A few months back, there was a Kickstarter was launched for a Ghostbusters board game, featuring art and writing from the IDW Ghostbuster team of Dan Schoening and Erik Burnham. Of course, I Kickstarted it. Luckily, before my copy arrived at my home, Cryptozoic offered to give us a demo of the upcoming game and learn all the rules.

First and foremost, the thing the game had going for it was that there's a lot of potential for a lot of different types of scenarios to keep the game fresh. We played a scenario where Slimer is headed around the map and the Ghostbusters have to close gates/portals around the map before Slimer can collect all the slime. There's a story to said scenario, but by the end of the day, I just wanted to see what the gameplay was like.

In the past few years, we've seen a few boardgames that have a comic book franchise stamped onto, with CHEW: Cases of the FDA being one of the most recent. I say "stamped on" because while they may be fun to play, it really feels stamped on, like there's nothing pulling the player into the world. That's different with Ghostbusters. Much like the comic and film, these characters have to work together to accomplish their goals and each one has abilities based around their personalities. There's ghosts here from the comic with abilities from the comic. What I'm getting at is that this feels like Ghostbusters as a board game.

Stantz player card. It may be hard to see, but he's the "healer" of the group and can unslime people.

One of the noticeable things about the demo is the genius in its simplicity. Tabletop gaming ranges from games that are so simple they become no fun to play, to games so complex that it takes hours to learn. Ghostbusters doesn't feel as complex. Gameplay was relatively simple to learn, but complex enough to keep my attention.

However, there were some moments where either something wasn't completely explained (it was the final 30 minutes of the show and everyone was pretty tired at this point, so things may have been skipped on accident) or there seemed like too much to remember. There's also a lot going on in the game we played. Ghosts move depending on if you shoot them, Slimer moves, the team moves, the Ecto-1 moves, gates can shoot out ghosts, ghosts can slime you, and so on and so on. Ghosts can come from the ghost world, but you send them there after shooting them. It's a lot to keep track of in that scenario and some of it is confusing.

However, this isn't a full-scale review, just the demo I received. There's still a lot more to learn about the game and the gameplay. One thing we can easily say is that the game pieces look awesome. As you can see above, there are tons of different models, including the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man and Slimer, among other fan favorites. What I really liked is that the ghosts a tad transparent, so the light flows through them, giving them a "ghostly" visage. The player models, which include ALL the Ghostbusters, not just the original four (although I think those are Kickstarter exclusive) look really nice.

The demo just made me want to play more, but alas, after 40 minutes, the hall closed and I was kicked out. Thank you to the folks at Cryptozoic for giving us an early look at the game. Ghostbusters should be available in the upcoming months in comic shops and retail. Look for a full review of the game around that time.