Cosplay
Designed by A J Powell and published by Vestoland, Cosplay is a light set collection card game for 2–4 players. Players all start off with two cards and, each turn, they draw a card and play a card with the aim of collecting 'traits', ideally sharing the same 'fandom' icon as their character card. The character cards mimic popular culture icons, so there's Steamy the Hedgehog, a Mario-like Giovanni (a carpenter rather than a plumber), a Hello Kitty-like Puppy Howdy and a Lobster-Man that we guess must've been bitten by a radioactive lobster.
Gameplay is intuitively easy, with cards either playable on yourself to benefit you (usually to add a trait card) or on an opponent to take one of their cards or force them to miss a turn. In addition there are some cards that affect everyone - for example, requiring all players to pass one of their trait cards to their neighbouring player. These 'special event' cards can be a good way of finessing to your character traits that match their fandom icon and so score double points.
This is a 'take that' game with a lot of to and fro but because it's a light game the 'take that' feels good natured and family friendly. It's suitable for children much younger than the 14+ indicated on the box. Rounds ordinarily run until the draw deck is exhausted but there are couple of 'special event' cards that can be played to end the round prematurely. Obviously you'd want to play one of these cards if you know you've currently got more points than anyone else. If you pick one up when you're behind you'll want to hang on to the card either in the hope of playing it if and when you nab the lead but also to deny other players access to it. Just discarding it would be dangerous because there are cards that allow players to mine the discard pile. Best keep shtum about holding the card, however, because there are 'special event' cards that redistribute the cards in everyone's hands...
At the end of a round the player with the highest score advances in rank. The game is supposed to go on till a player advances to the status of 'Cosplay Superstar' (ie: rank 6). That could mean an awful lot of rounds; potentially 20 or more in a close-fought four-player gamer. We'd recommend the option of starting everyone at rank 3 or 4 to avoid Cosplay overstaying its welcome and achieve the '30 minutes' playing time indicated on the box.
