Wolfwalkers is an animated fantasy adventure movie released on Apple TV+ in 2020. The film follows the story of Robyn Goodfellowe, a young apprentice hunter who arrives in Ireland with her father during a time of superstition and magic to wipe out the last wolf pack. While exploring the forbidden lands outside the city walls, Robyn befriends a free-spirited girl, Mebh, a member of a mysterious tribe rumored to have the ability to turn into wolves by night. As they search for Mebh’s missing mother, Robyn uncovers a secret that draws her further into the enchanted world of the Wolfwalkers and risks turning into the very thing her father is tasked to destroy.
Wolfwalkers: My story is a 2-player card game, lasting about 25 minutes and published by Value Add Games in 2021. It uses the art from the movie as a thematic background to a card drafting / placement mechanism. During the game, players draft and place cards from the market, in order to form a 5×5 grid of cards on the table. At the end of the game, players score points according to the placement of cards and certain objectives that must be fullfilled.
During setup, all cards are shuffled to form a shared-deck. From it, six cards are drawn to form the market. The cards are double-sided. One side is a story card and the other an objective card. The story side features illustrations from the movie along with one or more icons related to the picture.
The objective side, features three different types of objectives:
- Shapes. A specific sequence of icons must appear in your grid. However this sequence can be reversed or mirrored.
- Arrows. It gives you points for icons in the same row or column with the objective
- Balance. It gives you points for specific balance between icons on the grid
Objective cards depict their requirements, a title related to the specific card and icons used and the number of points it is worth at the end of the game if accomplished.
The market is formed by choosing six cards from the deck and placing four cards story side up and two cards objective side up.
Each turn, the active player must take a card from the market and place it on his/her grid, keeping the same side up as it is. That means that some cards on the grid will be story cards and others objective cards. The new card must be placed adjacent to another card already on the grid. After that, a new card is drawn from the deck to replace the one picked at the market.
At the end of the game each player will have formed a 5×5 grid with a mix of objectives / story cards. The winner is determined according to the points earned from fulfilling the objectives.
The game also features an expansion which provides for advanced and more challenging gameplay. The expansion comprises of two new types of cards, namely Permanent and Opportunity cards. Permanent cards change a specific rule of the game e.g. instead of taking the card from the market, you can take the bottom card from the deck. You can place it in your grid – story or objective side up. Opportunity cards are action cards each player can use once in the game whenever they want e.g., swap the position of two cards in your grid. Opportunity cards come in four possible types or a mix of two: Resources, Interactive ,Grid and Scoring. For a small change in gameplay, you can use one permanent card. For a bigger change and player interaction, you can use one Permanent card and three Opportunity cards. There are 15 Permanent cards and 25 Opportunity cards.
Now, let’s see how the game scores in our usual scoring categories:
Components
The only component of the game is cards, so their overall quality is essential. The art on the story cards is just amazing and depicts moments from the film. As I was playing the game, I often caught myself gazing at the beautiful images, immersing in the movie’s world and forgetting I was playing a game. The cards are made from thin but durable cardboard. A nice addition could be a scoring pad with the three categories of objectives.
The gamebox is pretty impressive, featuring a beautiful image of the two friends, Robin and Mebh and the name of the game written in shiny golden letters. It certainly attracts the eye. Its compactness makes it ideal to carry with in your travels. 9/10
Gameplay
When I first oppened the rulebook I was somehow dissapointed when I realized that the gameplay has nothing to do with the movie nor with storytelling as its title suggests, but when I delved in what the game really has to offer I felt challenged.
This is one of those games they call “easy to learn but difficult to master”. It has super easy rules but requires tough decisions. One of the most important decisions is which card to pick from the market. Should it be a story card or an objective card? If there are more than one good choices, you must also consider what the other player may want to pick and prefer the card that he/she would probably choose as it may not be available next turn. It should be noted that all icons on story cards don’t appear with the same frequency. Fortunately there is a help card that depicts the frequencies of all icons, helping players to decide which card to pick.
Another important decision is the placement of the card just picked. There will be times that a story card may fulfill different objectives when placed in different positions on the grid. The 5×5 grid will be a real puzzle to solve though a fun one.
Wolfwalkers can be easily played by all ages 8+, and most importantly it can be played by non gamers as well due to its easy rules and short duration.
This game is two-player only but it can also be played by 3-4 players by using a second copy. Its nature I think could make for a good solo game too, which isn’t implemented but could add some more replayability. 7/10
Learning Curve
Wolfwalkers: My Story can be learned within minutes. There is a single job to do each turn and that is to pick a card and place it on your grid. As long as you familiarize yourself with the different objectives and how to accomplish them, you are ready to take it a go. It’s pretty helpful that between the contents of the game, there are help cards that provide clarifications for objective cards and inform players about the rarity of each symbol on the story cards. 9/10
Theme
The theme of the game is surely based on the movie “Wolfwalkers”, however only the images featuring excerpts from the movie are used and they are undeniably an eye-catcher. The gameplay has nothing to do with the movie and in reality this game is an abstract one. At no time during the game you do feel that you are living in the universe created by the astonishing images. The icons on the story cards are related to the image depicted but that is the only link of the game to the movie. Any other art could be used instead without changes in gameplay.
At the end of the game, you will end up with story cards put side by side and you could try to form a real story from these images if you feel creative enough. I would really like it if the story of the film was somehow incorporated in the game but I guess that would be a completely different game. 5/10
Replayability
The 55 cards of the game are double-sided, one side story one side objective, which provides for much variability. The 5×5 grid will be completely different each time you play.
The expansion provided with the game gives a great boost to replayability as you can choose each time a different permanent card to play with, twisting the basic rules. Moreover the opportunity cards which provide one-time actions for players also spice up the game. The overall combination of double-sided cards, 15 permanent and 25 opportunity cards ensures that no game will be the same.
The simplicity of rules, short duration and low learning curve of the game also makes it a robust candidate to be featured on your gaming table frequently as a filler game. 8/10
Player Interaction
Each player in the game builds his/her own grid of cards and doesn’t interfere with the opponent’s grid. The only indirect player interaction is “hate picking” cards from the market in order to deprive your opponent of them.
However when you learn the game well and decide to add Opportunity cards from the expansion included in the box, the game is enriched with one-time actions, the Opportunity cards, that include four interaction cards e.g. point to a card in the market that your opponent cannot take on their next turn. The limited number of these cards means that if you randomnly choose the Opportunity cards to use in your game, you will have little chance of getting them. However for more interactive games, you could hand-pick the specific cards to play with. 6/10
Final Thoughts
Though the game has really nothing to do with the movie it is based on (except for using images from the movie) nor with storytelling as its title suggests, it presents a robust filler game due to the challenging decisions it presents, its astonishingly beautiful images and its great replayability. Its small size makes it a perfect travel companion. Overall it fills the purpose it was designed for, being a small, quick and challenging filler game.
Recommended for: Everyone!
According to our scoring system for board games, scoring categories have different weights. Components have 13% weight, Gameplay 35%, Learning curve 6%, Theme 5%, Replayability 26%, Player Interaction 15%. According to this system and the above scoring in each category, overall weighted scoring of the game is:
Overall: 7.39
