Willy Wonka’s The Golden Ticket Game Review

Greetings to you, the lucky finder of The Golden Ticket Game. Just like in the book and movie, Willy Wonka has hidden golden tickets in some of his chocolate bars. The objective of the game is to move around the game board and play combinations of Wonka cards to gain as many Wonka Bars as you can. At the end of the game, everyone opens their Wonka Bars to see who won a golden ticket.

You can play the game as Charlie Bucket, Veruca Salt, Mike Teevee, Augustus Gloop, or Violet Beauregarde. Each character pawn has a corresponding character play mat that tells you your character’s special ability and how much money the character starts out with. Each player also gets six Wonka cards for their starting hand. Don’t show your cards to the other players. Whoever most recently ate a chocolate bar gets to go first by choosing two cards to discard. Then, all other players discard one card. With all character pawns on the Classroom board space, the game begins.

On your turn, you can take two actions. Discard a card to move one space, play a card, and/or refill your hand. If you discard a card, you don’t follow the action written on it. Just place it into the discard pile and move your pawn to any adjacent space horizontally or vertically. When you land on a space, you may play the effect shown on that space as part of this action. If you play a card, you place it below your player mat, not the discard pile. Cards might allow you to move an extra space or take a card from another player. And if you choose to refill your hand, you simply draw new cards into your hand up to a maximum of four cards.

After performing your actions, check to see if the Willy Wonka pawn is on the same space as you. Willy starts off on the Wonka Factory Gates space. If you share a space with Willy Wonka, then you get one Wonka Bar for free. Then, roll the Wonka die and move Willy to the space with the same number. Now it’s the next player’s turn.

When a player claims the last Wonka Bar, the game is over. Unwrap your bars to see who has a golden ticket!

For a different way to play, use Side B of the game boards for the Scrumdidilyumptious Game Variant per the game instructions.