No matter which side of the game you control, the best part of The Goonies: Never Say Die is easily the way the theme is implemented. Obviously, the specific powers and artwork contribute to that, but I found the light gameplay and pseudo-danger of the secretive GM to underscore exactly the feelings that the movie was meant to evoke. The game works in 2 teams, the GM vs the rest of the players who will represent their chosen Goonie. The GM’s main goal is to gain points by defeating goonies and stopping them from completing their secret goal which only the GM knows. The Goonies’ goal is to try and complete their secret goal and to keep the GM from gaining points along the way. To complete these goals the GM follows a story set for that adventure and the Goonies traverse through the map trying to gain loot and defeat enemies and ultimately try and get clues for what their secret hidden goal is. Each of the kids and Sloth (no playable teenagers in the base game) have their own abilities and strengths which help everyone move on to the next goal. Dice are rolled to resolve conflicts and everyone has tokens (Wishes) that can be turned in to increase their chances. For the Goonies, choosing which member of your team to send off alone into potential danger is where much of the game’s tension lies. If a new room shows a few searchable items, it’s best to send Mikey in because he’s the best at searching, but if he gets trapped in there alone with an enemy, he’s in a lot of trouble. (This happened in a game I played where Mikey’s room didn’t even have a proper exit and his team was way on the other side of the board. I actually uttered the words, “Guess I’ll just have to sacrifice Mikey for the good of the team.” It felt like a depressing deleted scene from the movie.) I know it feels like a lot of steps, but between the diagram and the clear step description is goes pretty fast after all the Tokens have initially been punched out and sorted, and I honestly believe the next time I play I can leave a lot of Tokens in the box and just pull out what I need as needed which will cut down a lot of setup time. My kids are ten and seven, and I admit i might be able to let A set up since he’s ten, but W probably could not do it on his own. Gameplay

The goal of The Goonies: Never Say Die depends on your role. Unlike most tabletop rpgs, there is a win scenario for the GM. The GM wins if all 4 Sand Tokens are at the bottom of the Hourglass at the start of their turn. The Goonies win if they can complete their Starting Goal which varies by the adventure. I freely admit, as a GM, I didn’t care about winning and focused on creating a game that would be fun and challenging for my kids so I reined in at times I could have gone after the characters more and I highly recommend considering this approach for younger and/or new rpg players. Setup A game with 3 Goonies set up. Photo by Elizabeth MacAndrew. Adventure Action. These are used to remove Rubble tokens, Trapped Tokens, or activate Adventure specific actions.Data uses an Adventure Action to activate an Invention. Photo by Elizabeth MacAndrew. The Game ends when the Goonies achieve their which gives the Goonies and victory or when a GM Round starts with all 4 Sand Tokens in the bottom half of the Hourglass Tile which means the GM wins. Why You Should Play The Goonies: Never Say Die The gameplay is set in turns where the Goonies go first and do their actions, the GM is next and plays any enemies or actions that they can, then the GM controls the active enemies and tries to take as much health from the Goonies as possible. This is the main chunk of the game really but is always intense and never seems to drag on for long as there are only 2 actions that each Goonie can do, and the GM actions cost GM points so they can’t exactly go crazy with their turn’s actions either. I love that this is the case and that it keeps it from feeling boring or slow, making for a better experience throughout.You get a chance to live this story yourself in The Goonies: Never Say Die, a game for 2-5 players by Prospero Hall and published by Funko Games. It’s best with ages 12+ and lasts about an hour per adventure. Setup

The Goonies: Never Say Die plays very much like a lite-version of a tabletop RPG. A large map is placed in the center and the GM populates the starting room. As characters move through and discover each new area, it's the GM's job to fill it with monsters, traps, and obstacles based on the Adventure Guide. In the early missions, games come down to simple move, fight, and search mechanics, with players not really knowing the end goal until a certain event is triggered. As the story progresses, the game adds new mechanics and obstacles that The Goonies must overcome. One of the ways the theme is tied into the mechanics is in the distribution of each character’s skills. For example, Sloth is the best at fighting enemies, but not good at dexterity or searching. (Although Sloth did pull off that impressive rope swing in the movie, so I actually think he’s more dexterous than the designers give him credit for.) Mikey, on the other hand, is the best Goonie at searching but very weak in combat. There is a pit trap with many nostalgic property based games that look enticing but fall flat once you play. The nostalgia isn’t a pirate’s treasure hoard but just a bunch of counterfeit fifty dollar bills. In other words, it is superficially that property but once the gameplay is examined it could be any other game. The Goonies Never Say Die is not that. The treasure is in the details and you should explore those unknown tunnels with kids to discover it. On my first playthrough I did it solo. None of my family have the same love for The Goonies that I do. So, I thought I’d step through a game to see how it played. The game plays very simply and is easy to understand. It’s a Dungeon Crawl game which makes perfect sense. You move from room to room, searching for “rich stuff” encountering hazards (pit traps and cave-ins) and creatures (mostly bats and rats). Defeat them and move on to the next room.

Setup

That may be the one obstacle the game doesn’t quite overcome. If you aren’t a huge fan of The Goonies, there’s a lot of quotes and easter eggs (the Octopus from the deleted scene!) that you might not get. It’s still enjoyable as a game but the nostalgia element might be lost on someone who didn’t grow up with it. Similarly, the game is also objectively easier with more Goonie players since the GM only gets a single turn after every hero has gone. It’s not necessarily broken, but the game doesn’t scale very well in terms of its difficulty even if the fun remains the same regardless of player count. (The game comes with five playable Goonies but is not meant to played with more than four of them at a time.) But if you allow yourself to get swept up in the adventure, then that’s when the game really sings just like a Cyndi Lauper tune blasting overhead as you ride your bike toward Astoria’s shore. The game is basically divided up into a Goonies Round followed by a GM Round and the rounds keep cycling through until the game is done. The stories are great and keep the players immersed in the Goonies world and into their chosen characters. The certain events and actions that can happen during the game are written out simply as instructions for the players, but the GM always has the choice to act out and make a story out of them if they wish to make it more immersive and “D&D-like”. This is however fully optional depending on how each group of players wish to play through the game.