I feel like when people reminisce about high school, they have extreme feelings one way or another. They either look back fondly on the pep rallies, school dances, and hanging out with friends, or they just focus on the heartache, embarrassment, and hours of detention. I tend to fall into the latter group. High school was… tolerable. I would not go back in time to relive those days for any amount of money. I might change my mind though if I were part of a superhero team with some of my fellow classmates. Super Squad High, designed by Michael Addison, puts you in such a world. In this fully cooperative worker placement game, you must complete tasks and stop crimes while trying to find out which classmate is secretly the villainous mastermind. Stop the villain and save the day. Oh, and don’t forget to do your homework.
Super Squad High
Designer: Michael Addison
Publisher: Nerdy Pup Games
Theme
As discussed in the introduction, Super Squad High puts you in the role of a high school student with superpowers. During setup, each player will get multiple student and power cards to choose from, giving them some agency on how they will play the game. You will also shuffle up the Villain, Scheme, and Motive cards, drawing one of each card and placing them face-down on the game board. These hidden cards determine which student is secretly the villain in disguise.
The key feature to exploit in this game is forming relationships with other non-playable students. Each student will have something they like, something they love, and something that makes them sad. These are randomized during setup. Once you discover a student’s 3 pieces of information, you can take a Meetup action with that student. After this meetup, you can claim this student as your “Bestie” or your “Sweetheart”. Besties offer extra opportunities to utilize your superpowers, Sweethearts will help heal you of damage.
Once a student becomes your Bestie or Sweetheart, you remove the “clue” token from their card, place it on the villain’s track, and get one step closer to revealing their identity. The number of clues needed changes based on the number of players.
Each player will acquire gear or equipment throughout the game. These are cards they will play to stop crimes and in combat against the Villain. Some of these are basic everyday items, like sports equipment. Others are a bit more advanced like an E.M.P. grenade.
Each of the NPC student cards are double sided, with each side stretching the diversity of the student body. There are students representing different genders, ethnic heritages, and racial backgrounds. This is a nice touch that isn’t required in game design but is refreshingly becoming normalized. It’s important for kids to see characters they can associate with in different forms of media. Otherwise, a child might subconsciously start to associate that only people with this skin color can be superheroes, or only people with these types of names can be successful, or only those that identify a certain way or conform to restrictive social constructs can have privileges. I like when boardgames can support these ideas.
Gameplay
Each round is made up of a single day. Each day is divided in to 3 parts: Morning, Afternoon, and Evening. Certain locations on the board are only available at certain times of day. It is nearly impossible to complete everything you want to on your turn. There will be homework, or crimes, or friendships that slip through the cracks. It is your job as a team to decide where those shortcuts can be made. Once you understand which characters can get by without needing to heal or which characters can skip getting new equipment, the game becomes much more manageable.
Depending on your character and superpower, the progression from finishing homework to stock up on good grade tokens, and turning homework tokens in to Like tokens to fuel your superpowers feel very intuitive. The mechanics intertwine seamlessly.
Once you discover who the Villain is, you do battle at the end of the current day. The type of equipment that will be effective against the various villain stages is public knowledge through the game as cards are revealed, so you can start planning and building for that final showdown early on.
Final Thoughts
Let’s try something different this time. I played the game once by myself, as if I was playing as all players, just to get the flow of the turn down. Then I played it twice with my 4 oldest children. The first time we lost. I helped them understand what we did wrong and where we needed to do something different. The second game with my children was one where I merely ran the game, and I let them (mostly) just play. I did urge the 8-year-old towards some “better” choices as he was getting tired by the time we were finishing up the game. We were able to get the victory just before bedtime. The next morning I told them all to write down what they liked about the game: however long or short they wanted to write. So here are the opinions of children who were defeated, came back the next weekend, and pulled of a victory.
“L”, age 8: “I like the abilities in the game.” (When pressed for more info, he said he liked how there were different choices and every time he plays, it could be different.)
“J”, age 10: “I liked it because you kind of got to choose your own superhero.” (Autonomy and deciding your own playstyle seem to be a common theme.)
“R”, age 11: “I really like the different abilities and superheroes that you can have in this game. It’s also unique to come up with the happy, sad, and flirty things about them when you go out with them in the game.”
This one needs a bit more explanation. I glossed over the details of what is done when you meetup with a student who you have successfully found out details about. The player to your right draws a special Meetup card, and reads the card, asking questions about your date. Each question is labeled happy, sad, or flirty, requiring that icon to be a part of the answer for that part of the date. Players are encouraged to really makes this part silly. For instance, one of the icons that’s applicable for sadness is a bumblebee. So, if a question read, “What graffiti did you show them on the walk home that made them quiet and introspective?”, a correct answer could be “You showed them the painting of the wildflowers on the side of the abandoned train car, and it reminded them about how wildflowers don’t grow how they used to since all the bee are disappearing.”. This part isn’t really needed. The player could simple say “bumblebee”, but my kids had much more fun being creative with their answers.
“A”, age 13: “I really like the character abilities you can use with the Likes. My favorite is the Hawk. I also like trying to figure out who the villain is and learning about the other suspects/characters. I like how everyone is on a team working against one villain, so everyone wins or loses together.” (I love my oldest child, despite her lack of competition. Cooperative games are her jam. It’s fun to see your kids’ personalities shine through even when it comes to boardgame preferences.)
Super Squad High was a big hit in our house, and we will be playing it again. Which brings me to my final point. The game is going live on Kickstarter! Keep an eye on our social media for when the campaign goes live. Or you can follow Nerdy Pup’s Facebook page for all the latest info.
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