Customer Reviews

Christmas Story Board Game

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

"A Christmas Story: The Board Game" provides a game board, a 36-card question deck (28 cards with 3 questions on each and an additional 8 "life lessons learned" cards), a 75-card game deck, 6 player tokens, and 6 scoring tokens. In the store where I purchased it for $29.99, it seemed like a good way to remember the excellent movie on which it is based. However, it turned out to be, without question, the biggest disappointment I have had in purchasing games in many, many years.

The best thing about this game is the big, cute picture of Ralphie on the box. Having loved the movie, it was irresistible not to buy this board game, and I feel victimized by a cute picture on a merchandising sham. This is not a game; it's a money maker for someone who could not have ever tested the game to see if it "works." Instead of providing fun, it provides frustration.

The instructions consist of a four-page booklet of the most indecipherable guidance I have ever encountered. Key information on how to proceed is not presented in a logical order. I disliked wading through unnecessarily long sentences of cutesy phrasing throughout the instructions. Example: "The cops and fire department need to come to pry the tongue from the lamp pole. The other kids can't wait around as Christmas loot is on the line." What are passages like that, padding to make the instructions longer?

The leg-lamp tokens provided to move around the board refuse to remain standing. We gave up on using those within the first few minutes of trying to play the game.

There seems to be no real objective to the game and no conventional way to begin it. Having been dealt 7 game cards, players begin to go through areas of Ralphie's neighborhood - his home, the alley, the school, the schoolyard, and the department store. Players move pieces without the aid of dice or spinners. Choosing a card to discard with a number on it and then moving my token is not challenging nor does it provide the element of chance, a key to experiencing luck (winning) or failure (losing).

We tried rereading the instructions numerous times, only to be further frustrated. After clearing off the game tokens and forsaking the use of the game board entirely, we sat around and had a bit of fun reading the questions and answers to each other. It took only a short while to exhaust the small question deck. Unlike many games with hundreds of questions, "A Christmas Story: The Board Game" has only 92 questions. So, for the $30 cost of the game, I figure that worked out to 33 cents per question - too expensive for a tiny deck of question cards I'll go through only one time.

My advice to families that want a fun board game: admire the packaging of this game in the store and leave it there.

This game should be fun but the directions of how to play are so confusing, badly written and organized, and so complicated that it is difficult to teach others how to play. After explaining it you start to sound like Ralphie's Dad battling the furnace.

The game pieces and board are cute. The game looks better on the shelf as a collectors item than as an acutal playable game.

I bought this as a christmas gift for my boyfriend because this is one of his favorite movies of all times! We opened it on Christmas Day to play it and started to read the directions (which is in fact 4 pages) After reading the first page of directions I felt stupid because I wasn't understanding them at all. I looked online to read the reviews to see if maybe we were stupid by not understanding the rules for this game, but it turns out we aren't stupid, the creators of the game were! It seems they didn't even bother test out the rules to make sure they work. Overall, this was a huge disappointment and a waste of $30. Don't bother to purchase this game, enjoy the movie and the memories that you, your friends and family get from A Christmas Story.

I have wanted to purchase this game since last Christmas, but never got around to it. I recently won a gift certificate to a web-store, and decided to use some of it to get the game. I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it.

When I opened the box, I was impressed with the high quality game board and plastic leg lamp tokens. True, it is difficult to keep them standing, but they are nicely detailed. The graphics are nice and bright and the cards feel pretty durable. My joy was lost, however, when I began reading the instructions. It made no sense to me or my Girlfriend. We tried playing once with their rules, but it went nowhere. We quickly decided to ditch the instructions and come up with our own simplified version. So here is how we play:

First off, set aside the colored cardboard tokens. You won't be needing them.

Place the two decks of cards in the center of the game board within reach of all players. Make sure they are shuffled extremely well, or the game will be frustrating. Like the rules say, we let the youngest player go first.

Choose a colored leg lamp token and place it at the top of the board at the number 1 space. This is the space that looks like a Christmas light. The object will be to get around all 60 spaces first while answering questions along the way.

Pick a card from the Christmas ornament shaped deck. The number on the card will be the number of spaces moved if you answer a question correctly. The other player will pick a card for you from the question deck. If there is a picture of a child's toy on your ornament card (the tank, fire engine, decoder pin, etc) you will answer question 1. If there is an adult item (bowling ball, etc) read question 2. If a picture of a kid is on your card, read question 3.

Picking the Pink bunny suit or the Scut Farkas card will result in losing a turn.

Example - On my turn, I pick up an ornament card with a picture of Ralphie and the number 4. The other player then picks a question card and reads me question 3 (because there is a kid on my card). If I answer correctly, I move my leg lamp token around the board 4 spaces. If I answer incorrectly, I don't move. The cards are placed on the bottom of the deck when finished with each turn.

If the other player picks a life lesson card, they hold it and pull the next card. If I answer my question correctly, they then ask the life lesson question. If that is answered correctly, I get to move an extra space. This continues until the first person reaches space 60.

This may sound just as complicated, but it's not. Even with these rules, the questions do repeat quite a bit and game play gets old. It's fun for a while, especially if you ask the other players to imitate the movie characters when answering. There can be many variations on the game play. I am just listing one possible example. So not all is lost, we can get some fun out of this game after all.

This game is cited as being for ages 8 and up... All I can say is a group of honors high school students, honors college students, and adults with college and master's degrees had trouble with this game. We are huge fans of the movie the game is based upon, hence the purchase, but the game's creators have tried to incorporate too much and made the game near impossible to play, let alone score points and win. For visual value, the game looks great and created a lot of conversation. The leg lamp game pieces were problematic, as they tip easily - actually, maybe an 8 year old would not have been bothered by that...

I thought this would be more of a Trivial Pursuit game, but found it to be more like Chutes and Ladders from Hell. The rules of the game are long and tedious, and it took us a bit to even figure out how to move around the board. We tried making up our own rules and even then, everyone lost interest so we packed it up and shoved it into the closet to re-gift next year to someone far more intelligent than we are.

My family loves this movie! We wore out a VHS and we are now working on the DVD, so we were very excited about plying this game on Christmas Eve. There were six of us, the youngest being 17 and so given the box said "8 and up" there should be no problem. WRONG! The instruction were horrible, the game board confusing, the game pieces would not stand up and the results were so bad it was laughable. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME IF YOU PLAN ON PLAYING IT! Seriously the instructions were so bad and the game was so confusing, we spent two hours (six of us) trying to see if we had overlooked the obvious. It is impossible to play and the frustration is too overwhelming. If you bought this and have not yet opened it, take it back. This game should seriously be recalled, because it is not a game.

We LOVE the Christmas Story and were THRILLED to find this trivia game! That said, our experience went downhill once the game was opened. First off...all the characters on the board have 'blurred' out faces with the exception of Ralphie. (is this some sort of copyright infraction)? Next come the horrendously confusing directions!! Do this, do that, go here..or if you dont choose this, dont do that do this instead...blah blah blah. Our heads were spinning trying to decipher what kind of game play this would be like if we followed this nonsense!! We opted for our own version....which involved picking the cards...deciding which dare we chose, and then based on that choice, we would move the number on the dice as they were for a single dare, we would double the amount moved for a double dog dare, and we would triple the amount for a triple dog dare! If you didnt answer correctly...of course you went nowhere on a single dare, but if you didnt answer correctly on the double or triple...you moved backwards that number of spaces. We used the flat tokens to advance...and the leg lamps would be our foolish reward if we made it to the end. No one did! We set a one hour game play and werent even close to finishing. Some of the questions are quite tough...but it was entertaining. I just wish the original directions were as exciting as the game looked!

For a family that loves games and the moving this game was a huge buzz kill! We never got through the direction to figure out what the heck we ere even supposed to do. It is a great idea, but horribly done.

This game is the worst I have seen in years. The FOUR PAGE instructions are on 8.5 x 11 paper. We gave up on the game AND the game pieces that would not stand up. We ended up just moving the pieces around the board asking each other trivia. We are going to use the board and print out our own trivia questions. It will be a better game. They should have had REAL Christmas Story Lovers to come up this game....