Pop! Funkoverse Strategy Games Peter Pan and Universal Monsters Review

Both of these games have very different themes, one being Universal Studios classic monsters like Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Invisible Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the other being Peter Pan, with the titular ageless lad and the herpetophobic Captain Hook. Each game includes player pieces that are big by board game standards, but slightly small by Funko standards. The detail work and paint is just as quality as standard Funko collectibles though, make no mistake!

Each game has 2 different maps and 4 different play modes: Flags, Control, Leaders, and Territory. These play modes each have a unique rule, but share 1 standard rule: earning points through challenging opponents and knocking them out. In essence, roll dice better than your opponent to win. If I challenge a rival, and roll 3 exclamation points and a hit symbol, that’s worth 4 successes. My opponent, who rolled only 2 shield symbols, gets locked down. If they get hit again whilst knocked down, my team gets a point, and they go to the cooldown track, an area where they must wait a few turns before they can join the game once more. Each turn, move anything in the cooldown track down by one, and if it moves past 1, return it to the game. This is the core gameplay of Funkoverse, with each game type adding an additional objective.

With Flags, you want to move across the board to your opponent’s flag safely by the end of a turn to get points. Leaders has you elect leaders and allies at the top of a game, and win more points based on who knocks out who. Control makes you capture territory with markers before your opponents can to earn points, and lastly, Territory is like king-of-the-hill, where you want as many people on your team in the scoring zone at the end of the round. Actions are performed with ability tokens, and a character’s card determines what tokens they get per turn. Ability tokens are shared through teams, so if Dracula and Invisible Man were on a team, Dracula can use some of Invisible Man’s gray tokens to perform abilities. Abilities are special actions that can help you win the game, like pulling a rival closer to you, or recovering immediately from the cooldown track. 

Now if this sounds complicated, hoo boy. We just gave you the heavily simplified version! Funkoverse is a game of rules within rules and several different systems to keep track of, from statuses, to objectives, to the cooldown track, special character traits, sight lines, and even companion or item actions. They even recommend you play a simplified version of the game to start out, and then integrate one of the 4 main modes after that. There’s a glossary of terms in the back of the instructions. You will get the hang of it eventually, but starting out, it’s rough, especially when teammates need to be represented by basic tokens and not other included Funkos. At least the Funkos themselves look cool!