Ravensburger Games has had a hell of a year publishing new entries in the popular Villainous RPG board game series bringing in the evilest characters from both Marvel and the Star Wars universes. These titles let you play as the most interesting characters in these worlds where up to four players strategize against one another in an effort to complete their unique nefarious objective. We loved the Star Wars Villainous game and hailed it as the perfection of the titles that came before it. During D23 Expo in Anaheim, we spoke with Villainous Game Development Manager Mike Mulvihill on the critical success of Star Wars Villainous.
Part of what made this entry the best of the series is its evolution, the game which allows you to play as popular villains such as Darth Vader and General Grevious, took a natural step of bringing vehicles into the game as additional locations players can use. Mulvihill doesn’t so much attribute the new mechanics to evolution but rather “the team’s objective of making every game world feel unique from the others with the world of Star Wars having iconic you just have to find a way that fits the game in order to bring them in.”
As of now, Ravensburger has not announced expansions for Star Wars Villainous but it’s all but a done deal that we’ll get some. When asked if he believes the Star Wars universe has enough vehicles for future expansions, Mulvihill talked about not being able to rewatch any of the movies without making tons of notes and building his own bank of vehicles that would fit into the game.
One of the most interesting things to come out of our conversation for Villainous fans is how the game will handle the modern trend of franchises eventually turning every popular villain into an anti-hero. Star Wars Villainous has been the first to incorporate characters that have become gray area with Kylo Ren. Marvel Villainous will follow soon with its upcoming first-ever single-character expansion focused on Venom. What Mike Mulvihill stressed was that the game we were playing was and will always be Villainous. To the studio, “the appeal to fans is to immerse themselves in exploring the darkest parts of these characters. For someone like Venom who has almost as many years as a villain as he does a hero, we want to honor both but there will never be an objective where one of our villains wins by turning into a hero. So for Venom, his objective will be more of the guy who was always trying to eat Spider-Man’s brains.” Mulvihill also teased that they would implement something new with Venom for Marvel Villainous where one of his fate cards would make him a hero card that could be used to prevent other players from winning as the hero cards can cause some chaos.
Marvel Villainous Infinite Power and Star Wars Villainous Power Of The Darkside are both available now at game retailers everywhere while Marvel will see the Venom expansion come to the game in November.
