In the new hit flick Project Hail Mary, Ryan Gosling attempts to save humanity through sci-fi shenanigans. I won’t spoil said shenanigans here, but will say that a quality performance like this one deserves a movie marathon to appreciate Gosling’s work. And every movie marathon is better when paired with board games. It’s like red wine and steak, peanut butter and chocolate, or Barbie and Ken (spoilers!).
So, as you prep your own celebration of all things Gosling, here’s some recommended games to go along with his best films:
The Notebook: Love Letter
The Notebook is all about love, and so is Love Letter, in which you and the other players attempt to woo a princess through deduction, sneaky tricks, and out-of-nowhere plays. Love Letter is as simple to learn as it is devious to play – it’s as simple as draw a card and play a card, using special abilities on the same to knock players out of the round, trade hands to boost your chances, and so on. Fast, fun, and prone to leaving you wondering what just happened (like a certain James Marsden), Love Letter remains a classic party game.
For extra Gosling flavor, as he’s set to appear in a Star Wars flick soon, check out Star Wars: Jabba’s Palace – A Love Letter Game, where, instead of a princess, you can compete to earn the favor of everyone’s favorite slug (er, hutt). New cards and changing win conditions keep things spicy, and while you might not kiss Jabba in the rain, you’ll doubtless enjoy imagining your pals getting devoured by a rancor.
The Nice Guys: Street Masters
Once you’re done with the blockbuster romance, The Nice Guys offers a great buddy comedy, with our golden boy getting the snot kicked out of him as they try to sleuth out a mystery. Equally brutal, savvy, and often funny is Street Masters, a tactical beat’em-up based on the 90’s arcade games that sent millions of quarters into arcade machines. Street Masters puts you in the shoes of a fighter, each wildly different from the others, and matches you with a villain, objective, and map. From there, you’ll have to use abilities, rescue civilians, and deal with enemies through timing, dice, and good ol’ fashioned guts.
Street Masters makes its moment to moment gameplay so compelling through defense tokens, little chits of varying types that let you (or the enemy) block incoming attacks. Plan ahead and thwart an enemy’s punch and you’ll turn that defense token into a power token instead, which can be used to buff attacks or use your character’s ‘ultimate’ ability. Combined with unique decks that let you build a flexible tableau, Street Masters rewards smart play while crackling with narrative life.
With tons of expansions, some in and out of print (more of the former now that Steamforged Games owns the game), Street Masters remains worth jumping into, particularly if you have a love of Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, and similar side-scrolling bashers from yesteryear.
Drive: Formula D’s Street-Racing Mode
Drive’s opening sequence is iconic, almost as much as rolling the monster dice in Formula D – both combine luck and, with Formula D’s street-racing mode, skill to
get you out alive. Most folks put Formula D in with the many great racing games – as we did here – but nestled inside its rulebook is a funky alternate game mode, which has you picking out unique characters and cosplaying The Fast and the Furious (which, sadly, Gosling did not star in) as you blitz around the track. There’s police, nitrous, and the frenzied shifting of gears while you try not to crash in hilarious fashion.
At its core, Formula D is a dice-rolling push-your-luck sorta game, with the need for speed shoved up against tight corners, crashing into other players, and your car’s rickety frame. With a good group, you can zip through tense races fast (good thing, as exploding means you’re out). The street racing mode builds in the aforementioned cops, but the characters are where the real fun lives. One racer can literally throw his stereo out the window to smash another car, while another actively damages the road while they drive, making it real risky to push for that slipstream.
While I’ve yet to hear of a board game that incorporates the whole getaway driver experience into a single title (could you combine, say, Burgle Bros and Formula D? Why not?), the sheer delightful chaos on offer here is tough to beat. Especially with Drive’s killer soundtrack.
Project Hail Mary: Unsettled
Project Hail Mary itself falls into a well-worn board game genre: the sci-fi adventure. We’ve covered many of these in our sci-fi ladder series, which scales you and your group up from their first steps into space to galaxy-wide conflicts. Gosling’s character in Hail Mary (and, for that matter, First Man, in which Gosling plays Neil Armstrong) lends itself to the complex, rewarding High Frontier series with its exacting simulations of rocket launches, but hey, maybe you’re a bigger fan of Rocky and working together for mutual success. That puts Sidereal Confluence, with its manic real-time trading and negotiation front and center – an experience game if you’ve never tried it.
Yet, the purest vibe for an Andy Weir movie/book is likely Unsettled, a game we’ve touched on in the past that combines humor, puzzles, and story-telling into a difficult, rewarding cooperative experience. Every planet in this ongoing series presents a different challenge for you and your friends (or yourself, if you prefer solo play) to overcome through action efficiency, deduction, and adjusting to surprising twists. Every session plays out in about the same time as one of Gosling’s movies, too, making it a viable week night adventure.
La La Land: Draft & Write Records
At first glance, the appropriate recommendation for Gosling’s character Sebastian in La La Land is, obviously, Kenny G’s Keepin’ it Saxy game, which, with its groovy jazz style, puts you right in the mood to, uh, ride in an elevator or something. Despite the title and feeling like you’re looking at a joke, there is an actual (light) game here – cooperative, silly, and with a truly compelling goal: don’t let Kenny G have a bad day. Hard to get more important than that.
There’s actually a burgeoning musical genre in board gaming these days, from classical euros like Lacrimosa and Luthier to modern takes like Rock Hard and the upcoming Fest Season. But if you want to inhabit Sebastian’s dream of growing his own musical empire, then Draft & Write Records is a snazzy spin on the, er, draft and write formula, where you’ll mark off your star music acts, productions, and so on in puzzle-tastic configurations to try and create the best musical catalog in the business. As with most of these games, the simultaneous play, immaculate theming, and easy rules lend to a fun, fast game that’s easy to get to the table. No jazz required, but Miles Davis and Charlie Parker make every game go down easy.
Blade Runner 2049: Tamashi & Breach
When you’re thinking Blade Runner, and Gosling in Blade Runner 2049, and board games, you have quite a few options. We covered Cyberpunk Red not long ago, and Android: Netrunner remains perpetually beloved. But I’d like to shed some light on two lesser-known cyberpunk games, both dealing with hacking, rogue AIs, and the general thrill of fighting against corporate overlords that pervades both the films and these settings.
First, Awaken Realms’ Tamashi: Chronicles of Ascend is a scenario-driven adventure game with a unique, extremely compelling minigame that drives your every
action. You’ll draw tokens from a bag, drop them on a personal grid, and attempt to arrange them to trigger abilities, attacks, and other actions as you try to navigate both the virtual and physical world. Unique scenario decks provide the story in every game, which may have you working with or against other players. It’s a gorgeous game, and its one-off nature makes it a nice change-of-pace from giant campaigns.
The Breach from Ludus Magnus, a studio known for big games like Black Rose Wars and Nova Aetas, is also a scenario-driven game, and a fast one at that. We’re talking 60-90 minutes of rampant racing through cyberspace to steal some digital loot before your opponents (or the game shuts you down). The Breach throws you into cyberpunk variety, with the map layout, heroes, and just about everything else given the flexible treatment ahead of a game, making sure you’ll be seeing something different every time. More of a race than a pure euro or dungeon crawl, The Breach is a fascinating blend of mechanics, emergent narrative, and so much neon.
Barbie: All the Barbie Games
Lastly, we would be remiss to not mention Gosling’s star turn as Ken in Barbie, which you can certainly relive through literal Ken dolls. Or… the literal plethora of Barbie board games and figures. You’re certainly grading these games on a different scale, but for young ones with a passion for pink, or if you’re hunting a good gag gift, they’ll definitely fit the bill. Which, all things considered, is what you get with Gosling’s movies and the games that match: a darned good time.
