Laurence King Publishing The Shakespeare Game: Make Your Fortune in Shakespeare's London: an Immersive Board Game

Recipient was very pleased

We enjoyed this game as a family. I realised afterwards I learned a lot too.I think this would also be appropriate for high school students. My wife is as an English teacher and is intending to take it into her school as an additional learning resource for her Shakespeare classes.

As other reviews indicate, what you think of this game probably depends on why you are buying it. If you are looking for a stand alone game with innovative gameplay, look elsewhere. If you are looking for a way to make Shakespeare more fun and memorable for children learning it at school, it's excellent. We enjoyed hamming up the acting. My children enjoyed stabbing their playwright opponents in the back (metaphorically!). They are now more familiar with some Shakespeare plays. Everyone is happy.

Ordered this as a brand new item but it is damaged and clearly a previous return. This was a meant to be a gift missing some of the card which were also open inside the damaged box.

If you are all massive Shakespeare fans you may find the extension tasks make this worth it. If you know no Shakespeare you can ignore the tasks. Reading quotations on the cards and/or the info in the booklet could help you build knowledge, but it feels more either you have or haven't got it and isn't the most obvious or intuitive learning experience.The game play itself doesn't rely on Shakesperian knowledge at all. It requires collecting and playing sets of cards as you move round a (very attractive) board of Elizabethan London. There are two ways to win - gain £120 or gain £70 plus six plays at the Globe. £120 seems a much easier route but it feels like aiming for the Globe is a more satisfying conclusion. We may try playing only the Globe route is a win to see if that works better. A lot comes down to luck of the cards.Overall the game isn't compelling enough. I expect we'll play it a few times more and then donate it onwards.The design is very attractive. We have a 1000 piece Shakespeare puzzle in a very similar style which is what sucked me in.

My first impression is that this is a high-quality and well-designed game – the board is appealingly illustrated by Adam Simpson (also responsible for at least some of the gorgeous jigsaws from the same publisher). We have Shakespeare’s London centre-stage, with a host of theatres and other locations (for example, the Bear Pit, Shakespeare’s Rooms, The Tower of London) that form the spaces on the board to move around.The playing pieces and cards are also well-made, although I wished a bit that some of the tokens weren’t so tiny – this is definitely one to keep well away from small children if you want to retain all the bits. All the playing pieces are cardboard – great from a sustainability perspective, but I’m not sure how long they will stay pristine.The rule book directs you to a short video to explain game play…but I’m impatient so we just got on with it! I did check out the video later but I don’t think we went too far astray without it.Essentially, players have to choose an entry into Shakespeare’s London (e.g. seek a patron, be a schoolmaster, be caught poaching and flee town – all very authentic options for a young Shakespeare). Once you get into the big city, you move around collecting Performance Cards which allow you to stage plays. The number of cards, venues and whether you’re the first to use that theatre all equate to different levels of profit. Winners need to make £120 or stage a (tricky to co-ordinate) 7-card performance so that they can retire happily to New Place in the footsteps of the great man himself.The game is recommended for 2-5 players from the age of 8 upwards. There is a kind of additional level of Shakespeare-geekery in the shape of Fortune Cards which have some tasks included – depending on your fellow players’ levels of Shakespeare knowledge, you can adjust these, give hints or dispense of the tasks altogether. I played with one other adult (not a Shakespeare fan), a 14 and an 11 year old – so we skipped the tasks.Once we got going, everyone enjoyed the game – there are some fun frustrations with Fortune Cards and the fiendish rule about how many cards you can hold at one time. There’s definitely a strategy to this – but I didn’t master it and my 14 year-old won hands down. Repeatedly.This is definitely a game we’ll come back to again and again – my kids both have asked to play it again since the first (epic) session. I’m still no closer to working out the winning strategy, sadly.It’s worth mentioning that the rule book has some really interesting information in it – there’s a kind of beginner’s guide to the locations, themes and plays included which, while not needed to play the game, are a welcome addition.This would make a great present for any Shakespeare fan – and they won’t have to find other Shakespeare aficionados to play with as it is very accessible. Highly recommended, even if you will end up falling out with family members who have beaten you to the Ophelia card or cut your performance takings for all comedies!