Item and Treasure Cards: Use any number of these that do not require an Action. Items must be discarded after use. Treasures are only discarded if their description says to discard, but some Treasures may require an Action to use. By the end of the Goonie turn, each Goonie may only have 2 Treasures. Legendary Treasures cannot be discarded unless stated and do not count against the 2 Treasure limit. A Treasure Card will take care of Rubble. Data uses an Action to activate an Invention. Photo by Elizabeth MacAndrew.

Flooded Token: Foes are not impacted by Flooded rooms, but any Goonie in a Flooded Room must spend 2 Wish Tokens instead of 1 for Upgrades and Teamwork. So, crank up some Cyndi Lauper, rip open a Baby Ruth, and let’s gather around the game table for The Goonies: Never Say Die, designed by the team at Prospero Hall. Gameplay Overview: Overall, well done, and well put together. Any fan of the movie should be excited by all of the little details for the pieces. How to Play The Goonies: Never Say Die Goal You get a chance to live this story yourself in The Goonies: Never Say Die, a game for 2-5 players by Prospero Hall and published by Funko Games. It’s best with ages 12+ and lasts about an hour per adventure. Setup Each Goonie has their own abilities specific to their character which helps them in different ways and there are enough Goonies included in the game that allow for the players to mix up who they play each time to make the game feel new and different each time (if they want to swap that is). The GM controls a set of enemies as well as a boss character, and these enemies are different for each of the adventures provided. The enemies are spawned and drawn by certain actions that happen during the game and are usually quite easy for the players to defeat, but the bosses are the real difficulty and main threat to the Goonies. These characters come with their own skills/abilities and come with more health too thus making them extremely difficult to deal with. Final ThoughtsGain a GM Token: These Token can be used to Upgrade Rolls, Draw/Play extra GM Cards, or Defend with an End is Nigh Roll with an Hour glass Card. Search a pirate stash or bone pile in the room by rolling search dice. Goonies receive one item card no matter the outcome of the challenge, but draw a treasure card if they succeed. Mikey is successful in searching the Pirate Stash Bone dice faces are success, The stories are great and keep the players immersed in the Goonies world and into their chosen characters. The certain events and actions that can happen during the game are written out simply as instructions for the players, but the GM always has the choice to act out and make a story out of them if they wish to make it more immersive and “D&D-like”. This is however fully optional depending on how each group of players wish to play through the game. The Goonies: Never Say Die plays very much like a lite-version of a tabletop RPG. A large map is placed in the center and the GM populates the starting room. As characters move through and discover each new area, it's the GM's job to fill it with monsters, traps, and obstacles based on the Adventure Guide. In the early missions, games come down to simple move, fight, and search mechanics, with players not really knowing the end goal until a certain event is triggered. As the story progresses, the game adds new mechanics and obstacles that The Goonies must overcome. The game works in 2 teams, the GM vs the rest of the players who will represent their chosen Goonie. The GM’s main goal is to gain points by defeating goonies and stopping them from completing their secret goal which only the GM knows. The Goonies’ goal is to try and complete their secret goal and to keep the GM from gaining points along the way. To complete these goals the GM follows a story set for that adventure and the Goonies traverse through the map trying to gain loot and defeat enemies and ultimately try and get clues for what their secret hidden goal is.

On my first playthrough I did it solo. None of my family have the same love for The Goonies that I do. So, I thought I’d step through a game to see how it played. The game plays very simply and is easy to understand. It’s a Dungeon Crawl game which makes perfect sense. You move from room to room, searching for “rich stuff” encountering hazards (pit traps and cave-ins) and creatures (mostly bats and rats). Defeat them and move on to the next room. The gameplay is set in turns where the Goonies go first and do their actions, the GM is next and plays any enemies or actions that they can, then the GM controls the active enemies and tries to take as much health from the Goonies as possible. This is the main chunk of the game really but is always intense and never seems to drag on for long as there are only 2 actions that each Goonie can do, and the GM actions cost GM points so they can’t exactly go crazy with their turn’s actions either. I love that this is the case and that it keeps it from feeling boring or slow, making for a better experience throughout. So, I grabbed my two boys who are pretty close to the age of The Goonies and played through that scenario again. This time with me as the GM and them as The Goonies. We had a blast! The character placards and GM screen do most of the heavy lifting in terms of “frequently asked questions,” but players will need to keep the rulebook handy for the first game or two. It’s not a major problem but it does mean that more experienced gamers will need to be the GM for at least the first few adventures. (I was the GM the first time I played and made a mistake that told the Goonies exactly which room they needed to get to. Mama Fratelli would have made me walk the plank for this blunder.)

Includes eight beautifully sculpted miniatures of Mikey, Mouth, Chunk, Data, Sloth, the Giant Octopus, the Fratellis, and even One-Eyed Willie himself No matter which side of the game you control, the best part of The Goonies: Never Say Die is easily the way the theme is implemented. Obviously, the specific powers and artwork contribute to that, but I found the light gameplay and pseudo-danger of the secretive GM to underscore exactly the feelings that the movie was meant to evoke. Each of the kids and Sloth (no playable teenagers in the base game) have their own abilities and strengths which help everyone move on to the next goal. Dice are rolled to resolve conflicts and everyone has tokens (Wishes) that can be turned in to increase their chances.

The goal of The Goonies: Never Say Die depends on your role. Unlike most tabletop rpgs, there is a win scenario for the GM. The GM wins if all 4 Sand Tokens are at the bottom of the Hourglass at the start of their turn. The Goonies win if they can complete their Starting Goal which varies by the adventure. I freely admit, as a GM, I didn’t care about winning and focused on creating a game that would be fun and challenging for my kids so I reined in at times I could have gone after the characters more and I highly recommend considering this approach for younger and/or new rpg players. Setup A game with 3 Goonies set up. Photo by Elizabeth MacAndrew.The world's favourite family board game brings you another exciting edition of MONOPOLY – The Goonies! The game is basically divided up into a Goonies Round followed by a GM Round and the rounds keep cycling through until the game is done.

The Goonies start each adventure with a basic goal that typically involves finding a specific room or item, but they will have limited information on how to achieve this and not know which direction will lead them to their destination. There is a pit trap with many nostalgic property based games that look enticing but fall flat once you play. The nostalgia isn’t a pirate’s treasure hoard but just a bunch of counterfeit fifty dollar bills. In other words, it is superficially that property but once the gameplay is examined it could be any other game. The Goonies Never Say Die is not that. The treasure is in the details and you should explore those unknown tunnels with kids to discover it. But if you allow yourself to get swept up in the adventure, then that’s when the game really sings just like a Cyndi Lauper tune blasting overhead as you ride your bike toward Astoria’s shore. But is it an RPG, with a GM after all? It depends on the company. There is a GM working against other players collectively and adding story-telling elements. If players aren’t afraid to roleplay and immerse themselves into a character, it could feel more like one. The GM does have an adventure script to follow, but there’s leeway for them to embellish the action as it takes place.

Goal

Similarly, the game is also objectively easier with more Goonie players since the GM only gets a single turn after every hero has gone. It’s not necessarily broken, but the game doesn’t scale very well in terms of its difficulty even if the fun remains the same regardless of player count. (The game comes with five playable Goonies but is not meant to played with more than four of them at a time.)