Welcome to our spoiler-free review of Unexpected Games The Initiative! If you love campaign games that make you solve puzzles while you play, then this is the game for you! The Initiative is a game for 2-4 players and takes 60 minutes to play.

This game is quite an interesting ( in a good way) game. The core game you are playing is actually the game played within the campaign story. Let us explain! The game comes with a book that at first glance looks like a dressed-up instruction manual, but in reality, it tells the story of four kids in the 1990s who find a mysterious board game called “The Key” at a yard sale. “The Key” is the game we play—this is a fascinating concept. The game you play is the game within the game. The campaign in The Initiative is more than meets the eye, though. You start by reading the next page or two of the instruction manual for each game and then play a game of “The Key”.

So what is The Key?

“The Key” is a code deciphering game. The characters in “The Key” each have unique abilities and must move through an office building collecting files. These files are tokens that have either symbols or traps on them. Once you collect a file, check to see if the symbol is part of the mission in the mission console. If it is, you can reveal the letter or number under the corresponding door. You continue to do this until you solve the puzzle.

We’ll be releasing our complete Overview of The Initiative next week which goes into more detail on how to play.

So, with that short description of the game, let’s talk about our impressions of it.

Game Components

The game comes with a full-color Instruction book that doubles as the campaign story. You will not read this book from cover to cover. Instead, think of it as a bit of a “Choose your Own Adventure” In that, decisions you make determine how the story ultimately plays out.

Included in The Initiative is also separate instructions on how to play “The Key”. The components for “The Key” include five character standees along with four different enemy standees along with their character card. The illustrations on these cards and standees are superb, and they make you feel like you are playing a spy game. I particularly like the Mastermind and the Doberman illustrations. 

You will also have several file folder clue tokens with symbols and traps on them. These are cool. I particularly like the fact they look like mini manila folders.

The mission chapter cards are nice and big, and easy to read. The thing you’ll notice is that there are a ton of those. The neat thing about this game is playable beyond the campaign. Once you complete the campaign, you can keep playing “The Key”. They’ve even released more digital mission cards online.

One area we do want to call out is the mission console stand that holds the chapter cards. The doors on the stand were a bit flimsy. Honestly, we did almost break one of the doors off about halfway through the campaign. We ended up simply needing to treat it carefully when flipping that door up. (editor note: since our first playthrough, Unexpected Games has released a digital version of the mission console, which you can find here)

Lastly, the game also has cards in three suits. The quality of these cards is on the higher end and have entertaining illustrations. I love how they are themed to the spy game we were playing. Overall we like the style of this game.

Game Setup

The Initiative is pretty easy to set up. As it’s a campaign game, each time you play, you will need to read the next page in the Comic book first. Sometimes these pages ask you to solve additional puzzles and riddles before moving on. At some point, the kids in the story will sit down to play another round of The Key, and the comic book will direct you to set up that session.

When setting up this game, you take the current chapter card, and without looking at the front of it, you slip the card into the provided stand. Then you take a look at the back of it. The back of the card shows you how many clue file tokens to place in each room. It also indicates which type of enemy appears in this chapter. This part was a bit of a chore to set up, not terrible, mind you, but it did take a few minutes to layout the clue tokens.

After distributing the cards, you’re ready to play. Overall, we found it easy to set up the game, with the most tedious part laying out the file folder tokens and chapter cards.

Game Play

Let’s talk about how The Initiative plays. Well, there are two parts to this game, the campaign story and the game within the game. The campaign story is enjoyable. We like that you read a bit of the story to find out what the kids are doing in the story and then you play “The Key” The campaign book isn’t just about reading the story. You also need to solve riddles in the book, which will lead you to [redacted spoiler]. This game has tons of spoiler content as well, so there’s much more to this game than what we can tell you about here.

As for “The Key”, this game is a lot of fun to play. The part we haven’t mentioned is how you play it. Basically, you get cards in your hand that have numbers, 1 – 12, and a suit (suitcase, walkie-talkie, and binoculars). The players can’t discuss what cards they have in their hand, but they can talk in general terms. On your turn, you place a card down on the action card for the action you want to do. The actions are Run, Gather, Intel, and Regroup. The trick is to put down a low-numbered card on the action you want to do. Why you ask? Because if another player wants to do the same action, they must place a higher card on the action than you. If an action has a 12 on it, that action is unavailable for the REST OF THE GAME!

As mentioned above, your characters have special abilities. One character can move further per turn, while my favorite Brock Sanders can do any action even if it gets blocked. Doing a character’s unique action requires you to discard two cards from your hand. Still, in the case of Brock, he can unblock another action AND remove the top card from the action, which is pretty cool!

Moving on to the main focus of the game, solving puzzles. The front side of the chapter card will have a question or statement at the top and then rows of symbols. As you do your actions, you can gather clue tokens that give you those symbols. Sometimes these clue tokens aren’t clues at all, instead they are traps and can trigger bad things to happen for the group. As mentioned above, actions can be blocked and this is one of the types of traps you will face.

Overall Impressions

If you enjoy campaign and puzzle games, The Initiative is for you. We like the idea of playing a game within a game. The surprises that happened left us genuinely amazed. The comic book was an entertaining way to tell the story. It reminded us of a “Choose your Own Adventure.” The only real downside of the game was a minor issue with the mission console, which we mentioned before. If you encounter a problem with your mission console, have a read through this article on the Unexpected Games website – https://unexpectedgames.com/news/replacement-mission-consoles, and they’ll be happy to help.

The other thing we want to mention is that communication is key to winning each game session. We lost our first game, and before we looked at the puzzle answer, we started replaying it and realized we needed to talk more about how our cards were coming out. This isn’t a critique of the game; it’s more a critique of how we played it. 

We want to give a shout-out about the designer, Corey Konieczka. We’ve played a lot of Arkham Horror and specifically Mansions of Madness. If you’ve played those games, you’ve already played some of his work. We saw parallels between this game and some of those games. We loved the integration between the overall campaign story and the individual game sessions. 

If you enjoyed this review of The Initiative and want to pick up a copy for yourself, we have it in our store!