Frankenstein’s Bodies
Playing the face card
Release Date: OUT NOW!
Two to six players | £ 30 Publisher: Yay Games
There’s nothing quite like placing an unwanted and infected leg unceremoniously onto the edge of someone’s otherwise pristine table. Well, apart from sending your master surgeon out to harvest their heads. That’s pretty satisfying too.
The delicate multiplayer card- juggling politics of this boardgame, best experienced with as many competing monster- builders as possible, won’t emerge until everyone around the table has puzzled their way through the very- Kickstarter- quality manual. But when they do, the simple conceit of being able to play any card ( from body parts to disinfectants and beyond) almost anywhere – on your own operating tables, or those of your opponents – turns this race to assemble the perfect monster into one of devious alliances, betrayals, and getting up to your armpits in a binful of unwanted body bits.
Sticky virtual science put aside, real- life friendships are likely to fray when the sticky subject of the deflection cards appears. They don’t stop an action but… deflect it? Somehow? It’s a tricky rule to fathom. This and other weak spots in the manual mean that gameplay sessions are likely to devolve into house- ruled lab- monsters more often than not.
We should also point out – not that it matters, really – that the flimsy stock used for the cards and operating tables is disappointing. You wouldn’t want to get a bend in your favourite torso. Alex Cox
Yay Games is working on a more familyfriendly game based on the concept, titled Sandcastles. It features naughty crabs.
