Hulk Smash Board Game
Over the past three days, my children have become quite taken with the Incredible Hulk Smash board game from Milton Bradley. What’s been fun for me is that this is the first game that our whole family is playing together: two parents and our soon-to-be 3- and 6-year-olds.
That a 3-year-old can play this game tells you how simple of a game it is underneath, on the order of Candy Land or Snakes and Ladders. But, Hulk Smash has some delightful layers that keep both kids engaged and even keep the adults from getting bored. Even better, I see it helping my kids take setbacks in stride, have fun even when they don’t win, and just have a good time together around the table as a family.
At its core, Hulk Smash is a roll-and-move race game. (Surprise!) Your goal is to get both of your pawns from one end of the track to another. This what makes it essentially Candy Land, though with two 6-sided dice for the movement.
The “Hulk” part comes from a deck of cards. If you roll the equivalent of a 6 on your turn, you draw a card and get the opportunity to “Hulk smash” pawns on the board.
If your pawn gets squished, you get out your can of Play-Doh and mold another one, starting it back at the beginning of the track. Your smudged piece remains on the board, occupying a space that you’ll be able to skip over when you pass through again.
Let’s go deep on the Hulk smash mechanism because there are a lot of great aspects to it to unpack.
For starters, there’s the toy value. Play-Doh, molded cars, the fist, the cardboard buildings. “Hulk smashing” the little cars with the fist is just fun, game or no game!
This taps into something that I, as a not-very-competitive person, need to see in games: the act of actually playing needs to be fun, regardless of the final score. Executing a “winning strategy” has no particular joy for me. The meat of each turn has to have something that’s interesting and satisfying to do.
I find this in my favorite titles: Alien Frontiers has its manipulation of the dice, moving a pip from here to there and flipping that one over to get the pattern that you need. Above and Below has a book of random encounters, each a paragraph long adventure that you can try to beat. Agricola has — if you don’t starve to death—your own little farm that grows right in front of you.
Hulk Smash has the kid-friendly equivalent. No matter how you’re doing in the race to the finish, several times during the game you’re going to get to be the Hulk. You’ll shout “smash!” and bring down that green fist and it will be fun. It’s not fun because it’s helping you win (you may even be smashing your own pawn) or getting back at someone else (though you may be) it’s simply enjoyable, in and of itself.
If, when you got the opportunity to smash, you could pick any target you wanted, the game would be much less interesting and would easily devolve into petty back-and-forth between siblings. Instead, knowingly or not, Hulk Smash borrows from the legendary Cosmic Encounter by making the target of your fist not entirely up to you. Some of the cards match one of the four colors of board spaces, and you’re obligated to smash any pawns on that color, regardless of who owns them. An equal number are “wild,” meaning you get to choose the color, but you still have to smash everyone on that color. A third set of cards let you choose an entire building to demolish, and you smash all the pawns adjacent to that building.
I love this system.
First, it diffuses the responsibility for what amounts to a “take that” setback to another player. If you draw the red card, you have to smash pawns on red spaces. There’s no malice because it’s mandated. Even when you can choose, you’re choosing a color and not a player, which softens it from being a direct attack against someone else. (The leader of the race is also pretty easy to spot, so smashing them is objectively a reasonable move that should garner few complaints.)
Especially with young kids, it’s worth avoiding any mean-spirited interactions at the table. Going by colors lets them knock someone back, or get knocked back, in a way that threads a bearable middle ground between being arbitrarily chosen (which can be frustrating) and being specifically targeted (which can be hurtful).
Second, there are times when it can be really funny. Drawing the color that both of your own pawns happen to be on is funny. Choosing to stop the leader but also having to squash one of your own pawns is funny. Knocking over a building that’s surrounded by everyone but you is funny. It’s in this way that the game enhances the direct joy of Play-Doh squashing: what that squashing means in game terms is often delightful.
My oldest talks about when my spouse’s first car got squashed right before the safety of the end of the track. She remembers when a building took out both my pawns at once. She’s learning that it’s the unique moments within the games that stay with you, not the score at the end. (Though she does keep track of where the last winner was in player order, and wants to be in that “lucky spot” in the next game.)
Finally, going by colors opens strategy doors by having risk that’s possible to mitigate. I’ve gotten my oldest to notice when she leaves both of her pawns on the same color, making her extra vulnerable, or when she’s on the same color as an opponent, meaning smashing them would smash her as well. In Hulk Smash, choosing which of your pieces to move is not an arbitrary choice; there are consequences you can weigh in making that decision.
I’m excited for how Hulk Smash is making my kids better board game players. The youngest is able to experience the fun of actually playing with his family, not just being on someone’s “team” at the table. He’s also getting practice adding small numbers together from the two dice, and — since this is a luck-heavy roll-and-move—even has a shot at winning some times. Our oldest is learning basic strategies, but is also getting experience in how to lose while still having fun. After all, regardless of won, everyone got to smash little Play-Doh cars and trucks with a plastic fist while shouting like the Hulk.
Copies of Incredible Hulk Smash seem to be on Ebay for as low as $10. You may have to provide your own Play-Doh, but trust me it’s worth it. The 2008 version is actually a straight re-theme of a 1998 Godzilla board game, if you like giant lizards more than superheroes.
