Christmas, 1984. Gremlins. History says it may well be the best holiday-horror-comedy ever made, and it messed with the heads of soooooo many kids. Myself included. Joe Dante’s Corman-honed style with Speilburg’s stamp on it, written by Chris Columbus, the film literally changed the world of Hollywood as a major reason behind the introduction of the PG-13 rating.
Despite its success, it’s an IP that has never been fully realized in a tabletop game, with very few attempts even made. Since Funko has a licence to Gizmo and “friends” it was not surprising that it would be Funko Games to release the first Gremlins game in a decade. (As a side note, there is an animated prequel series coming soon from HBO Max, so I suspect there will be more games coming.)
The game is an enjoyable improvement on the typical card-slapping reaction game, which is a genre I don’t particularly love. Each player chooses a location card to place in front of them. The 60 card deck is then shuffled and distributed evenly between all the players. One at a time, starting with the youngest player (Funko’s first player determiner of choice), each player reveals their top card, flipping it onto their own location. If there are two matching Gremlins showing, the first two players to slap their hand onto one of them takes all the cards at that location. If the revealed Gremlin matches the one below it, the player who first slaps that pile gets all the cards in it.
There are a few special cards involved in the game. There are Multiply cards (featuring the garden fountain from Spike’s last stand in the movie), which force a player to flip another three cards that follow the same slapping rules. Gizmo has his own card (of course) which awards the first player to slap a different location all of the cards there. Gizmo, and all cards at his location, are then removed from the game. The final special card is the Sunrise card. The first time the Sunrise card is revealed the first player to slap it get that pile of cards, including the Sunrise. The Second time it is revealed and slapped, the game ends. The player with the most cards, wins.
I don’t think I can exaggerate how much I appreciate the way some of these mechanics differ from similar games. Fliping cards one at a time slows the game down and makes it much more accessible. The fact that for most slapping it is the first two players slapping two different piles reduces the times I get my hand slapped, and again makes the game less frustrating for many players.
The artwork is a bit darker and creepier than the movie, which has always been criticized for being too dark and creepy (and violent) for kids. I also have a completely cosmetic issue: the location cards are also much darker than the movie. One of my absolute favourite things about the original Gremlins movie is the lighting. If you’ve ever watched Riverdale, it has a similar feeling, being full of highly saturated colour. The locations here just… aren’t.
This is one of the better games I’ve played in this genre, for sure. But I didn’t love it. Not unlike the movie, I’m not certain Holiday Havoc hits its mark for a game labelled ages 8 and up and it definitely misses the mark as a holiday game. I won’t go as far as to say it misses the mark as a Gremlins game, but only because of the type of game it is intended to be.
If you go into Gremlins: Holiday Havoc with appropriate expectations, this is a fine game. I just didn’t feel the proper expectations are necessarily set by the packaging or marketing of it.
You can find Funko Games, online at funkogames.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/funkogames.
Don’t forget you can read all of our current and past holiday reviews at TheRatHole.ca/Christmas!
In yet another case of ending our holiday reviews with an obvious choice of music, today we present a fan-made video of ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’ by Darlene Love which was featured prominently in the original Gremlins movie.