After every Origins Rhonda and I discuss the games we demoed and/or bought and quietly confer upon one of them the Fourhman.com Best of Show Award. In our previous vacations, we've given the accolade to 7th Sea CCG (2000), Chrononauts card game (2001), and Battle of the Bands card game (2002).
This year, our favorite game of the show is WizKids' Creepy Freaks. WizKids is making their bank off their patented clicky dials, the low-bookkeeping basis behind Mage Knight, HeroClix and just about every game in their library. Creepy Freaks uses a similar click base, but it is streamlined to illustrate only one statistic: your figure's health. It's being marketed towards kids who are too young to grok the higher-end click dials of Mage Knight, but Rhon and I think the game itself is solid enough for any age.
The concept is pretty much ripped directly from Monsters Inc: little kids have wandered into a world of gross and silly monsters, and the kids are the scariest and most powerful creatures around. Combine that with a touch of Pokemon; the kids have to lead teams of monsters into arena battles to see which freaks are the creepiest.
The game plays on a chess-like field of squares, with each figure's base taking up exactly one square. (Although one wonders if massive 2-block or 4-block figures are on the drawing table.) You and your opponent select your teams - including figures of the kids themselves - and roll dice for movement.
Each figure's movement is cleverly illustrated on its base in the form of directional bands of color. If you picture a chessboard here, a figure that can move in any direction has color bands pointing in all eight possible directions. Most characters move in only a few directions. Skelehomie moves only on the four diagonals. Spitty Cat moves forward, backward and right-front diagonal. The movement directions also indicate how the figure can attack.
Attacking (freaking) is done just by being adjacent to an enemy figure, as long as you're along those directional colors. Worm Breath freaks Frosty the Snotman: One click of damage. Certain characters have weaknesses to certain attacks, so a well-placed freak attack can kick a weak character down several clicks. Once any team is down to one figure left, that team loses. (In a nice visual touch, clicking damage causes the figure to rotate... so by the time it has taken all of its damage, it is facing the complete opposite direction. This makes it look like he is running away from his opponents in terror!) You can probably tell the kind of gross-out kids' marketing behind the characters just by hearing those names. Our demo guy compared it to Garbage Pail Kids.
It's very easy to grasp, which is always a plus. It's quick to play and suitable for a variety of ages. The figures look great, nicely sculpted and painted. One weakness I see is that once one player starts winning, it seems difficult for the losing player to come back, unless the die rolls all go his or her way. It was also unclear how you build balanced teams. In other WizKids games, each figure has a point value that is used to even out opposing forces. Creepy Freaks would probably not want to add that dimension of pre-game complexity, but it is already fairly obvious that some figures are better than others.
Naturally, the figures are collectible, sold in blind boxes. The initial release will have 56 figures, but many are repaints. Creepy Freaks is supposed to be in stores this September. Until then, Rhon and I will be playing LMS 2-on-2 matches with our four Origins giveaway figures.
My runner-up choice for Best of Show is Third World Games' Testimony of Jacob Hollow. Noelle and I tried it out while the lads were deep into the Doomtown Penny Farthing. It's any given episode of The X-Files if the agents routinely died off by the end of the show.
