Joystick Heroes (2022)

Overview

Joystick Heroes is a board game about playing video games - radical! Grab your friends and family and head to the arcade, where you’ll burn through tokens to play games and compete for the best scores. Each game tests different skillz, like your joystick agility or button-pressing prowess. Earn tickets, prizes, and power up your skillz. Kick butt on games in your favorite genre and win big by beating high scores. Challenge other wannabe heroes to 2-player games, grab a friend for co-op mode, and compete in arcade tournaments. The player with the most prizes when everybody’s out of tokens is the new Joystick Hero! Righteous!

At setup, create your arcade by laying out a number of Games cards. Each player starts with 10 arcade tokens. A round consists of 2 phases: (1) In the PLAY phase, choose any available Game card in your arcade, place 1 arcade token on it, and play it by rolling a number of dice based on the skills the game requires and your own skill levels. Use your hand of Power cards to boost your scores. Refer to the Top Scores chart and collect your winnings (tickets). (2) In the POWER UP phase, players spend the tickets they earned on skills upgrades or to purchase prizes.

When all players run out of arcade tokens, the player with the most prizes is the new Joystick Hero!