From the Vault: 13 Dead End Drive
Death to Preconceived Notions
This is the final blog in my “From the Vault” series. That means everything from here on out will be completely original. No reposting from my old blog anymore.
That means I have a bit more work to do for this site than normal. I like releasing something every week, but that cadence might become more difficult to manage in the coming months.
I don’t know, I’m not beholden to any schedule or anything like that so we’ll see how this place continues to develop. As always, thanks for being a subscriber, and if you aren’t consider it!
I am working g on something that has a bit of meat to it so expect that in the coming weeks! The move has been delayed a bit so we’ll see how things land!
I liked this piece because it was one of the first times I played a game and immediately thought I had to write about it. It was almost compulsive and that’s because the game really surprised me!
This was released on June 18th, 2024 on my first blog.
When my wife was a kid she would play a board game that took place within a house chock-full of traps and levers. For the longest time, she didn’t know what it was called. It was a distant memory to her clouded by the lens of nostalgia. Until we walked into our local game store and there it was. It was nestled between Risk and some reprinted version of Clue.
13 Dead End Drive.
It looked old, it still had the shrink wrap protecting the interior goodies, but everything about the box screamed 1993. The front shows caricatures of a rich old man, a chef, a farmer, and even a fortune teller either sneaking around a brightly colored mansion or on the verge of dying. A chandelier hangs above the chef’s head who looks at it knowingly – yeah I’m gonna die.
Skepticism
I’m a bit of a board game geek ™ so when my wife told me she wanted it I kind of cringed. Surely it would make a nice gift for nostalgic purposes, but would it even be played? Why get this old game when we could fund the next Leder games Kickstarter or buy a game that’s a certified banger ™?
This is certainly an area of weakness for me. I tend to think the best games are the ones people are talking about. As of this writing, 13 Dead End Drive is ranked number 5,037th on Board Game Geek. I didn’t think it had much of any merit.
My wife ended up getting this game as a Christmas gift from a family member last year. I was floored to see her face as she opened the package to find her object of childhood gaming.
We didn’t play this game right away and in fact, we finally got around to opening it 6 months later, but I wish we had done so sooner.
How Does 13 Dead End Drive Play?
13 Dead End Drive is a game about deception, taking risks, and a little bit of luck. Players control a group of 12 people trying to win the will of the late Aunt Agatha. Think Knives Out but if the detective spent the whole movie walking to the house.
On the center of the massive cardboard wall hangs a portrait frame with a stack of cards nested in it. Throughout the game, the showing portrait will cycle to the back of the stack revealing a different character portrait.
The goal of 13 Dead End Drive is to leave the house with your pawn while their portrait hangs on the wall.
The Traps
It’s impossible to look at 13 Dead End Drive and not notice the massive plastic traps littered throughout the playing board.
There are 5 traps in this game, each of them having their own plastic toy that when used will (theoretically) knock over, throw, or crush the pawn standing on a certain spot. These traps are used to kill (“bump” in the rule book) the competition.
These physical traps are the highlight of the board. There’s nothing like pulling the lever and seeing a pawn getting sucked into the fireplace, or a statue fall on someone. However, you can’t simply place a pawn on the proper spot, you need to have the right card.
Every time you place a pawn on a trap space you can draw a card or play a card. If you draw a card that matches the trap you can play it immediately to “bump” the pawn. You can also use cards in your hand to trigger the trap. The trap card deck is forgiving enough so it doesn’t take a lot of effort to get the proper card, and by each trap is a trap door that makes it easy to bring a pawn closer to a trap you have a card for.
How is it Played?
Before playing each player is dealt a number of character cards based on how many players there are. For two players, both players get 4 character cards and 2 secret character cards that they aren’t allowed to look at. These cards are the pawns you’re trying to escape the house with.
The game is played by rolling two dice (they aren’t typical 6-sided dice, the 1 is a 3 and the 6 is a 4). The player then uses both values to move two pawns a number of spaces equal to the number on a dice. If you roll a double, you can choose to cycle the portrait to the next card. It’s a simple turn, but the complexity (which there isn’t much of) comes when you interlace the mechanics with the deception of it all.
My Favorite Mechanic
The most interesting thing about 13 Dead End Drive is that all players can control any of the pawns. That means you could ignore one of your pawns until the final moments of the game when you make a B-line for the door. Adding to the interest, players don’t know which pawns are controlled by the other players. So players spend a lot of time thinking about who their enemies actually are.
I love this. I love having the ability to move anyone around the board and to keep intentions hidden. This is a truth for most games that aren’t played open handed, but it’s even more directed in this game.
Conclusion
I’ve been experiencing somewhat of a board game renaissance over the last couple of weeks. They’re slowly returning to our weekly cycle of things to do after putting the baby to sleep, and it’s been amazing!
13 Dead End Drive is not a game I would have pulled off the shelf on my own. I decided to bust it out because I wanted something easy that my wife would enjoy (it was also the only game not packed in a moving box). However, I can’t stop thinking about it.
I’ve learned over the last couple months that I’m really bad at judging a book by it’s cover. There are so many experiences I have missed because I was too worried they wouldn’t live up to the hype or I simply shrugged them off because I wanted to take the safer bet and choose something that’s critically acclaimed.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is something really special about this game, and I think with a couple modifications of 13 Dead End Drive could be an incredible game. I want that idea to keep nagging at me.