Introduction

A couple of months ago, I wrote about my brief subscription to Board Game Bento.A� They had some a discount code for the holidays and I always wanted to try the service.A� Unable to pass up a deal that gave me a chance to do just that, I signed up.A� I already wrote an article about the first month’s box.A� Due to a mix up with my Paypal account, I got subscribed for a second box even though I meant to cancel after only one.

As Bob Ross is fond of saying, that was a happy little accident. I wasn’t sure that I would continue with the subscription beyond that first month.A� I’m still not sure if I will and the subscription is currently on hiatus until I determine if it will be worth it.A� I think that I might have mentioned that the dollar value more or less checks out, but maybe not all of the games are ones that our family will play.A� In addition, Christine made the point that we already have a ton of games and not much room for storage right now.

As a result, the current answer is leaning not very heavily in the “no” column.A� Even if only one of the games is playable by the family (and so far, we have found at least one from the first two boxes that we’ve received.A� You may have deduced, therefore, that this article is about the game that we played from that second box.A� Brilliant deduction, Sherlock!

The theme of the second box was time.A� There were two card games that looked interesting.A� One can even be played solitaire.A� However, we haven’t tried either of the card games yet.A� Christine noticed the board game, Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time, said that it looked interesting, and she, Aiden, Quinn, and I played through the game.

The Good

The game is a cooperative game, which is great for our family.A� None of us are really that competitive except for Aiden.A� I mean, we all have our competitive streaks as all people do, but we temper it with an overall attitude of just have fun with it.A� While it may not be effective for everyone, it has fostered a safe environment in which to play games.A� I’ve also been able to appeal to Chris’s charitable side and get him to adopt more friendly rules during our Magic games.A� I also think that he gets a lot of his competitive juices out during his games against Darren, so he’s often just looking for kitchen table fun when we sit down together.

My mother got us a game for Christmas a few years ago that was a cooperative game that we played a few times.A� It was a pretty good game, but I think that this game captures the spirit of games better than that one ever did.A� You work together as a team in an attempt to recover stolen artifacts from the mansion of Professor Evil.A� There are several obstacles in your way; traps, time and the professor himself.

The Bad

This seems like a common theme for board games that we’ve played recently and here we go again.A� When Quinn and I played Flag Dash, the set up for the game took longer than our play through and the payoff was not worth the time invested.A� This game suffers from a similar issue.A� Christine took about 15-20 minutes to simply set up the game.A� I thought that was a bad sign and that we’d be in for another disappointing experience.

Luckily, unlike Flag Dash, once the game was set up, it was much more intuitive to play the game.A� We all picked up on the turn order very quickly, used strategy and teamwork when necessary to win the game.A� It looked a bit grim and that we might lose.A� Instead of giving up, though, we formulated a plan that worked and got us the victory just before the Professor escaped with his stolen goods!

The Ugly

I said earlier that I was slightly leaning “no” with regards to signing up for a longer subscription for Board Game Bento.A� I haven’t changed my mind completely yet, but there currently is a bit of an ugly internal battle going on inside of me.A� Logically, I know that I probably shouldn’t.A� Inside my gamer’s heart, though, I’m pretty positive that I’m going to make the illogical decision.

I mean, really, we’ve gotten two boxes and have gotten at least two playable games from them.A� That’s all I’m looking for right now.A� As the boys get older and get involved in more things, as I work two jobs that keeps me out of the house for 12-16 hours a day, and as we all enter that time in our lives when we all are drifting apart for a few years, the time that we do get together is precious and I’m always thinking of ways to increase that time and make it more memorable.A� So, perhaps it isn’t such utter nonsense after all.

The Verdict

This was a fun game.A� Initially, we sold it to the boys and ourselves as a game similar to Clue.A� Since they all enjoy playing that game so much, it wasn’t hard to convince them to give this one a try.A� It wasn’t as much like Clue as we thought, but it was still a fun game.A� I especially liked both the cooperative nature of the game and that the game had a win condition.A� That was missing from the last cooperative game that we played.A� Though, to be fair, that game was mostly just for little kids to teach them about good sportsmanship and sharing, so probably not the best comparison.A� We haven’t played it again since that first time, but it should become a regular in our rotation for family game nights.

As far as the overall subscription, I’m no longer certain that I won’t sign up.A� I’m not even leaning in any significant way towards “No”.A� For the reasons discussed above, I might just give it another few months to disappoint me.A� Then again, Aiden is a fan of the Tinker Crates,A� those are much cheaper, and we can work together on those, too.A� Plus, I just bought a whole bunch of ebooks about designing video games, building robotic Lego structures, and making drones.A� I have a feeling we’ll be quite busy for the foreseeable future.