Hey you guys! One of the fondest memories I have of the 80’s is all of the wonderful feelgood movies that were made in that era. I once wrote a post about some of my Childhood Movies and it will probably come as no surprise that The Goonies is one of those films. Directed by Richard Donner, the man who also made the original Superman movie and of course the awesome Lethal Weapon films, it’s just one of those really great adventure movies that sadly these days hardly ever get made anymore. It tells the story of a group of kids that call themselves the Goonies, who are forced to leave the house they grew up in. However when one of them finds an ancient treasure map, that supposedly tells the location of pirate legend One Eyed Willy’s treasure, the race is on to find it and maybe save their house in the process. Of course things are never easy as a bunch of thugs called the Frattelis set off after them, determined to also find the treasure and keep it for themselves. It has some great performances all around, and it’s fun to see a very young Josh Brolin in this movie, who would later go on to star in The Avengers as the villain Thanos. Talks of a sequel to the film have been going on for years, but is one of those projects that in all likelyhood is never going to happen. But now we have the next best thing: The Goonies Adventure Cardgame! Or do we? Let’s find out if this game is worth it!
Components

This being a cardgame, it will probably not be too much of a shock to you that this game contains a bunch of cards. In total the game comes with 110 cards, representing the various items, locations, encounters and challenges that the players will face during the game. And of course all of The Goonies themselves are included as well, with each player able to play one of them. The cards are of a pretty decent quality and a lot of them contain stills with scenes from the movie. Also included are a bunch of cardboard tiles, and the awesome looking Goonies meeple, that you will use during the game to mark which location you are at. (More on that down below). Another thing that I am very happy with is that the game comes with a box insert where you can easily store your components. This might not seem important, but I have various games where once I opened the box, I had the biggest problems fitting all of the stuff back inside. Last but not least we have a 14 page rules booklet, that does a great job of explaining the rules. Containing various examples of play, and a lot of pictures, I had no trouble whatsoever in learning the game. All in all it’s a nice box, with quality components, so no complaints at all on that front!
Game Overview

In The Goonies Adventure card game, just like in the movie, you are racing against time to find One Eyed Willy’s treasure. At the start of the game, five locations from the film are set up, with each location having a piece of the treasure. If you are able to extract all five treasures before you are overcome by obstacles or the Fratellis you win the game. Obstacles you say? Well yes. Before you can explore a location you will have to overcome the obstacle cards. Each location gets a bunch of them, and more are added each turn. As soon as a location has more than five obstacles it’s game over. At the start of the game each player chooses the Goonie who he/she wishes to play, and gets dealt a hand of item cards. Each Goonie has their own special ability, and in this way also adds variety to the game. The game is played in a series of turns. During a turn players get the chance to take four actions. Actions include moving around the five locations, overcoming the obstacles, exploring a location to find a piece of treasure to name a few. Each obstacle includes a picture of the item card you need to have in order to get rid of it. For example, in the picture below, in row number 2, the top card below the the Chester Copperpot location has a musical note on it’s left hand corner. If you happen to have an item card with a musical note on it in your hand, that’s the one you need in order to overcome the obstacle.

Some obstacles require more than one item to overcome, and players can work together to form the combination they need. Once a location is cleared of obstacles, players can try to explore it. This is done by turning over one of the three face down tiles above the location. Some of these are boobytraps, and only one of them is actually a piece of treasure. After four actions have been taken (or less if you are not able to do any more actions), players discard all the items they used, and then draw a new hand. However this also means that new obstacles are drawn, sometimes if you are unlucky more than one, or even more horrible an encounter. An encounter card is usually bad news. They can add even more obstacles or be a Fratteli that makes life more miserable for the players. Even worse, if ever there are ever five of these lastnamed cards in play, it’s game over. So as you can see there are more ways to lose than win, which brings us to the next item on the agenda, the difficulty of the game.
Difficulty

As mentioned the rulebook does a great job in teaching you the game, and after spending as few as 20 minutes with it, I was able to play my first game. One of the hardest things to do in this game is managing the obstacles. Before you know it, these can fill up really fast, and remember once there are five of them below a location it’s game over. Sometimes that can happen really quickly if you are unlucky enough to draw obstacles that keep adding new ones. There is luck involved in this game, there is no denying that, but at the same time it’s also important to keep paying attention to the cards you have in your hand and deciding where to go next. When you are playing the game with more people, it becomes important to really work together in order to overcome the obstacles. In the solo version you have to keep your wits about you, and it’s easy to sometimes overlook certain things. All in all though this isn’t a difficult game by any means, and there is a good balance between winning and losing.
The Verdict

This is by no means a very heavy game that you can play for hours on end. But that is certainly not a bad thing. It’s always nice to have a few games in your collection that you can bring to the table every once in a while, play for two or three rounds and then call it quits. There is enough variety in the game to keep things interesting, and you are for example able to add cards that make the game more difficult. This gives it some great replay value. The nostalgia factor is certainly another thing that makes this an interesting buy, though admittedly I do have to say that the game could have done more to give it that real Goonies flavour so to speak. All in all though this is a fun game, for people who like cardgames, are 80’s fans and maybe want to relive a few childhood memories. Goonies never say die!
I give The Goonies Adventure card game a 8 out of 10 score.
Until I met you online, I didn’t even know that such games existed. 🙂
Glad to hear you enjoyed playing it. (I have seen the film once, but I was too old to appreciate it)
Best wishes, Pete.
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Haha…well these really are fun games to play, and more of them seem to come out every month😊
As for the film…I understand that😊 Being a child of the 80’s I saw this one on my birthday in the theatres. Have some fond memories of it, and to this day every once in a while I watch it for the nostalgia😊
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Hey, this is cool, I’m so glad you told us about it!
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Haha…it really is cool! You are welcome! Thanks for visiting! 😊
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Sounds cool, anything Goonies is good!
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True enough….as they say Goonies never die😊
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Looks ace!
I remember Albino Dragon did some playing cards for ‘The Goonies’ too, but I missed out. (I did grab a set of ‘The Princess Bride’ ones, which are also fantastic).
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I missed out on those too😢 But have this game more than made up for missing out on those! It really is a fun game to play, and it looks good as well 😊 Definitely glad I picked this one up! Thanks for your comment! 😃
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I was so keen to grab that deck, yeah, but I think they weren’t licensed for Australia from memory.
Hopefully I can get the game one day instead 🙂
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I hope so too. It should still be available for you on Amazon 😊
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I loved the Goonies! Will have to give this a go when I have a bit more disposable income to hand.
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Haha…well, it’s not going anywhere as far as I know, and it’s definitely a fun game. Hope you will enjoy it as much as I do if you get around to it at some point 😊
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Well that sounds like you had fun, the cards loook really cool, but I think it would take me more like 20 days than minutes to learn all that 😀
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It’s certainly a really fun game to play….but trust me though, it might look complicated but it’s definitely not. I won’t lie I certainly have a few complicated games in my collection. This isn’t one of them 😊 The rulebook does a great job of explaining things and in 10 or so minutes you are able to play with no problems😊
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Oh I really need to visit your blog more often! So much new content when you told me you would be back sort of I thought! I made a mistake!
This game seems kinda fun.. but I don’t really have a thing with the Goonies! Seems like a fun game but also hard to sell to non goonie fans :O . Happy to see you talk more about board games though! In this time I have little people to play board games with though I might play a game of Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards soon!
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Haha…well….don’t forget, I had about 20 posts (literally) all finished and written before I went off. So aside from some minor editing, they were pretty much good to go lol😂 No worries though…my blog isn’t mandatory reading haha
It really is a fun little game, but admittedly it’s probably more fun if you like the Goonies movie. I haven’t played many boardgames lately, but I hope to one day get back to them as they are way too much fun 😊
Well…I have that same problem, which is why I always make sure that my boardgames have a solo option😊 Hope you will be able to play that Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards. (that’s quite a mouthful by the way😅😅😂😂).
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Oh Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards is like only the series titles there are series of it
Battle at MountSkullzfire, Panic at the Pleasure Palace, Melee at Murdershroom Marsh, Rumble at Castle Tentakill, Annihilageddon and Hijinx at Hell High are all options to play.
So I am actually going to play : Epic Spellwars of the Battle Wizards Hijninx at Hell High (if I can order that one already) or Epic Spellwars of the Battle Wizards, Battle at MT Skullzfyre xD
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You got me curious, so did some googling…and have to admit, that looks like a lot of fun!😊 Crazy fun actually! Hope you will enjoy, and of course win!😂
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Sounds like a pretty good game. Reminds me a little of the Forbidden Island game, but more involved.
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It’s definitely a fun game. I haven’t played Forbidden Island myself, but I know of it, having seen some playthroughs of it, and I guess there are some similarities. That said, this is a fun and easy to pick up game, and I especially liked it of course because of the theme😊
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I was twenty when the movie came out, but I still love it. This game sounds like a wonderful way to keep the nostalgia alive.😊
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It’s one of those timeless classic films that will never get old😊 I revisit it every once in a while, and I still enjoy it quite a bit😊 The game certainly is a really fun one, especially if you are a fan 😊
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That meeple is awesome! Wish more games had cool meeples like that.
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Haha, yeah it’s definitely one of the most awesome components of this game😊
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Hey You Guys! I love The Goonies. Looks like a fun game for a fun movie. The Goonies was something I reviewed very early in my blogging career. Here’s the link if you want to check it: https://mastermixmovies.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/hey-you-guys/
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Just checked it out: always fun to see an earlier post, especially for such a fun film as this one😊 This game really was great fun indeed!😃
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Thank you!
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I missed out on all the goonies stuff…
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Well…it’s never too late to revisit old classics. It’s a real fun film, that’s still enjoyable even today😊
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I have such a vague memory of the movie, having seen it wayyy too young to remember much of the iconic stuff of it. This did remind me of what I need to fix ASAP with a good ol’ fashioned viewing. Children-led movies… Talented children-led movies are indeed rare, nowadays only allowing the kids from Stranger Things to get the roles hahaha Then again, Holywood is a mess and putting kids in there is quite risky. 😉 Great review for this game though. It does sound well-conceived, Michel! Thanks for sharing! 😀
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It’s definitely an oldie, but one that is still very enjoyable to this day. I return to it every once in a while, because it has withstood the test of time very well indeed. You are right though….It’s hard to find really talented children led movies…I can’t even think of a recent one, except for Stranger Things of course which isn’t a movie😊
But yes, this is a fun game, and one that’s perfect to play every once in a while😊 Thanks as always for your comment!
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