Quick Look: Darkridge Reunion
Publisher: Starlux Games
Year Published: 2021
No. of Players: 6-12
Ages: 13+
Playing Time: 60-90 minutes.
From the Publisher:
It’s Jocks vs. Geeks vs. Rebels in this live action game that’s part murder mystery, part survival game and entirely devious.
Darkridge Reunion is a dynamic whodunnit party game played over three rounds. Each player is given a role (jock, geek, or rebel) and are attending a high school reunion.
Players will use social deduction and clues to find who is on which team but more importantly who is the slasher.
Each player is given a secret mission and an artifact.
Disclaimer: The publisher provided the prototype copy of Darkridge Reunion. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.
Review:
I am sorry to say, this but we really tried to enjoy this game. I love social deduction games and the concept is interesting and literally cloak and dagger. However, the game leans the furthest into high school stereotypes of anything I have seen. The characters have almost no depth and the secret missions are very easy to guess. I have a hard time imagining the proper group to play this. It would likely have to be a group of high school drama students that love role playing melodramatic roles, but ones that are either dissociative enough to ignore their own high school terrors or that can’t actually relate because their experience wasn’t nearly so bad.
This game breaks everyone into three teams, the jocks, geeks, and outcasts. Each group has a variety of super stereotyped persons and goals (Like a jock getting points for getting people to call him bro etc). The goals are not achievable unless you are alone with someone so you spend most of your time trying to break off, but if you have more than 6 people in the group it is hard to find a room without 3 people in it so it becomes an awkward shuffle trying to avoid most of the people whether they are a killer or not.
This is not to say that there are no redeeming characteristics. I got to play as an undercover investigative journalist and take pictures of others doing suspicious things (Like getting pictures of the “Creeper” getting pictures of others around corners 🙂 ).
All in all, if you have the perfect group for this it would likely be at least on par with a decent murder mystery dinner or something otherwise it is just a bunch of cringey Highschool overdramatics that most people didn’t enjoy even in high school let alone wish to relive.
We definitely will not choose to stock the game, but our store is more family friendly games focused even for our horror selection and this is not a good fit for the scope. I would not ask to play again, though I would likely give it another try if a group that all wanted to try it were to form.
After reading The Arcanist’s Armory LLC’s review, if this sounds like a game for you at the time of this posting Darkridge Reunion is available on Amazon. check it out and get it HERE.
Find out more at BGG.
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The Arcanist’s Armory LLC- Reviewer
The Arcanist’s Armory LLC has recently begun to review board games. They love supporting small creators as they also run several custom dice and game projects and empathize well with other small creators. Sharik Peck, the owner, has a master’s degree in Financial Economics and a JD (law degree). He works as an attorney full time and runs the gamestore on the side. They specialize in family friendly games and their reviews will make sure to give suggestions for how to play the games with your families.
All of their reviews can be found HERE.
