Bang!

November 30th, 2011

Originally published by DV Giochi, who have sold in excess of 600,000 copies, Bang! is undoubtedly one of the most popular and most fun party games to hit a table, and now it’s available to play on PC and Apple’s numerous handheld devices courtesy of developers Spin Vector and publisher Palzoun. True to its spaghetti western theme the game sees players secretly take on a role with its own victory conditions: the Sherriff (who wins if all the outlaws are killed), the deputies (who win if the sheriff survives), the outlaws (who win if they kill the Sherriff) and the vigilante (who has to kill everyone apart from the Sherriff so he can have a legendary gunfight with him). At the beginning of the game only the Sherriff’s identity is known, which leads to some tense moments of bluffing. Each player draws a hand of cards from a deck, which allows him to shoot at his fellow players, initiate a duel or simply pass a lit stick of dynamite around the table. Each player has a cartoonish western persona with a special ability and a gun with specific range, which can be upgraded.

As a party game Bang! undoubtedly works best in a face to face setting and does suffer somewhat from the abstracted nature of online play, particularly in terms of pacing and interaction. Also a few of the game’s cleverer concepts are a little ambiguous in a virtual setting. For instance a gun with a range of one will only allow you to shoot at the players immediately to your left and right, but this concept is a little hard to grasp when you’re sitting alone on a beach with your iphone, playing someone else several hundred miles away in an office. That said Spin Vector have done a fantastic job of implementing the game in a simple yet attractive way, providing subtle animations and visual prompts, rather than obscuring the game’s mechanics with unnecessary pyrotechnics. Meanwhile there’s the welcome addition of the ‘strategy’ view, which allows you to keep track of who you believe to be playing the various roles, whilst the ‘peek’ view allows you to see the game from another player’s perspective in order to get a clear idea of who they can shoot and be shot by in turn. It’s an elegant solution that provides an easy to comprehend breakdown of what could quickly become a complex situation without the physical proximity of players sitting around a table to anchor proceedings.

It’s not always easy to get seven or eight players together and so the flexibility of being able to play this classic game anytime and anywhere more than makes up for not being able to make a gun out of your hand as you off the person sitting next to you. The beauty of the release is that for the first time PC gamers can play seamlessly with ipod/ipad users as the game utilises the multicross online gaming, a system that will hopefully become the norm in the future.

The game comes with some comprehensive and well presented rules, which is just as well as the built in tutorial is a slight affair that covers the game’s basic concepts but may leave players scratching their heads as to how some of the game’s more advanced cards, such as the duel or cat ballou, work. It also includes a full set of achievements to gun for, although the game’s repetitive music will quickly see players muting their device.

Words > Dean Bowman

Tags: Bang!, Board games, Card Games, DV Giochi, Palzoun, Party Games, Spaghetti Western, Spin Vector