BFF! Best Friends Forever: RPG Spotlight
This week we’re picking out our favorite hang-out location and having a slumber party as we take a look at multi Ennies Award Nominee, BFF!
BFF! Best Friends Forever looks like the kind of game most of us would skip in the game store. At first glance it looks a little too bubblegum, a little too cutesey, and a little too kids friendly. And it is undeniably all of those things. But it’s also an evocative and smart game that groups of two to six players of just about any age can – and honestly likely will – enjoy.
Right from the top, the first thing you may notice after opening the box BFF! comes in and flipping through all of the game materials is the art style. You’ve already seen the art of the kids on the cover, but the game book is also full of locations where scenes will take place around town, and that style all watercolor and looks so much different. This instead feels like the background art from Hey Arnold! where everything is idealized, larger than life and shiny. BFF! captures the feeling of being a tween, still recognizing magic in the world, and seeing everything as a little larger than it actually is.
The other thing you may notice when going through the game box is that BFF feels more like a board game than your average tabletop RPG. There are standees to represent your characters, game charms to collect and trade, and game cards to draw from and play, plus the book draws out all of the potential hand outs and scenes and acts as your game board and a one d6 dice system makes any rolling aspects of the game very simple. There isn’t a lot of conflict or a heroic journey or monsters, instead BFF! is a game where players act out scenes as tweens doing tween stuff, becoming closer friends, and working on their personal growth.
At this point you may be wondering how this is an RPG at all, but once you get the box of game supplies out of the way, this is a game of cooperative storytelling and character to character interactions at its core. The game cards contain prompts to help flesh out and kick off the hang-outs and scenes players will move through and the charms are meant to show aspects of your character’s personality or their relationships with other characters with the intention of trading them away when they’re ready to move on and a piece no longer fits. This isn’t your high adventure, classically exciting style of tabletop RPG, but BFF! is fun in a way that’s surprising and charming. You’ll be taken aback by how much you enjoy going on imaginary hang-outs with your BFFs.
To learn more about BFF! you can check out the Heart of the Deernicorn official website here.
Have you played BFF! Best Friends Forever? Do you prefer more character and interaction driven RPGs like this one, or do you like the more crunchy action based games? Which of your BFFs you would like to play BFF! with? Let us know in the comments!
Happy Adventuring!
