Hunger Games Training Days Board Game Review

I wanted to love this game, but unfortunately, I was disappointed in it.  The Hunger Games is a great book series, and I've been anxiously awaiting the release of the third book, which is tomorrow!  I bought the game for my library and held a small program for teens to come in and play the game.  The night before, I played with the game with my husband in order to learn the rules ahead of time, so I could better assist the teens as they learned to play.  I guess I just wanted more from the game than it was able to provide.  We knew from the box that it was a strategy game, but I'd hoped that it would at least pull some trivia form the game. 

In the books, before the tributes actually go into the Hunger Games, they went through a couple of days of training in various events such as knot tying, wrestling, archery, edible plants, etc.  The board game takes place during those training days.  Players choose a district tribute to play from one of the nine districts that are represented.  For casual readers of the series that may not remember specific characters from these districts, and for those who haven't read the books, it makes little sense to include only nine of the twelve districts.  The tribute cards do not have names on them, so you are a generic tribute from whichever tribute you choose.  The attributes of each tribute seem to have been randomly chosen as well.

Event cards are laid out and each player decides how much effort to put into each event in order to win approval ratings.  The player with the highest approval rating at the end of the game wins.  The game typically consists of 2-3 days, and the number of events during each day depends on when the players randomly choose the end of day card for one of the events.  There is little incentive to get interested in the events, as the regular events simply have an approval rating and a name, such as wrestling, first aid, etc.  There's little creativity in the events.  The special events give players special abilities, but still there is no creativity. 

Basically the strategy game consists of players bidding their effort tokens on events in an attempt to gain the most approval ratings.  The teens that attended my program complained that the game was too complicated and weren't really interested in the game.  I had to walk them through each step of the game, and even then they only played because I asked them to.  I don't think they ever really saw a point to the game.  I can't blame them for that.

This could have been a much better game if it had a storyline that related back to the game in a way that was interesting and fun.  I think the lack of creativity will quickly make this one a dud.