Vampires Vs. Unicorns Review – Great Art on this Indie Title

Disclaimer: Vampires vs Unicorns was provided for free by Yumfactory, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Vampires vs Unicorns takes board gaming to the floor. In a game not too dissimilar to Beer Pong. It starts with each player placing seven-floor tiles in a pyramid configuration at their feet. Representing their castle, and palisades.

Then each player gets a deck of 48 cards matching their faction. From there, they take turns pretending to be Gambit. Throwing cards, and trying to land them on any part of the opponent’s base.

Your tile is damaged if any part of the opposing player’s card lands on it. You represent this by flipping the tile over. When your tile takes two damage you remove that tile completely.

The exception to these rules is your Castle Tile. This requires a card to land perfectly on top of it to damage it. Unless the opponent destroys all of your other tiles. In this case, your castle works the same as all the rest of the tiles.

Cards are thrown back and forth until one player’s castle is destroyed, or one player runs out of cards. The player with the surviving castle or cards remaining is the winner.

Just look at it!

If you enjoy surreal art you’re in for a treat, as visually Vampires vs Unicorns is stunning. The vampires look like they belong in a Shaun Tan book, while the unicorns look like they’re straight out of Adventure Time. You’ll find this same awesome, but weird, art throughout the cards, game box, rulebook, and even card boxes!

However, once you start playing you quickly realise there’s not much game here. It’s a jock’s party game like Flip Cup and Beer Pong. Where the fun comes from partying, rather than the calm collectedness of board games like So Clover!

The simplicity of the game lends itself to this forum. It’s missing any and all of the design improvements made over the last couple of decades of board gaming.

The special cards aren’t that special, as they mainly boil down to throwing a couple of extra cards. The decks of cards are too large, so there’s no threat of running out. Meanwhile, bending over so many times caused my back to ache after extended playing. Mind you, a much younger and drunker me might not have the same issue.

Nothing can save this game

The only thing that captured my interest about the design was how the cards damaged themselves after a couple of plays. Whether intentional or not, the small bends and creases made in the cards caused them to move differently when thrown. Adding an extra dimension of puzzling out the flight path of the card.

But that’s not enough to save Vampires vs Unicorns. Not by a long shot. By our second game, we were making our own fun. Throwing cards with our non-dominant hands, or making up and performing trick shots. We had more fun doing that, than playing the game put in front of us.

While it might find an audience with kids, churchgoers, and anyone whose last game played was Monopoly. Anyone, who’s reading this website, or played a modern board game will walk away wondering why they wasted their time.