Six scoundrels had gathered: Captain Hook was plotting his revenge, Jafar envisioned ruling unopposed, Maleficent smiled at the thought of thorns engulfing the kingdom, Prince John was devising new taxes to fill his coffers, the Queen of Hearts brooded over her next decree of decapitation, while Ursula lounged with a sly grin, imagining helpless souls entangled in her tentacles. Each was driven to prove their wickedness and become the evilest Disney Villainous: The Worst Takes it All by Aaron Donogh, Brian Kirk and Prospero Hall from Ravensburger.
Who is the baddest of them all?
I don’t know how many of you have ever watched a Disney film and secretly hoped that the villain would come out victorious and show those silly do-gooders how it’s done, but now you can openly play the role of your favourite villain and change the ending of your favourite fairytale story.
Yes, in Disney Villainous, for short, you take on the role of Captain Hook, Jafar, Maleficent, the Queen of Hearts or Ursula and change your arch enemy’s destiny for the worse. Don’t expect a one-versus-many game, though, where one of you is the baddie and the rest try and stop you. No, all of you are evil schemers and tricksters hoping to be the first to fulfil your goal and show the rest who is the worst villain of them all.
That in itself makes Disney Villainous an interesting game. It flips the well-trodden-out idea of being on the side of good on its head. Here is a game where you can be an infamously famous baddy and live out your darkest thoughts. Well, within reason, that is. We’re talking about Disney, after all. It’s all very family-friendly. However dark it might get, it’s still all completely PG.
In fact, while the rules do take a little time to digest, the game is actually pretty straightforward. You can easily play it with all the family. So if your kid always rooted for Captain Hook and wished he would be able to put an end to Peter Pan‘s shenanigans and nasty tricks, now they can. If they always thought that the Little Mermaid was a little bit too self-obsessed and wished Ursula would get her own way and succeed in her malicious plans, Disney Villainous lets them do just that.
Asymmetric Symmetry
While every character has different goals and different player boards, everyone’s turn order is the same and everyone chooses from pretty much the same actions. You just need to learn what the symbols mean and how the different actions function, but that doesn’t take too long and everyone gets a really helpful player aid so you can quickly look up anything you may have forgotten.
The real challenge in Disney Villainous is learning how to get the best out of your chosen character. You need to learn your deck and understand how your player board’s arrangement of actions lets you play the cards you need to complete your goal before everyone else. On your turn, you move your pawn to a different location on your player board and carry out any of the actions available there in any order you like. Actions allow you to play cards, gain power, which is the main resource in the game, activate a card you previously played, move cards around and do all sorts of other things.
The way Disney Villainous plays reminds me very much of Root. Everyone has different goals, different cards and a different player board, but everyone has the same actions. From the outside, it does feel like everyone is doing the same thing on their turn. Like Root, it all is a bit overwhelming at first, but once you’re about halfway through your first game, it will click.
Also like Root, as soon as you feel you know what you’re doing, you need to start looking at what your opponents are up to. Some of them will probably be close to reaching their goal and winning the game. So it’s time for you to show how awfully wicked you are and throw a big spanner in their works.
Fated Action Selection
The spanner in Disney Villainous is fating. Fating is an action on your player board that allows you to play a fate card on a location on an opponent’s player board. That not only makes some of the actions at the location unavailable, but also forces your opponent to take extra actions to get rid of the fate card. It slows them down, hopefully giving you the extra time you need to complete your own goal and snatch victory from right under their nose.
There is no rest for the wicked though. If you’re not careful, you may stop one player from winning, just to give another player the extra turn they needed to finish their goal on their turn. So be careful and choose your fate action wisely. The turn has to come back around to you if you want to win. If someone else gets there before you, you will lose, even if you were only one action away from finishing your own goal and taking victory.
That’s where Disney Villainous really comes to life. It’s the Oath effect. You know you can get everything done this turn to be able to win the game when the round comes back to you, but you can also see that another player will win on their next turn. So you need to do whatever it takes to stop them, even if it messes everything up for yourself. Yet, by successfully stopping the other player, a third villain may be able to reach their goal instead. Like a dragon chasing its own tail in a vain attempt to eat itself whole, the spanner is handed to the next player, whose victory was just snatched away by you. They have to stop the third player who themselves will have to stop you.
Endless Villainy
So while Disney Villainous starts pretty normal, with everyone trying to cycle through their decks to get the cards they need and build up their engine, at some point, everything changes. It becomes less about winning and more about not losing. It becomes about stopping another player. That’s when the table talk starts, plans are hatched together and temporary alliances are formed. That’s when the game becomes really lively and exciting.
You can feel how the stories that every player has created with their character up to now reach their climax. Even though everyone’s storyline is a separate thread and Disney Villainous feels very much like a multiplayer solitaire game for the first half, everything suddenly becomes very agitated and mean. Everyone’s villain comes to the fore and shows their glinting teeth, sharp claws, pointy hooks or evil spells. It’s as if the different Disney universes have merged.
I really like how the game allows you to play as your favourite villain and go about your own business, as the character would do in their respective film, until everything comes to a head and all the film projectors overlap and the characters jump at each other’s throats.
So if you are curious how the story would go if Captain Hook finally defeated Peter Pan or the Queen of Hearts succeeded in taking off Alice‘s head, then give Disney Villainous a go. It might take a little while to learn the game, but you will be rewarded with a rich story-telling game of slitting each other’s throats and becoming the most villainous of villains.
Useful Links
Videos
Transparency Facts
I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way.
- I played a friend’s copy of the game.
- At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind.
Audio Version
Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.
Music: “Fortress” by AShamaluevMusic.
Website: https://www.
Music: Cinematic Suspense Series Episode 008 by Sascha Ende
Link: https://filmmusic.
Playlist
These are the songs I listened to while I was writing this review:
