Help the Toy Story gang!
I’m a big Toy Story fan.
I was blown away with the animation in the first Toy Story movie in 1995 and have loved every one since. So when Disney and Pixar released Toy Story 4 last summer, it didn’t matter if my kids weren’t young anymore. I was going to see it!
And as soon as it hit Disney+ this year, I was ready to see it again.
But Toy Story 4 wasn’t the only cool Toy Story release last year. The OP also released a new Toy Story cooperative board game — Toy Story Obstacles and Adventures!
With as much as I like Toy Story. And as much as we enjoy cooperative board games. I had high hopes diving into the game.
And I won’t make you wait until later for the surprise — it delivers the fun!
Check it out…
How to play Toy Story Obstacles and Adventures
Toy Story Obstacles and Adventures is a cooperative deck-building board game. Which first of all means that all players are working together to win the game. And secondly, it means the central mechanic in the game is deck-building.
But there’s even a little bit more. Players will also play through a number of adventures along the way that coincide well with the 4 movies.
If you’ve seen our review of Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle (also by The OP), this board game will sound very familiar to you. And that’s for good reason, because the gameplay is essentially the same.
Set Up
The first thing players do when they open the game for the first time is open the Adventure 1 box. This includes the initial set of cards to play the game. As players successfully overcome the obstacles (dangers and hazards) to win, they’ll open the next Adventure box and so on.
At the start of each game, players will select a Toy Story character and take that character’s starting deck of 10 cards. They’ll also set out the Adventure Card deck with the top 6 cards placed face up on the right side of the game board.
Then they’ll shuffle and set out the Danger Cards and Hazard cards (with “Escape from Sid” card at the bottom). The top card of the Hazard card is drawn and placed face up at the bottom of the board. This is what players are trying to overcome. In the first Adventure, only one Hazard will be face up at a time. But over the course of more adventures, more will be faced at once.
Lastly, the Adventure Track for that Adventure is placed at the top of the board and the Token is placed on the Start space.
The objective is to defeat all the Hazards before the Token advances to the end of the Adventure Track.
Playing
A player’s turn is made up of four steps:
1. Reveal and Resolve Dangers
The active player draws a number of Danger cards as indicated by the space the Token is at on the Adventure Track. In the first Adventure, this is just 1 card. But that will increase in later Adventures.
The effects of these cards won’t be good. They’ll involve losing health, losing cards, advancing the Adventure Token and such.
2. Resolve Hazard Effects
The face up Hazard cards have ongoing effects that take effect at this stage. Some will happen every turn and others may be triggered by different events. Either way, as long as there are Hazards in play, more bad things will happen.
3. Play Adventure Cards
This is the active stage of a player’s turn. Players will typically start a turn with 5 cards in their hand. They play cards from their hand to gain the effect written on the cards. This will typically include gaining Insight (Pixar lamp) and Imagination (Pixar ball) tokens.
There are spaces on a player’s board to place these tokens as they gain them. After they’ve gained the tokens, they immediately use them.
Insight tokens are used to fight the Hazards. The active player places their Insight tokens below the face up Hazard of their choice. Once there is an equal amount of Insight tokens next to a Hazard card to match the number at the bottom of the card, that Hazard is defeated. Players claim the reward indicated at the bottom of the Hazard card and then the card is discarded.
Imagination tokens are spent to purchase additional face up Adventure cards to add to their growing deck. The cost is shown in the bottom right of each card. All used and purchased cards are then placed in the player’s personal discard pile.
4. End of Turn
Any defeated Hazard cards are replaced with the next card from the Hazard deck. And any empty spaces near the Adventure deck are refilled with cards from the Adventure deck.
If they active player has any unused tokens on their player board, they’re also discarded.
Then the player draws a new hand of 5 cards (to ready for their next turn) and play proceeds to the player on their left.
Game End
There are a couple of ways the game can end.
If the players overcome all the Hazards, they win! Players celebrate their victory and progress to the next Adventure in their next game.
If the Adventure Token reaches the end of the track before the players can defeat all the Hazards, they lose. In this case, their next game will be replaying this adventure again.
Can the whole family enjoy Toy Story Obstacles and Adventures?
Toy Story Obstacles and Adventures is a fantastic game for the whole family!
It has characters the whole family can enjoy playing and the gameplay is straightforward. Plus, it’s cooperative!
The only element you need to worry about is kids being able to read and understand their hand of cards. But that’s also the beauty of it being cooperative. If players want, they can all play with their hand of cards showing. And parents can easily read the cards for their kids if they really need to.
Since the characters have a Health track, characters will take damage and may lose all their health. The good news is that there isn’t any player elimination.
When a toy character’s health meter reaches 0, they get “shelved”.
When “shelved”, that player discards all the tokens on their board and discards half their cards. The Adventure Token is advanced once space. At the end of the active player’s turn, this toy is “repaired” and the player resets their health to 10.
Experienced players of deck-building games may not feel the need to collect tokens for each item listed on their cards when they play them. Instead, they may just add up their icons and know how much they have to spend to buy cards. But they will still need to place Insight tokens next to Hazard cards because those will typically require multiple players to contribute to defeating them.
Also, players can also be rewarded with tokens when it’s not their turn. Those are good to add to your player board because those will add to what you’ll play from your hand on your turn.
The comparison to Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle is a strong one. Because these two games really do share the same game mechanics. They’re both cooperative deck-building with dangers, hazards, and cards to grow their deck.
The big difference is the theme. And that can make a big difference in which game will best fit your family.
The art difference is night and day. The Harry Potter card art and theme is dark for a young family. Whereas the Toy Story card art and theme is light and cartoonish. (Just like the movies.)
Also, in the Harry Potter game, players add tokens to location cards. And when all the locations are corrupted, the players lose. Whereas, in the Toy Story game, a token is moved along the Adventure track to denoted how well they’re doing.
This Adventure Track is very fitting for a game targeted at younger kids because they can always see how far along the track the group is. It’s a nice visual for a countdown timer.
We also love that each Adventure has its own themed track. For example, in the first Adventure, it represents Andy’s family moving. In the second Adventure, the token is an airplane and the route is to the airport. (We won’t spoil what comes next…)
And of course, we love the various Adventure cards in the game. It’s fun to see so many alien toys and army men along with other items from the movies. And within every Adventure box is a new bunch of cards to add to the game.
So by the end of 6 adventures, you’ll have added every card to the game.
One nice thing about the cards is that they also have a number showing which box they were included in. That’s not because you have to put them back in those boxes. But rather, if you want to roll back the clock and only play with cards from a certain adventure, you could.
But most likely, once you play through all the adventures, you’ll want to keep playing with everything!
And the game comes with handy divider cards to keep everything well organized outside of the Adventure boxes.
I could write more about the cool things about Toy Story Obstacles and Adventures, but I don’t think I need to. By now you’ve probably figured out if this game will be a good fit for your family.
It’s a fun family cooperative board game with a family-friendly theme that almost everyone will be familiar with.
How does Toy Story Obstacles and Adventures score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?
As you might guess, Toy Story Obstacles and Adventures scores high on our “let’s play again” game meter.
The very nature of having separate adventures that coincide with the Toy Story movies draws us in to playing again and again. The first couple of adventures were pretty easy for us to beat. But that’s not the same for later adventures.
A lot will depend on the Adventure cards you’re able to add to your decks and which different Hazards and Danger cards surface. But that’s the fun of the game — having a challenge to face. So even when we have to take on an adventure again, we don’t mind at all.
And the best part though is that the game is still fun to play even after the final adventure box has been opened and won.
