The Goonies Never Say Die is a 2021 board game based on the movie of the same name, published by Funko Games.[1]
Game[]
Never Say Die[]
The game is a turn-based tabletop game with some role-playing elements that puts players through the original events from the film with some threats might be new to some and familiar to others. One player acts as the "Goondocks Master", acting as the driving force behind all the dangers and enemies the other players will have to deal with and survive against.
The game comes with a total of eight miniatures which include the four main Goonies: Mikey, Mouth, Data and Chunk which serve as the main playable characters, as well as a figurine of Sloth who acts as an ally, The Fratellis with Mama Fratelli and her two sons sharing one piece and acting as bosses, the Octopus which acts as a boss, and a figurine of One-Eyed Willy himself. Players will start off in the Goon Docks and go through the events of the film's original story while encountering new never before seen threats and some old rare ones from Goonies history.
The game also comes with nine dice that instead of dots or numbers feature skulls and bones. There are three types of dice: the first dice is a regular red-colored four-sided die, while the second is a blue-colored six-sided die, while the third is a green-colored six-sided die.
Each player character comes with their own info placard detailing their abilities and stats. Players also have access to several cards during the game. Six Data Invention Cards can be used for emergencies and Data slick tokens for slowing down enemies and the Fratellis. There are also 15 item cards, 15 treasure cards, 3 legendary treasure cards, and 3 Mouth's Wisecracks cards. Players also have access to Wish tokens based on the coins from the Moss Garden Wishing Well.
The Goondocks Master has his own set of cards to use against the other players, mainly 3 giant octopus cards, 3 One-Eyed Willy cards, 6 riddle cards, 5 peril cards, 4 Goonie reference cards, 3 teenager cards, 6 Foe Reference cards, and 3 Boss Foe placards of the Fratellis, the giant octopus card, and of One-Eyed Willy. The GM also controls 22 enemies represented as moving pieces that the players must face.
The game also comes with a Game Master's screen for the Goondocks Master which is based on One-Eyed Willy's map.
Under the Goondocks[]
Under the Goondocks
Under the Goondocks is an expansion pack for the first game mode and acts as a sequel taking place long after the fall of the Astoria Country Club and the events of the movie and Never Say Die. This expansion features three brand new adventures and includes figurines of Brand, Andy and Stef as the main playable characters (Sloth can also be played as well) while Troy acts as the main antagonist who can be controlled by the player acting as the Goondocks Master. The expansion includes many new enemies and characters.
In the game's story, upset over his family's fall from grace and their plans for the Goon Docks being ruined by the Goonies, Troy Perkins has been secretly searching for any clues about One-Eyed Willy's treasure hoping to find out how the Goonies got it and steal some treasure for himself in order to restore his family's wealth and demolish the Goon Docks for good, wanting to make them all pay for ruining his father's enterprise.
One day while Brand, Andy and Stef were hanging out on the porch of the Walsh residence looking back on their treasure-hunting adventure, they are interrupted by the abrupt arrival of Troy himself. Troy, in a pathetic attempt to win them over, tells the Goonies of how he lost everything because of them and begs them for help in finding One-Eyed Willy's treasure so he and his family can escape poverty, but the Goonies weren't fooled by his half-hearted plea and tell him to go back home. Angry but refusing to give up, Troy barks back that he'll go after Brand's brother Mikey and force him to tell him where One-Eyed Willy's treasure was and drives off to the Stop 'N Snack, knowing that the younger Goonies are still there and defenseless.
As Brand and the girls arrive at the Stop 'N Snack, they find the kids' bikes but the younger Goonies are nowhere to be found. They then asked the clerk if she'd seen them and she reveals that they boys had been abducted by Troy and taken away in his car to where the old lighthouse is. Brand, Andy and Stef immediately ride off after him only to find Troy at the docks riding away in a speedboat with the kidnapped Goonies in tow on the way to Cannon Beach where the Lighthouse Lounge rests nearby. Hoping to catch him in time, the older Goonies took the fishing boat belonging to Stef's father, but once they make it to shore, Troy has already disappeared into the Lighthouse Lounge and the caves below, a fact which the Goonies dread, knowing full well of the horrors that lay within the cave, including some which they never told the adults about as they were far too terrible to be believed.
Trivia[]
- The game contains elements that were cut from the film but left in the film's novelization and the deleted scenes, such as the Octopus and the Stop 'N Snack.
- The game also contains a number of elements from the The Goonies video games and The Goonies II, with many of the enemies from said game returning for the board game, such as the giant rats, giant spiders, undead skeletons, the wisps, and pirate ghosts, with the latter undead monsters acting as the greater threat in Under the Goondocks which the Goonies never wished to speak of.
- The game also mentions the mermaids, a nod to Annie from The Goonies II, who were the ones who put a curse on the mutinous members of Willy's crew which kept their spirits trapped in a closed-off region of the caves which they could not escape from until making a pact with Troy.