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Following the French atomic bomb tests in the South Pacific, an unknown creature is spotted passing eastward through the Panama Canal. Scientist Niko Tatopolous is called in to investigate the matter, and he quickly arrives at the conclusion that a giant, irradiated lizard has been created by the explosions. Godzilla then makes its way north, landing at Manhattan to begin wreaking havoc in the big city. Even with the combined forces of the U.S. military to fight the monster, will it be enough to save the people of New York?
Ok, so this is the plot of the Godzilla movie, but in Terror in Meeple City, each player is a Godzilla-type monster, rampaging all over the city, destroying buildings, throwing vehicles and trying to eat as many ‘meeple’ as possible. In this game, no-one is really trying to stop you, the people are just scared and waiting for you to cause carnage in their city.
It’s a dexterity game in which you’ll use a few different types of dexterity to try and win the game, including flicking, dropping and even blowing elements of the board and the monster with the diet that scores the most points will win the game.
Terror in Meeple City Gameplay
Terror in Meeple City is a flicking (mostly) game that offers a large variety of ways to knock over the cardboard buildings and feast upon the tasty meeples therein. Each turn you get to take two actions, these can be moving your monster around the board by flicking it’s feet or attempting to throw a car in your area by balancing it on your monster’s head and flicking it.
Should you end up on the pavement next to a building you can pick up your monster and drop them onto the building, or instead you can place your head on top of your monster, take a deep breath and blow as hard as possible.
At the end of each round you will be able to eat up a number of meeples from your section of town, equal to the number of teeth you have left. However if you managed to knock meeples off the board then they have “fled”, at certain numbers of fleeing meeple the monster responsible takes a penalty, should enough meeples flee then the game ends early. At the end of the game you will only score for each complete set of coloured meeple, so the variety that you eat is very important, moving around the map to eat meeple that other players have left exposed is a valid strategy.
Each game you will also be dealt three cards; a role, a power and a secret power. The role gives you a bonus way to score points, perhaps your monster has a particular taste for army men and tourists? The power gives you an ability that lasts the entire game, these can massively change the way you play, keeping the game fresh between plays. Finally the super secret powers are one-use abilities that you only reveal when you want to use them to surprise your opponents.
Amy’s Final Thoughts
Terror in Meeple City is a visually impressive game that goes to show how much board games have evolved. It’s absolutely wonderful to take the role of a Godzilla style creature rampaging through a city, knocking down buildings as you go. Though if you aren’t very good at flicking then you may find instead that you are stumbling around blindly occasionally falling flat on your face for no reason. Either way though with such a physical game you are sure to have fun.
There are some potential balance concerns in the game, some of the powers and roles are noticeably stronger than others which can lead to relatively easy wins. This can be coupled with the occasional frustration of knocking down a building only for the meeple to flee the board en-masse or scatter onto a section of the board ready for your opponents to eat. However even when that happens the game is still a huge amount of fun, in my experience people don’t care that much about who the winner is, it’s about the journey!
Fiona’s Final Thoughts
I first played Terror in Meeple City when visiting Edinburgh for work. I crashed a game group and got into a game of Terror in Meeple City with three strangers. For me, this was the perfect game to break the ice, because everyone had to make a bit of a fool of themselves, and no-one was taking themselves too seriously.
Since we bought our own copy of the game we’ve played it at home with just two players, but also used it extensively to impress new gamers and show them how cool and innovative the newer board games have become. In particular, Terror in Meeple City is our game of choice when there is once player in the group who we know likes to attack other players and generally be quite destructive!
Personally, I’m not very good at Terror in Meeple City, but it’s a light game so there is plenty of fun to be had, even if you’re not winning. There’s definitely some dexterity skill to the game, so if you’re good at other flicking games you’ll be at an advantage. However, you can also play tactically, targeting the scoring opportunities given to you by your special abilities, as well as moving around the board to do the set collection required for end game scoring.
Terror in Meeple City is one of those games that has to be described simply as ‘fun’!
