Critical Role Codenames is a far better board game than it has any right to be

Codenames: Critical Role Adventures is a wonderful board game, but it faces one hell of an uphill battle. Step one: convince the world they don’t need to like Critical Role to play. Step two: convince the world to buy a less replayable version of a game they already love that also costs more money. Step three: profit???

It’s a tough sell, especially when many will take one glance at the box and write it off as a cash grab. Perhaps it is a cash grab (yay, capitalism!), but designers Vlaada Chvátil and Felix Podlesny have still given it their all. This is an excellent evolution of Chvátil’s original Codenames formula.

It’s inventive and exciting, and it mostly manages to avoid spoiling the original’s simplicity. If you’re a Codenames addict, it’s a must-have – whether you care about Critical Role or not.

Basically, this is a co-op Codenames campaign. If you know anything at all about Dungeons and Dragons, you can picture it already. Three adventurers must work together to complete quests, grab loot, and advance the story of their adventure. You might even get to roll a D20.

Critical Role Codenames can accommodate much larger player counts (or even smaller), but you always use three characters from Critical Role canon. Each comes with a character sheet and a unique power. Grog the beefy Barbarian gets extra modifiers on D20 rolls if he’s taken damage. Dorian the Bard can use songs to prevent damage and farm XP. Fresh Cut Grass…blows up if he gets too stressed?

I’ve used a lot of terms there that make sense in a D&D game, but not in Codenames. So how does this work, exactly?

You still have your word cards in rows and columns. Instead of Spymasters, you have a single Dungeon Master, who gives one-word, one-number clues as usual. When you think you know what they’re getting at, you place a character’s standee on the word of your choice.

If the guess was correct, there are two possible outcomes. The DM might place a gold token on top of the word. Congrats! Your guess was right, and you get an XP token as a reward. Generally, you need to discover a specific number of gold tiles to complete a scenario (though the game’s three campaigns often bend these rules for variety).

Alternatively, you might discover a Blue token. These are still correct guesses, but they trigger an effect specific to the scenario. They’re usually beneficial (though, again, some scenarios experiment). You might pick up money to spend on magic items in a store, or you might earn an extra hint from the DM.

Things can go wrong in plenty of ways, however. Grey and red tokens deal damage to a character, and you fail the mission if someone loses all their HP.

Red tokens also act as timers that count down to mission failure. When you get a wrong answer or choose to stop guessing, the DM places a red token on your grid before a new round begins. Run out of red tokens, and it’s game over.

Plus, the dreaded assassin remains in play. This still acts as an insta-death, but Critical Role Codenames gives it a new role, too. As you advance through a campaign’s scenarios, you’ll encounter boss fights that require you to discover the assassin after meeting your usual guessing goals. It’s a thematic and interesting spin on an infamous mechanic.

Critical Role Codenames keeps on innovating by changing things up from scenario to scenario. Win conditions change, and special rules come into play. The actual narrative of the three campaigns is barely there, but I’ll forgive Czech Games Edition for not giving Matt-Mercer-worthy descriptions. The campaigns’ maps and prologues are all just set dressing – pleasing, but not necessary to enjoy the game.

The campaign structure of this game does hamper its replayability, of course. The original Codenames can be played endlessly. Each of these campaigns does offer branching paths, so there’s some reason to return and replay, but you don’t miss much by sticking to a single path. All roads on the map lead to the same outcome, story-wise.

It’s also worth mentioning the increase in difficulty. Some of these scenarios are absolutely brutal. Without spoiling anything, there are one or two where you should expect to fail repeatedly – the clues and time you get are that sparse.

The word cards up this difficulty further. While CGE has saved its most specific Easter Eggs for the Vox Machina expansion, there are still some words here that make no sense outside a Critical Role context.

What kind of clues would you give for ‘Exandria’, ‘Plainscow’, ‘Briarwood’, and ‘Earthbreaker’? What the hell is an Unseen Servant, or a Red Moon? What is ‘The List’ referring to? Even if you do get these references, they’re tough to chain to other, more generic words with a single clue.

Okay, so this game isn’t perfect for a non-Critter. Those words are easily removed, though, and the rest of the game is easygoing and accessible. It’s an enjoyable take on a new classic, even if it won’t please everyone.

Want to hear more about the best board games coming out this year? Check out our dedicated guide, or keep up with my reviews in the Wargamer Discord.

A review copy of this game was provided by the publisher.

Source: Wargamer