Political Animals Review

September 16, 2020 at 10:35pm
By Jason Stettner

I really didn’t quite get the point of this game, and the package on top of that was rather unappealing. It might have something to do with the fact that I’m Canadian, or in general that this one doesn’t quite make sense to me. So what you’re attempting to do is move across a board that represents the United States’ political spectrum.

There are four corners, and you’re wanting to get close to your area. You do this by voting on issues, but you don’t really care what the issues are since you’re mostly just after the board shifting. I don’t know if that’s a comment on American politicians not caring about the issues, or what.

It’s strange as they have all have this context on them, but you don’t really care about the issue at all. It’s marketed as being for everyone no matter what political party you care about, and I suppose that’s because it also doesn’t care? It was just weird playing it, as I was already disconnected not living in the particular country.

Now, I do generally understand how the political system there works, how could you not when it’s shoved down your throat when you don’t even live there. That comment aside, the game itself just works out weirdly. You pick the issues, bet on them and then continue. After playing it each time it was just sort of, oh. It didn’t leave much of an impact, a sense of a thrill for winning or even any perk up of query into the issues we pushed through. It just, wasn’t very impactful or very good.

The Board/Pieces
You get a selection of components, all of which are contained within a dreadful envelope type of package. It’s the sort of thing that I get sent to me for reviews packaging wise and I throw out afterwards. Literally what holds the items I have sent to me, if that clarifies it better.

That makes storage of this game an absolute nightmare. It doesn’t even really fit in that well and it’s this unsightly bloated envelope that is impossible to store. That aside you get a basic board with colors. There are twenty-eight special tokens and a hundred and twenty capital tokens. The final aspect is fifty nine cards.

Oh, and I forgot the lengthy rule book. There’s not much to the visuals here. They’re sort of bland, but the cards do have some neat text alignments to them. I suppose that’s something. The play time is about twenty minutes, it could be quicker at times. It’s meant for two to five players.

The Conclusion

Political Animals is a horribly packaged experience that’s very specific when it comes to the region it aims to please while being a rather muddled time. I really didn’t enjoy this, neither did anyone I played it with. We really tried to keep in mind the US perspective on this one, and still it was just weird.

It wasn’t particularly funny if it was trying to be a satire on the political system in the United States. Maybe we just didn’t get it, not sure. It wasn’t fun to play, so I won’t touch this again. It’s also a packing nightmare due to the awful envelope design. It’s just an infuriating way to release a board game.

Political Animals Review
Review Sample Provided by Breaking Games

Rating Overall: 3.7