Follow The Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz Adventure Book Game

Escape the twister, meet the munchkins, visit the wizard, and defeat the wicked witch of the west, all on your quest to return home to Kansas.

Published by Ravensburger, The Wizard of Oz is the second entry in their Adventure Book Game line. For 1-4 players, it is a cooperative game that will have you play through Dorothy’s entire journey from Kansas and back again.

Gameplay

The game is played with an adventure book, which is divided into six chapters. You play through the game in order, starting with chapter one. Each chapter shows you a game board and gives you setup instructions for which character miniatures are used in this chapter, any tiles you need to place on the board, and where to place them. It also lists the loss conditions for that chapter, as well as the challenges you must complete in order to beat the chapter and move on to the next one.

There is a deck of story cards. At the start of each chapter, each player is dealt four cards from this deck. These cards come in five different colors. During the game, you are awarded special story cards for completing certain challenges. When you gain one of these, you draw from the special story deck, but discard any played special cards into the general discard pile, which is shuffled back into the main story deck as you play — meaning that the story deck grows stronger as you progress. Special story cards are often wilds that can be any color or have special abilities such as extra movement for characters or allowing a player to draw additional cards.

All players are working and controlling all the characters on the board together. On your turn, you start by moving. You may move one character one or two spaces, or you may move two characters one space each. Next, you may take any of the following actions in any order: you can trade one card in your hand with a card in another player’s hand; you can discard any number of cards to move a character one space per discarded card; you can complete a challenge if you meet the necessary requirements.

Challenges will typically require a certain situation on the board, such as a character at a specific location or certain tiles flipped face-up. Then you will need to discard a certain number of cards of certain colors. After completing the challenge, you check the reward that comes from it (often drawing special story cards). Most special story cards can be played on any player’s turn. Some challenges will also give you a Glinda the Good Witch Favor token. You can spend one of these tokens on your turn to either draw three story cards or restart the chapter with no penalty.

Finally, you finish your turn by drawing two story cards and then drawing a plot card. Plot cards will often set you back or bring you closer to the chapter’s loss condition. Discard down to six cards, if necessary, and it’s now the next player’s turn.

If players beat all six chapters, they win the game. If you lose a chapter, you are supposed to start back over at the beginning of the game.

Review

The Wizard of Oz Adventure Book Game is a nice, low-key, cozy, cooperative game with some fun puzzles and challenges that you have to work through. If you’ve already played The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game and enjoyed it, Wizard of Oz is much the same but with some clever new ideas for challenges and new puzzles introduced to the gameplay. If you didn’t enjoy The Princess Bride, this game won’t change your mind.

There’s a nice variety in the puzzles, and in the lose conditions of each chapter. There are some elements of luck that come into play to make something a little harder or a little easier, but you do always feel like you have a chance, and that luck is where the game’s replay value comes in the most. There are also some great ‘a-ha’ moments when you realize the key for tackling a particular problem.

There is one chapter in which, once you figure out the workaround for the lose condition, it becomes quite easy and really won’t have any real replay value in the future. It’s a great first playthrough experience, but it definitely is one we might skip if playing again.

The game looks great. The picture book is such a fun component to play with and the characters are nice and chunky, and (with the exception of the wicked witch’s broom) quite sturdy. It can be a bit messy when more than one character is on the same space, but this is a minor nitpick. You can typically keep track of where characters are supposed to be since everyone is moving these figures together and tracking the game state.

This is a fun, family cooperative game. It does run a little long if you’re going to play it in one sitting, but there is quite an easy save system for taking breaks between chapters, and as the chapters are only about fifteen minutes each, they’re nice and quick to play. It’s a game that is quite simple to break up into shorter play seasons if you prefer, while setting aside an evening to play through the entire game in one setting can also be quite satisfying.

Pros: Component quality, variety between the challenges and plot decks in the different chapters, easy save system

Cons: One chapter really won’t hold up to replay, it gets messy when multiple characters are on a single space

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.