It has been years since I watched Cowboy Bebop. I remember borrowing imported VHS tapes and flying through the series (“bingeing,” as the kids today call it). I still remember Faye’s tragic return home, the iconic confrontation at the cathedral, and the many scenes of violence backed by beautiful jazz. The show is electric, burned into my brain.
So Cowboy Bebop: Boardgame Boogie is immediately appealing. This is a 60-minute cooperative game where participants play Spike, Jet, Faye, and Edward, and it has a similar feel to titles like Star Wars: Outer Rim, Firefly, and even Tobago. You will spend most of the game on the repetitive grunt work of chasing bounties and earning Woolong to keep the Bebop’s lights on, creating enough food and cash so you can buy just enough time to deal with each character’s personal issues.
Gameplay is about a group of bounty hunters, but it’s not really about the bounty hunting. You’re really dealing with iconic moments from the show, such as Faye finding a tape of her past and Spike preparing for his meetup with Vicious. These are called “Sessions,” randomly selected for each character and forming the goals for each session.
So you soar about, pushing the Bebop from Mars to Venus and chasing quarries like Chessmaster Hex. The game uses an action point system where you visit abstracted locations to gather leads, hunt the wanted, and eventually resupply. The core loop of gaining information, which leads to a pursuit and to subsequent reward, is the heart of play.
Leads are vague indicators, such as “Mars” and “Bar.” They are earned by meeting up with contacts and are later assembled into groups of three, which point to a specific subset of locations on the board.
Say your current leads are “Earth,” “Spaceport,” and “Market.” You can head to that location and pursue the bounty for picking up Asimov Solensan—but the catch is that each wanted criminal requires one specific lead (such as Asimov last being seen at a spaceport) to make this a legal encounter. (If you had picked up “Venus” and “Desert” instead, you could have encountered Asimov at the Venus spaceport and turned the place over with a dizzying chase.)
