Saturday, 3 December 2016

Escape From Colditz - A Nightmare Christmas Present

I like nostalgia as much as the next bloke but news that the board game the Escape from Colditz is staging a comeback this Christmas brought me out in hives. I have written about this game before because I was scarred for life one Christmas.

Off the back of the much-loved BBC TV series back in the early seventies ‘Colditz' about British POWs and others, tirelessly attempting to escape Colditz Castle some company came up with a board game. Mum must have thought it would make a good Christmas present for my brother or me. Which one of us received it Christmas morning I don’t know but one thing is for sure it was one of my least favourite board games ever. The cover box looked so exciting and promised a lot, boys own stuff but failed to deliver if you couldn’t get your head around the game and rules I suppose.

The game based on breakouts from the infamous prisoner of war camp in a German castle and was hugely popular in the 1970s according to reports but I beg to differ. The idea of the game was to get your POW to a safe escape zone for a successful escape.

I remember reading the rules and thinking oh my god what have we here! Having puzzled over them for a while, I was still none the wiser and it was looking like a game I really wanted to play was turning into a bit of a white elephant. After a lot of head scratching it was put to one side where it stayed.

It was a pity, as I would have liked to have a play. It seened an interesting game with its unusual game play maybe there should have a game for dummies along the line of the classic board games layout. I remember coming up with my own POW escape game based around one of my favourite film Stalag 17. Which was the classic design like Monopoly maybe I should try to sell my idea to a games board company.

No comments:

Post a Comment