I Butle, Sir: 13 Dead End Drive!

REVIEW TWO: 13 DEAD END DRIVE

PURCHASED: SAVERS NORTHWEST ALBUQUERQUE
PRICE: $1.99 + TAX
PLAYERS: 2 - 4
AGES: 9 & UP
CREATED BY: MILTON BRADLEY

  I recall growing up having somewhat of a desire to have this game. The commercials were certainly somewhat entertaining to my 10-year old brain, and the concept of flinging cardboard pieces across the room to "murder" them certainly is going to be something that will appeal to every young boy. Alright, let's be honest, it still appeals to me. For whatever reason, growing up I never managed to get my hands on this game. It ended up being the bottom of the list underneath video games of varying stripe and other assorted goofballery. However, when I found it for $1.99 at the closest Savers, I definitely decided to give it a whirl. Is the game nothing but a funnier version of Clue, also known as Clue: The Movie? Flinging pieces of cardboard may be fun for the nearest monkey or child, but there's got to be more to it than that, right?

The game box is very cartoonish and to me, seems to try its hardest to do exactly what I'm hoping it doesn't do: Become a 'lighthearted' version of Clue. The sneering characters all in the corners are out to off each other in various ways; to be honest, if I had a million dollars, I'd try my hardest to hire people that actually have smiles on their faces on a regular basis, but then again, Robin Williams already has enough money and likely wouldn't work for me despite my imaginary billions. Perhaps that's the curse of being a billionaire -- all the people you'd want to hire wouldn't work for you anyway, so you're stuck with whatever you can get.

In the bottom left corner of the box, we are treated to one of what I assume is the players: A CAT. Looking particularly evil, I think it's pretty safe to assume that the cat here will have players going one direction or the other instantly -- cats tend to be very polarizing in general, so I doubt there will be much 'bluffing' involving the cat. You're either going to try to get that little furball directly into the fireplace or you're going to instantly try to get it to the door for the sheer absurdity of a cat being a billionaire heir. Check out that alliteration!

Upon opening the box, one finds two separate sets of instructions: actual game instructions and the dreaded ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS. I like to think about irritated parents on Christmas every time I see one of these; imagining little Suzie or Timmy sitting near the tree crying as Dad swears repeatedly at the tiny piece of plastic or cardboard that simply refuses to be put together. For the most part, just about everything in my life that's required assembly instructions has been the source of sailor-level four-letter-words and a lot of pounding of fists.

However, much to my pleasant surprise, this game is not one of them. The 3-dimensional back wall looks great and slides into the clips on the board like butter. The fireplace is a bit of a pain to put into the cardboard backing, but other than that, everything went together with a Great Gazoo-esque snap. I assume this is how Aunt Agatha, the game's recently-deceased billionaire, built her fortune; you always hear stories of the notorious cheapness of "rich folk" -- building one's house of cardboard would clearly be no exception in this case. Of course, this also allows the "one real wall only" strategy to make a bit of sense, as rain would simply destroy the cardboard in the first place, so you certainly wouldn't want to spend a ton of money building all 4 walls out of cardboard or anything.

The board is very colorful and matches the theme quite nicely. The plastic gadgets already make the 10-year old in me excited; smashing someone with a statue or dropping a chandelier for no conceivably good reason is a very Joker-like technique that I think most anyone can appreciate. The art is very well done and looks quite professional -- take that, Rollercoaster Tycoon -- and it's obvious someone was (under?)paid to actually make a legitimate board game! The board makes sense and there's a clear grid to follow for movement. Areas in which players cannot move are clearly marked and the game doesn't seem to lead itself to any ambiguity on that stripe; although it might be fun to have the maid do a bit of table-dancing, it is strictly NOT POSSIBLE in this game. You, of course, will find out why this is interesting in a second.

 Of course, if this is a Hollywood production, the stars of the show are the plastic traps of varying stripe. Although hollow and feeling a bit cheap-ish on the decoration side with stickers, they all function quite well and as stated above, are incredibly easy to put together and straightforward enough to use that a kid playing the game (remember, the game is for 9 & up) can easily manipulate them with their stubby little non-dexterous sausage-fingers...

The knight, of course, serves a dual purpose of a player pretending to chop off said sausage fingers whenever another grubby kid is caught cheating. Barring that, of course, the plastic pieces can be thrown at your respective sibling of choice in the event of a tie, argument, or other malady afflicting gameplay.

And here we have poor Aunt Agatha. The point of the game here is that Aunt Agatha, who is unfortunately the woman my mother will turn into in approximately 30 years (white cat and all), has recently died and her will is to be read. She has no family, and as such, no next-of-kin can be determined to be the heir; therefore, her "loyal" employees, friends, and other assorted individuals have come together to ensure that they are, in fact, the sole surviving connection to Agatha, and therefore are determined to be the recipient of what I can only assume is Publisher's Clearing House level winnings. Actually, if you look closely enough, Ed McMahon might actually be "The Boyfriend". Disconcerting at best. In a nod to the more hilarious historical wills, the cat is also involved; visions of Fancy Feast swimming in its head.

The guests all are arranged at the center table, and the lawyer is mysteriously not present (I assume he was bumped off long before the game even began). Outside the house, Dick Tracy shows nobody in particular his badge while slowly walking away from lightning -- he serves as the 'timer' for the game; the game is won when either one person is left alive, the person whose portrait is on the wall exits the building, or the person whose portrait is on the wall when he enters is still alive.

Game play begins with Aunt Agatha biffing it -- her portrait is dumped upon the couch face-down and the next portrait in the 'portrait deck', a grouping of cards of all player pieces placed into the plastic frame, is shown. Depending on the number of players, each player is dealt a certain number of 'player' cards that show which pieces are yours. The goal, therefore, is simple: Kill everyone not on your team. Make sure someone on your "team" gets out the door or fulfills any of the winning conditions. A 2-player game is a bit different, with each player getting 'secret' cards that are VERBOTEN to be flipped over, so there's a bit of an element of chance there, but the goal of the game is straightforward.

After you've discovered your motley crew of hardy survivors and hopeful criminal masterminds, gameplay begins with a simple roll of two dice. The dice, of course, determine the amount of spaces your characters are to move: However, unless the dice are doubles, you must move TWO characters, one for each die. This is a nice addition, as it prevents the game from ending too quickly -- the first person to roll a 5-6 combination could easily bolt for the door and be done with it, leaving for a rather boring group of 12 survivors with no interesting freshly dug patches in the yard.

Aunt Agatha clearly must not have been a popular person, judging by the way the pieces move about the board; clearly the individuals somehow connected to her have been holding a kegger prior to sitting at the table for the will. I am also slightly concerned that certain pieces that should be intimately familiar with the layout of the house -- the butler, maid, and gardener in particular -- seem to have absolutely no idea whatsoever where they are going. Of course, this ties into my previous theory about the lackadaisical hiring standards Aunt Agatha appears to have had.

Players get "Trap Cards" (unless Admiral Ackbar is playing, in which case traps are useless) by moving a player to a skull/crossbones site, which is the 'trigger zone' for any of the plastic death machines Agatha apparently seems to have kept around her house. I'm beginning to think Agatha is more of a 'Wizard of Oz' situation, and behind the cardboard curtain there's a smaller, living Agatha that is pulling all the strings of these puppets.

 You can either play the card or "bluff" by pretending the card didn't work. This adds a nice little strategic touch to the game, and it's certainly welcome -- if you have no qualms with killing others, you certainly shouldn't have any about lying about which particular cards are in your hands. If you're feeling bloodthirsty and want to rub out the competition, however, you can play the card, eliminating a player pawn in its respective way.

I got the first Trap Card, and it matched the Statue -- thus, I quickly dispatched the Chauffeur in a gruesome plastic-statue laden fury. The first victim was claimed, and it wasn't the cat yet. Not to give it away early or anything, but it's obvious which side of the "cat debate" fence I'm on. That little fuzzball will be dead if I have anything to do with it.

There are several guiding rules that make the game a bit more strategic: You can only kill a pawn if you move that pawn to a skull space, not if it's already on a skull space. So part of the complexity within the strategy can be "bluffing" with this as well by moving one of your own pieces to the trap, then not killing it, making it safe for a guaranteed turn.

The Trap Cards consist of several different things -- either 1 or 2 Traps to be sprung, a Wild Card element that allows you to kill at any particular trap, or the intrepid Detective Card. Flipping this card over makes our perpetual badge-flashing Dick Tracy move one stepping stone closer to the front door, and thus acts as a turn/timer indicator for the game. Once he reaches the door, the game ends, whether you've planned for a win or not. This adds some randomness to the game, as the shuffling of the cards might make him sprint to the door like a PCP-laden freakazoid or take a leisurely walker-assisted stroll throughout the grounds before entering. In other words, the shuffling of the cards defines how competent the Detective is at his job. Apparently Agatha isn't the only one who has problems with hiring procedures; must be a worldwide thing.

The traps are all sprung in much the same way -- pull a lever and an item either drops on the victim or hurls the victim through space to their ultimate demise. This is quite giggle-inducing and fun for the first couple times, but honestly I could see how after several plays of the game the mechanics could get a bit "old". If the bookshelf misses, the chandelier drops in the wrong spot, or the like, you might initially keep 'trying' to see the pawn get bumped off, but after about the first seventy or so times the interest does likely wear off. This, however, can be said of a lot of different board games, and if you're playing this seventeen thousand times in a row, you like it enough that you're going to do it every single time, likely giggling like a maniac and imagining that the house is a real world.

The dead bodies begin to pile up outside the front lawn as the players scratch out their competition -- once again, the competence of everyone involved in this picture is called into question, as the bodies are dumped right in front of the Detective's leisurely stroll and he appears to neither notice nor care. I'm thinking there's more to this "Agatha is The Wizard" conspiracy theory I have, and the Detective is in on it.

As the gameplay continues, you have several options available since you can move any piece. You can try to move your own pieces to the front door so you can win while they are on the portrait, but you have to be subtle, as a mad dash to the door will have even Sloth from The Goonies figuring out who your "team" consists of. Of course, you want to move any pieces that aren't yours to traps as well, but again, "bluffing" plays a huge role. What this ultimately means is that the guests participate in a drunken ballet throughout the house with both players moving them back and forth almost aimlessly; you move your piece toward the door, an opponent moves the piece back -- everyone's been hitting the sauce at Agatha's place. Of course, the presence of 'secret tunnels' throughout the house (what I think is the wine cellar) would lead us to understand exactly what is going on....

Play continues, and the pieces continue to get knocked off. The piles of bodies grow in the front lawn, and the number of potential heirs dwindles; soon, only a few select pieces remain. In this particular game, that cat seemed to survive for a lengthy amount of time, but finally, in the end, just desserts were given.

I found it particularly appropriate that the most flammable of the potential inheritors was the one to be lit on fire; perhaps that's a little concerning, but that cat was just too smarmy for my tastes. To be honest, I think each player will inherently find the "hated" piece that they absolutely MUST kill -- part of the strategy will be finding out what that piece is for a person and using it to your own advantage.

 So the gameplay is varied and quite a bit of fun, and there's definitely enough "bluffing" and playing around to actually get more meat and potatoes out of what otherwise would be a goofy toy game with plastic flinging pieces, which is a plus. However, the strategy only goes so far, and following basic rules will always net you a result, so although the meat is there, filet mignon it is not. It is generally safe to assume any pieces that come within one dice roll from the door are an attempted "win", and as such you can generally figure out what the other person has. Most people likely won't kill off their own pieces, so if someone stops on a skull several times and doesn't kill the piece, you'll figure out rather quickly who has what and what "teams" are.

One significant problem found in the gameplay occurs when only 2-3 pieces are left -- players can get into a circular motion with a single piece, with one person obviously attempting to push their winner to the door, with the other players pushing the piece back away from the door. Back and forth can ensue until the dice roll gets sufficiently high enough to 'careen' the piece out the door and into the Burbs-style graveyard out front. At this point, strategy is generally meaningless, and it's all up to the roll of the dice, which in itself can't be too horrible, but usually isn't as fun as actually thinking.

Seriously, how crappy are the police in this town? There are 11 corpses littering the front lawn by the end of the game, and the Detective plods on, staring straight at them with no consideration for the crimes at hand. He simply shows them his badge, as if the local police department are some sort of Zombie Prevention Agency with magical Turn Undead Badges or something. I'm still thinking Agatha and the Detective are in on it together, and it's all a farce to get her incompetent employees to kill each other so she doesn't have to deal with the red tape of firing them. Perhaps they're using the front yard because the back has already been completely filled with thousands of previous applicants.....

Just look at that cat. It looks like it needs to die, and in the most hideous way possible. You can't tell me from looking at that picture that the cat doesn't have some sort of ulterior motive; this adds to the game, but at the same time, frightens in a way that few board games actually can. Congratulations, 13 Dead End Drive!

I ended up losing this game, with The Hair Stylist being a card my wife had upon the end. The game lasted approximately 15-25 minutes, and moved at a steady enough pace to be entertaining. It's definitely an easy-to-play game that, unlike the corpses buried in the front yard for all to see, stays relatively fresh.

THE RATINGS:

PACKAGING/MARKETING: The game art is quirky and irreverent and certainly doesn't take itself too seriously, and although there's a distinct "Clue"-like impression, the art is obviously something someone took time to create and looks very fun. Colors are vibrant and the sneers on the player pawns are absolutely annoying, thus making you want to kill them. The plastic pieces could have looked a little better, however, and not been simple solid toy-cheap chunks; they do the game's art no justice by looking so cheap against the board backdrop. A solid Bishop with potential to enter Rook territory if this one problem were fixed.

BOARD QUALITY: The board itself is laid out quite well and has an easy-to-grasp movement style behind it. The 'walls' are thick and easy to spot so you don't cross them and the borders on the grid are easy to see, preventing a player from making an illegal move (though, in a game in which murder is the goal, is anything 'illegal'?). As stated above, the artwork is clear and vibrant with a distinct 'style' seen throughout the entire piece. Set-up seems a little daunting at first on paper, but when assembling, anyone with above Chimpanzee dexterity can put the game together quite easily aside from the fireplace. The board enhances the game without becoming the primary focus. A solid Rook!

COMPLEXITY: The ability to move any piece you'd like adds a level to the game's complexity and strategies to 'bluff' other players can be formed, but the name of the game is figuring out who has what cards -- after that point, strategy becomes a complete moot point. The rules are straightforward so there's no ambiguity, which is a plus; however, certain situations can occur that extend gameplay unnecessarily and create complexity in a negative way. The game is simple enough for a 9 year old, but there are elements that adults can enjoy as well, though you won't be expecting Warhammer 40K-level strategy. If you are, I don't know why you'd be playing a Milton Bradley game in the first place. Bishop!

ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: The game doesn't take itself seriously, and you'll find yourself not taking gameplay seriously as well while playing. For some games, this would be a negative, but for a quirky little family game it's a big plus. Picking your hated "target" and seeing it lit aflame or crushed is quite satisfying and flipping the pieces, at least for the first several times, is entertaining. The simplicity of moving pieces and gathering a hand of cards adds to the fun, as the multiple goals keep you playing without getting stale. A good Rook!

VARIABILITY: The shuffling of several stacks of cards and the dice mechanism generally ensure that games will not be cookie-cutters, and you'll probably never get the same cavalier group of rogues twice, but in playing, one will quickly realize the "rules of thumb" to follow to figure out who has what cards. Pushing the buttons or levers to kill a piece is fun, but after several plays could potentially become tedious and is more flash than actual game mechanism. It's fun, sure, but it doesn't necessarily add to the gameplay significantly. A Bishop!

POTPOURRI: You get to light a cat on fire while an incompetent Detective watches bodies pile up. Funny in itself, yes, and adds to the humor in the game, which is a nice touch, and everything fits together and flows well. A Rook for sure!

AND THE OVERALL RATING IS:

ROOK!

The commercials did this game justice, and although there's some flash to make a 10-year old want it, there's quite a bit in there to make it a great family-style game that just about anyone can enjoy. The art is excellent and everything fits in with a great quirky theme that doesn't take itself so seriously as to be boring. The gameplay is simple yet varies enough to make you want to play it more than once, but it's not something that you're going to play seventeen thousand times in a row or anything. There's strategy in it, but it's not complex strategy, which is a good thing given the demographic, yet not-so-good for older players. It was definitely worth the $2 + minor change I paid including tax, and to be honest, if it were considered a "classic" and regularly appeared alongside Sorry and others at a department store like Wal-Mart or Target for $20 or less, I'd definitely consider it money well spent. It's not going to light anyone's mental cat on fire or anything, or keep you coming back for more, but it's a great solid library piece that you'll want to pull out every once in a while.

I'd say I bet Aunt Agatha and the Detective are bumping uglies and everything is a conspiracy for their sheer enjoyment, but I really don't want to have that mental picture.

Next week's review: CASINO YAHTZEE!