Game Time! Game of Life: Despicable Me Edition Game Review

Game of Life: Despicable Me Edition

Year: 2015

Ages: 5+

Players: 2-4 players (For the purpose of this review, there were 2 players)

Set Up Time: 1 minute

Playing Time: Took us 10 minutes

Object: The player who bags 5 bunches of bananas first wins.


Review:
+ I love this game and every game that allows the youngest player to go first, as that's always me!
+ This version of Game of Life is completely different than the original. In this version your minion pawns have to go around the board (in any direction) and take action cards in order to save up minion dollars to trade them in for bunches of bananas. Each bunch of bananas cost 5 minion dollars a piece.
+ Unlike the original Game of Life, this version allows the minions to have much cooler careers like "Hula Dancer" or "Karate Instructor".
+ The action cards are also lots of fun. They send you on missions to win minion dollars. (For example, one of the action cards says "Help Agnes win a fluffy unicorn")

- Just like the original version there is a spinner that attaches to the board and you spin to find out how many spaces you move. Unlike the original version (or at least the version I have from where I was a kid) the spinner doesn't attach very well to the board and half the time when you spin the spinner, it flies off the board. 
- There are also 5 mini "spinners" around the board that are also meant to attach. However, they like to make things confusing because you don't spin them. Instead you take your minion pawn and spin it in the spinner. There are so many problems with this. The base of the pawns is like rubber which doesn't spin well. Secondly it's very hard to spin the pawn itself since it's pretty small and it usually just falls off the spinner. Thirdly, half the time when it does spin it doesn't end up pointing itself in the direction of a path. This could have been made so much easier by just having a big circle spot instead of a spinner spot where either you got to choose which direction you wanted to go or you would spin the large spinner and if you got a 1-2-3 than you would go right and if you got a 4-5-6 you would go left. 
- The spaces on the board make NO sense in how they relate to what happens. Instead of having a "payday" space, they have a green arrow button (which looks likes a sideways elevator button) and instead of having an "action card" space, they have a silver circle. I'm in my twenties and I couldn't remember what half the spaces meant because in no way do those symbols indicate what they actually stand for. I have no idea how kids would figure this out.
- I always prefer board games with a clear start point and a clear ending point. I know where to start, how long until I get to the end and when the end is in sight. Half of the games we played only one side of the board got used because the pawns wouldn't spin well and would keep landing in the same direction. 
- My other beef with this game is the fact that they didn't pick normal colours for the pawn bases. Why in the world would they pick to have orange and purple but NOT pick red and green? It makes no sense and frustrated me to no end because I'M ALWAYS RED. 

Overall:
I enjoyed having the minion aspect added to the game and getting to play with little minion pawns that have super awesome careers but that's about it. There are so many things that they could have done differently with this game to make it more playable. There was no need to have 5 mini spinners that don't actually spin and one giant spinner that doesn't attach itself well enough to the board to be spun. I didn't mind that the whole concept of this game was different by having to collect minion bucks to trade in for bunches of bananas but I did mind having symbols on the board that in no way reflected what it was you landed on. In the end, as much as I love the minions, they could have put a lot more effort into the game. I think a lot of the problem is that I expected too much because the Game of Life is already an established series, the problem is that this version just doesn't live up to the original.

C+

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