‘Home Alone’ board game review
By Ed Appleby, Illustrator
’Tis the season to grab your holiday board games, although I find there is a desperate lack of Christmas board games out there. They are quite rare, and when you find one from a licenced property then you are in for a treat, like last year’s fruitcake.
Home Alone is a spin-and-move game for 2–4 players published by THQ in 1991. In the game, players lay out coloured cardboard squares around the house with either valuables or traps, then players take turns controlling one of the two thieves exploring the house. Each player has a kid token in their colour, and once that square is found a kid playing piece is added to the board. The game ends when one of the thieves catches one of the kids. The winner is the player with the highest combination of their traps and other players’ valuables.
When revealed, the kid moves a lot faster than the thieves, and can use various secret passages throughout the house to move even quicker. This makes the endgame more drawn out than it should be. This can lead to a lot of ties because it gives the thieves a lot of time to explore and by the end all of the cardboard tokens have been collected.
This game holds a lot of nostalgia for me: it was a game I used to play with my brothers when I was young, especially around Christmas. The game itself is far from stellar, with an extremely basic gameplay and a drawn-out endgame. Also, I hate spinners, so if you have a four-sided dice to use instead, do so!
I would only recommend the game for younger players. It offers a light and simple introduction to a more complex style of gameplay. Maybe a quick game after watching the holiday classic with some younger relatives.
