I told you all the secrets about the game, you wouldn’t have any reason to play it yourself!   This issue hasn’t come up as much in the past with legacy games – mostly because I had been avoiding them… I had had a few bad experiences with legacy games in the past, and as a result, I had been shying away from them.

However, given the changes in my gaming life this year due to the pandemic (see what I did there), I have ended up playing a lot of cooperative and legacy games with my online group.  With the help of the USPS, we managed to play My City via Google Meet and we’ve worked through a few of the Andor campaigns as well.   Having such positive results, I felt like I was ready to try Pandemic Legacy: Season 0.  I should preface my review by making clear that I haven’t played either of the earlier two seasons, so I cannot compare this game to those older ones.

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Candy Lab

• Designer: Thomas Danede
• Publisher: Funnyfox
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 mins
• Played with review copy provided by publisher/distributor

In Candy Lab, players are competing employees in a candy factory.  You are each trying to be the best at filling to orders for the brightly colored candy bars.  Unlike Lucille Ball, no one is going to have to eat the candies – just put them in boxes!  The game includes 27 colored candy bars (in pink, blue and yellow) – which are randomly arranged in a line on the table.  This represents the conveyor belt of produced candies. The deck of order cards is shuffled and each player is dealt a hand of 5 cards.  A supply of three cards is put face up on the table along with the remaining deck of order cards.

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The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game

• Designer: Ryan Miller
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 15 minutes per chapter, 6 chapters in the box
• Played with review copy provided by Ravensburger USA

“Fencing. Fighting. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True Love. Miracles”.  So, if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  And I’m assuming that all of these things will be in this board game, just like it was in the movie, just like it was in the book by S. Morgenstern. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out if anyone will ever be “mostly dead” though.

In this “Adventure Book” game, the players will play through six chapters of the Princess Bride story.  Well, they will try to play through the story – because that pesky sick grandson will continually interrupt.  Regardless, the players work together as a team to advance through the story.  Each chapter will can be played independently, but with a suggested time of 15 minutes per chapter, the whole game should take about the same time as the movie itself – which is 98 minutes, as I am sure you know…

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