Review: SPY X FAMILY: MISSION FOR PEANUTS is a Fun "Ooting" of a Card Game
KessCo and Crunchyroll are launching SPY x FAMILY: Mission for Peanuts and you should be able to grab a copy by the end of October. If you know me, you know that I LOVE SPY x FAMILY. When the manga premiered three years ago I fell in love and then when the anime launched I was in heaven and able to indoctrinate my wife into the joys that are the Forger Family. When I heard that a card game was being released, I immediately requested a copy without even looking at what kind of game it was. Thankfully, KessCo was kind enough to supply me with a copy and you can find my honest thoughts and opinions below. If you want your own copy of the game, you should start seeing them pop up in Barnes & Noble soon and on Amazon by mid-October for $15!
SPY x FAMILY: Mission for Peanuts is a thrilling game of deduction and deception designed for 3-5 players. Assume different roles within the game, employing your strategic prowess to outmaneuver your opponents and build the best 2-card team for each mission.
If a player can successfully bring the Forger family together, they instantly win the round! However, beware, as getting caught holding the spy card will result in elimination. With lightning-fast rounds and a deck of only 24 cards, every decision matters.
Mission for Peanuts is a fun and casual deductive card game. It reminds me a lot of games like Coup and Love Letter which are some fantastic fast-paced card games. In Mission for Peanuts, you have one card in front of you as a Role and one card in your hand. On your turn, you draw a card and then play one of the two cards in your hand. The card you play can be Deployed as your new Role or discarded for its Assist action. You’ll have to cleverly find ways to combine Roles and Assist actions as you try to win.
Speaking of, there are technically four ways to win. First, if at any point you have all three Forgers, you automatically win. Second, if all the other players have been eliminated (typically by Yor aka Assassin) then you win. Third, at the end of the game (the draw pile is depleted) any players still alive compare pairs and use the chart in the rulebook or on the reference card to determine the winner. Finally, if no player has any matches, then you count the number of notches on your Role and card in hand. The player with the fewest notches wins. In my experience, that last scenario never occurred, but I could see how it might.
I was able to play the game with a couple different sized groups and am happy to report that it works well with any size group, even with as few as two players despite the fact that the game is rated for a minimum of three. I do think that it works better with more players, but when doing a test game with just my wife and I, we didn’t really have problems having only the two of us.
The things I like about Mission for Peanuts include the artwork and the theming. Everyone’s abilities make sense based on who their character is. It’s not just a reskin of other popular games, but feels like someone knows who the characters are and uses that information to determine their abilities. That is very appreciated. Inside the rulebook there are other items that reference the characters such as a note talking about how “Anya thinks this game is more fun if everyone plays fair.” It’s a small touch in the rulebook, but feels very in-character.
What doesn’t work? Honestly, Mission for Peanuts works well as-is. That said, I do feel like the abilities feel more passive than in similar games making it seem a bit slower. In order to eliminate someone, you either need to use Secret Police (Yuri) and find someone with the Spy (Loid) or carefully manipulate cards so that a player ends up with Assassin (Yor) without drawing her. Once again, this does fit the theme of the franchise very well and gives it a different feel as it’s less of a witch hunt. The biggest disappointment in my opinion though is that the Deploy abilities for Seer (Bond) and Informant (Franky) feel extremely similar. They are different (Franky puts the card on top while Bond puts the 1-2 cards on the bottom), but on first read they seem almost identical.
Mission for Peanuts is a fun card game to play with friends and family. The theming is impeccable and I do recommend it for fans of SPY x FAMILY. The more passive gameplay does make it feel slower than some of its competitors, but it fits well with a franchise all about people trying to keep their true selves hidden from others. I’d rate the game a solid 7.5, but I’ll round up to an 8.
