Chairman of the Board: Avoid the Arena

‘Assassin’s Creed: Arena’ game review

By Ed Appleby, Illustrator

Licensed games are often duds because it’s hard to incorporate the narrative and excitement of other mediums into a board game without making the rules overly complicated. Assassin’s Creed: Arena avoids this problem by making the rules so simple that the game is just plain boring.

Assassin’s Creed: Arena is a board game for 2–4 players designed by Matt Hyra and published by Cryptozoic Entertainment in 2014. Players play as one of four different assassins, and attempt to be the first to gather 15 victory points by assassinating targets in a city without being spotted and taken down by guards.

The game world supposedly takes place inside the Animus, a virtual reality system from the Assassin’s Creed mythos that utilizes the Assassin’s blood to create interactive simulations of the past. This board game about a virtual reality system in a video game makes for an overly complicated world, because you have to deal with both a historical environment as well as game glitches.

The game plays very fast. The first playing took only about 20 minutes, and was over way too quickly. I found I spent more time clarifying the rules than actually playing the game. A lot of the mechanics of the game felt novel but highly rushed, and there was almost no similarity to the video game. The whole experience felt like it was rushed out and could have spent more time being play-tested.

I wouldn’t recommend the game for anyone. Those familiar with the Assassin’s Creed world will find the game a pale imitation of the real thing, and those not familiar with the source material will just be confused. The game itself is just okay at best, and certainly doesn’t justify the $50 price tag.