Family games based on movies are a dime a dozen, but a family game based on a movie, based on a musical that was inspired by a book, which was based on a movie, which was a retelling of a book? If that doesn’t make your brain feel like it’s made of straw, then I don’t know what will.
Wicked: The Game, by Spinmaster Games, is a set collection, cooperative adventure for two to four players. You can take on the role of a character from the 2024 movie and set off to reach the Emerald City before the Wizard can stop you. If you’ve ever wanted to be dancing through life, defying gravity, visiting dear old Shiz, or having one short day in the Emerald City, this may be the game that drops you right into the center of your favorite story.
Gameplay Overview:
The goal of Wicked: The Game is to unlock each card in the Chapter Deck before the Wizard can stop you. Each player takes on the role of a character from the movie by choosing a coordinating character board, while the central gameboard has a 13-spot tracker to show the progress of the Wizard. The Wizard’s movements are represented by a 3D hot air balloon figure. In the center of the board sits the Emerald City, an impressively shaped plastic card holder that contains a deck of Wizard cards. Around the Emerald City card holder is a trough of Thrillifying Magic tokens, pink bubble shaped domes that you earn by creating card sets.
The Chapter Deck sits on the center gameboard, with the face up card telling you how many Thrillifying Magic tokens you’ll have to earn as a team to unlock the next Chapter Card. This gives a sense of focus to the game, and makes you feel like you’re progressing through scenes in the story. If players get through all of the chapters before the Wizard marker makes it to the end of the track, they win!
The game is played in rounds, each of which starts with the first player drawing eight cards. Players take turns drafting and passing Story Cards, placing them in one of the two spots on their character board to try to create sets. Each Story Card is in one of five colors, and each color has two different card types, showing different scenes from the story. Creating a set from one scene will net you the tokens shown on the card. A set made out of blue cards showing the Shiz University scene, for instance, will earn two tokens for a set of four cards, or three tokens for a set of six cards. If the set color matches your character’s key color, you’ll earn extra tokens. When you earn enough tokens as a group, you unlock the next Chapter Card in the deck.
Some Story Cards are stamped with the Wizard’s hot air balloon. If you complete a set with these cards, the Wizard’s Mover progresses up the track. If your turn to draft comes along and you can’t contribute any cards to the sets you’re building on your character board, you must place a card in an Emerald City space. If all three of these spaces fill up before the end of the round, the Wizard tracker progresses, and a Wizard card is drawn. Some of these cards can help you, but some will disrupt your progress and aid the Wizard in his quest to stop you! When there are no cards left to draft, the round starts over. If the group can complete the final chapter, Defying Gravity, before the Wizard makes it to the end of the track, they win!
Game Experience:
For a family game, this has more going on than meets the eye. The set collection mechanic is easy to learn and teach, but offers a more interesting challenge than the traditional roll and move style family games. The card colors are asymmetrically allocated.
If you choose to play as Fiyero, who earns bonus points for orange cards, you’ll have much fewer options for putting together sets in your color than Glinda (pink), but your sets are worth more Thrillifying Magic tokens on average. Black cards are a good bet for earning lots of tokens, but no characters get bonus points for turning them in. Sets with the wizard stamp invariably earn you more tokens for fewer cards, but you have to weigh the risk of moving the Wizard tracker forward. As you go, you’ll have to make choices over which player will try to collect which sets, and hope that those choices pay off.
The Story Cards have printed on them how many copies there are in total in the deck to help you keep track of whether going after a high-scoring set is worth it later in the game when many of those copies might be in the discard pile. Being able to count cards in this way is a nice touch that adds an extra layer of strategy, keeping the game from being all about the luck of the draw.
Communicating with your fellow players about which cards to pick and which to pass adds some more color and dimension to otherwise straightforward gameplay, and the Wizard moving forward creates a little tension for the rounds. After several games, the Wizard never really posed that much of a threat, though. We found it pretty easy to hold him at bay so long as the players were keeping an eye on air balloons.
It’s a beautiful game. The box is the most impressive part of the presentation and would do any Ozian collector proud with it sitting on their shelf. The illustrations are lively, capturing the story well, and the color palette is rich and vibrant. I’m a fan of the Emerald City card holder, which is an efficient way of giving a chunky plastic set piece a reason to take up space on the board.
The ring around it holding the Thrillifying Magic bubbles, however, was less effective. We found it hard to pick the bubbles up from the ring, and ended up leaving them sitting outside of it for most of the game. The bubbles themselves are pretty and shimmery, but the first player token is a cheap-feeling plastic coin. The cardboard insert inside the box stuck to the game board and left a nasty residue that we had to scrape off before playing, but the board itself is well-designed, with lots of lovely graphic design elements that add interest without being too distracting.
Final Thoughts:
Wicked: The Game delivers more than one would expect for an IP-based family game. It’s beautiful to look at, with a clear and easy-to-learn rulebook, and gameplay that presents interesting choices and challenges. If you’re a fan of the movie, the musical, the book, the other movie, or the other book, you’ll likely find something to enjoy in this put-together, well-presented game.
Final Score: 3.5 Stars – An entertaining, attractive package that draws players into the world of the game.
Hits:
• Beautiful art and design
• Gameplay presents enough strategy to keep things interesting
• Does a good job of representing the source material and drawing players into the story
Misses:
• Thrillifying Bubble Ring is inconvenient to use
• Some components were not of the same high quality as the rest, including the coin and the box insert
• The Wizard is a little anticlimactic as an adversary
