Thoughts on… Frankenstein’s Bodies

Our copy of Frankenstein’s Bodies was kindly provided to us by the publishers Yay Games. You can find their games at their website here. Don’t worry, we thoroughly disinfected the game before playing.


 

It is a dark and stormy night. Lightening flashes illuminate the room in which I feverishly work, hunched over my ancient wooden lab bench. It has been long in its creation but the moment is finally here! I throw back my head and laugh – “It’s alive! ALIIIIIIVE!”

 But that’s enough about how Creaking Shelves got started, I want to talk about a game called Frankenstein’s Bodies, from UK publishers Yay Games. Or to give it its full title, “Frankenstein’s Bodies: Dark Harvest: The Legacy of Frankenstein”. A title as bloated as the last cadaver we pulled from the canal – ahem, I mean, let’s just stick with “Frankenstein’s Bodies” hey?

So if you’re here you must be wondering whether you’ve got what it takes to be the good doctor’s latest assistant! Well I hope your needlework is up to scratch; else you might find out where the daily delivery of body parts comes from…

Frankensteins Bodies Player Lab

You’ll be building bodies, of course, from the freshly obtained parts that arrive on a suspiciously regular basis. You have a lab, with space for two bodies, and a regular stream of cards coming your way. Place the body parts on your benches, and do try and make them match. As funny as a random set of male/female bits mixed together are, they aren’t going to score you many points with Dr. Frankenstein! And you also want each body part to be using the same delicious candy-cane coloured serums to reanimate the parts. Get it right and you’ll score big points! Get it wrong and, well, you’ll probably get it wrong.

See, only one player can be top, and everyone else will be doing everything they can to screw up your plans. The body part cards may be the game’s central element, but there are half a dozen other types of card that turn the game from a simple set collecting game into a blood splattered explosion of interaction and recriminations.

Frankensteins Bodies Cards 2

Surgery cards let you steal body parts from other people, grabbing them from their bench and dragging them across the mud slicked courtyards of the castle to another lab. Sadly this will likely lead to an infection, making the body part worthless until it can be cleaned with a little bit of Carbolic Spray. Or maybe you’ve been really cunning and placed a Master Surgeon into position ready to receive the part. That’ll stop the infection from occurring, and better yet stops other players from stealing the parts they are working on. Yes these dedicated acolytes of Frankenstein care not for your political squabbling, interested only in the artistry their craft.

Seeing the hand of a master surgeon at work on a body part will also boost its score! Unfortunately, they tend not to stick around too long. While engrossed in the sculpting of dead flesh, they still obey orders to move around, ever excited to start work on the next project. And there are plenty of these Master Surgeon stealing cards in the deck. If there are any good things in this game, you can be sure your opponents are planning on stealing it!

Frankensteins Bodies cards 1

If you’re feeling brave, you can apply some freshening “body quality” ointments to your body parts to make them even more high scoring, though you may as well be painting a target on them. Fortunately, you can catch your opponent’s in the act and stop them with one of the Deflect cards. But in a wonderfully sick twist, these aren’t just blocks as you would expect to find in other games, these let the victim move the attack on to a different opponent! “You’re not having my leg! But why not have Jim’s?” Though chose your target carefully because they could deflect it right back at you!

To say this game is heavy on the player interaction would be doing it a disservice. There isn’t a turn goes by where you’re not eyeing up parts on your opponent’s benches, or those exceedingly useful Master Surgeons, or at the very least how you can break those neat sets your opponent is building. Because with a rule that is breath-taking in its Machiavellian cunning, you can place body parts on any bench where they’ll fit. So sometimes you don’t just want to steal parts that fit your sets, but random parts that disrupt your opponent’s sets. That extra bit of infection they get is merely a bonus! Or if you’re feeling especially cunning you can donate parts to other players that your opponent desperately wants, gently steering them on to a collision course. The game might start off gently enough, but before long you’ll be running around the castle moving body parts and master surgeons around like some demented game of musical chairs.

If the thought of this has you cackling with malicious glee and drawing odd looks from your co-workers, family or table of body parts then you’re in for a treat! Frankenstein’s Bodies is easy to teach, easy to play and oh my God I’ve not even mentioned the best thing about the scoring yet!

Frankensteins Bodies game

I’ve mentioned lots of things that get you points in this game, body parts, master surgeons, quality tokens, but you only get to collect them during two scoring rounds in the game. One at the end, and one when you want to! At the end of any of your turns, before the deck runs out the first time, you can bank points before your opponents can cause more havoc. I really like this mechanism, turning scoring points into a push-your-luck mini game in its own right and gives you a series of terrible decisions each turn through the first half of the game. Saying “No, I won’t score…” will have you hiding under the lab bench and praying your friends forget about you for a round, not that they ever will. I always bank points too early!

Since this first scoring round doesn’t count the set bonuses for your bodies, just the number of parts and Master Surgeons in play, it also offers an interesting choice in strategies. Do you spam body parts (meat jokes not withstanding) to get the biggest opening score and hope to sort them into sets later? Or do you start building that perfect body right from the get-go? Amazingly both approaches seem extremely well balanced. In one game we played, I had carefully constructed an entirely blue male body, with a few leftover bits on the other bench, while my opponent, Alex, had gone meat spam, and trying to cobble together some rudimentary sets in the process. We had a single point between us at the end of the game!

Frankensteins Bodies hand

The game plays best with 3-5, there becomes a little too much down time with larger player counts and at 2 players you lose that multi-directional element to the player interaction. We found there were just too many block cards available at 2 player (though you are free to manipulate the deck as you see fit) and the head-to-head nature of it was lacking a big part of the fun. The component quality is ok but there are some obvious shortcuts taken, like tokens with only one printed side. A final issue for some players is the obvious potential for bullying, inherent to any take-that style game. If you’re caught out with no blocks your opponents will swarm you like a pack of hyenas, stripping you of your best body parts and taking that on the chin when you’re not in the lead to begin with can be tough. These systems work best when players gang up on the leader, rather than exploit the weak, but it’s not always obvious which player is which. That’s not exactly a fault with the game, just something to bear in mind when considering the group you play with!

Frankensteins Bodies cards 3

Frankenstein’s Bodies might seem merely reactionary at first glance, with its emphasis on take-that style mechanisms, but there is plenty of scope for planning clever moves too. And you’ll have to if you’re going to steal that perfect leg from your opponent. Just don’t wait too long because before you know it the game is ending and everyone is desperately putting those last minute plans into action, body parts and bone saws flying about. Like you’re tidying up the house after a party but you’ve just spotted your parents pulling up on the drive. Just with few – aha! I mean – more corpses.

As you stand up from this game smeared in blood, mud and serums and smelling faintly of Carbolic Spray (except for Chris who had spent a bit too long rooting around in the body pit) you’ll see that Frankenstein’s penchant for bringing things to life applies to board games too.

 

Rating: Body Quality +3

 

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