Yes, you read the headline correctly – HABA has published a legacy game that is not only family-friendly, but really is at its best as a family experience.

For those who’ve stumbled into this review who’ve never heard of “legacy games” before, let me attempt to explain what makes them different.

Legacy games answer the question: “What if a game remembered what had happened during the previous games… and that game told an epic story?” That’s always been true in role-playing games (well, those that didn’t devolve into rules arguments and/or what fellow OG writer Jeff Myers calls the min-maxing of character stats: “Dungeons & Accountants”). Designer Rob Daviau’s brilliant design idea (first seen in Risk Legacy) took the core engine of that 60+ year old game to a whole new mind-warping level as travel to parallel universes begat new conflicts and redrew old maps. Players put stickers on cards and on the map, wrote on the board, tore up certain cards, opened boxes with new types of pieces… it was a completely new kind of board gaming experience.

Since then, we’ve seen an avalanche of games legacy games and games with legacy elements – I personally have played Risk Legacy, all three seasons of Pandemic Legacy, Betrayal Legacy, Machi Koro Legacy, My City, Seafall, Netrunner: Terminal Directive, and Clank! Legacy. (That doesn’t begin to cover some of the other beloved legacy designs that haven’t hit my table, including Gloomhaven, Charterstone, and The King’s Dilemna, to name a few.)

What HABA and designers Christos Giannakoulas & Manolis Zachariadi have done is built a cooperative kids game using legacy elements… and in the process created a really nifty opportunity for families to play and enjoy an ongoing story together while honing their reasoning skills.

The Story

The story – and there is a lot of it – centers around Capt’n Pepe (a parrot with an eyepatch) and his crew of adorable sailor animals:

• Beaver Bob
• Monkey Charley
• Turtle Tuga
• Otter Oscar
• Mia the Cat (the tiniest of spoilers… but she’s literally in the introduction to the game)

They are working together to race Madame Goldtooth (a crocodile pirate) to find the fabled ‘Seven Treasures’ from the legend of Ghosty McBoo. (I know, I know… it’s National Treasure with cute HABA animals – but, to be fair, National Treasure grossed 347.5 million dollars and spawned a sequel and a Disney+ series.)

The Game At the Heart of Capt’n Pepe: Treasure Ahoy

Most legacy designs use a basic game system – whether it’s inherited from an earlier game (examples: Risk & Pandemic) or created for the game itself (examples: My City & Gloomhaven)… then use legacy elements to riff on that game system. Capt’n Pepe is no exception to that rule – at its heart, it’s a series of timed slide puzzles.

As you can see from the picture, the various crew members start scattered about the ship… and need to get to their oars in order to propel themselves towards the treasure. Players can move a crew member a single space – no jumping other pieces and no sharing of spaces (the boat is crowded!).

The two twists are simple but profound: first, players only get to make a single move before they must pass/throw/hand the Capt’n Pepe wooden ball (seen at the top of the picture) to the next player, who then moves a single piece. The second twist is the sand timer in the middle of the boat – the players only have two minutes to get everyone to their correct positions.

In each of the 25 chapters, players will work to get the sailors to the correct oars three times – scoring 1 “thumbs up” (well, wings up) from Capt’n’ Pepe for each match of oar and animal. The best possible score is 15 – and there are rewards (stickers) for reaching various levels of “thumbs”.

The Legacy Elements (spoiler free, I promise!)

The legacy elements in Capt’n Pepe: Treasure Ahoy! are not particularly radical – but they do work to complicate the movement of sailors as you and your fellow players race to complete the puzzle each time. There are new cards, new cardboard tokens, stickers that affect gameplay, and even a couple of surprises!

For those used to the “big reveals” in other legacy games, these are more subdued, but still enjoyable… and there is a definite ramp-up in difficulty as the game moves forward.

As mentioned before, there are 25 “chapters” made up of three 2-minute games… plus there is a 26th “introductory” game to help younger players understand how the basic game system works.

Family Time

You know, for kids.

Norville Barnes (The Hudsucker Proxy)

I was able to play through the first four chapters with my 7-year-old great-niece (since my boys are no longer children and live out of town – sigh)… and we had a good time with the game. She did pretty well with the puzzle without too much coaching and was excited to put the stickers on the treasure map and in our treasure book. She was especially jazzed to open the first treasure chest – which was [redacted] and made our final game a bit trickier.

The difficulty – at least in these early chapters – was perfect for her. The box lists “6+” as the recommended age and I’d expect any reasonably bright six-year-old could join in.

Now for the bad news – this is NOT a game for kids to play without an adult (or substantially older sibling). The rulebook and adventure book contain information and story that is meant to be doled out as the legacy game progresses – and I’m having real difficulty seeing how a crew of elementary school aged kids would make this work.

On the other hand, I think it’s a wonderful idea as a family game… and the amount of story/lore with the game would it make it the perfect blending of story time/game time each night. Just as my sons and I played a game of Clank! Legacy each day of Christmas vacation in 2019 – looking forward each time to see what new curves the game would throw at us – Capt’n’ Pepe would be a welcome 15-30 minutes of family time each night over a month.

A couple of final notes:

• The nice folks at HABA thoughtfully provided a website (linked with QR codes throughout the rulebook and adventure book) to audio recordings of each of the story sections. In addition, there is also a built-in two-minute timer on the site if you’d rather use a timer with a soundtrack.
• Reminder: sand timers in games have been shipped a long ways – sometimes it takes a few times of shifting the timer and letting it stand upright so it can work correctly. (I had no issues with the timer on this game – but I’ve had it happen before with other games.)

I received a review copy of Capt’n Pepe: Treasure Ahoy! from the publisher.