As a child of the ’80s, one of my favorite board games was “Crossbows and Catapults.” It was a fun battle game where players built a castle with lego-like blocks and then fired plastic pucks back and forth to knock down the opponent’s castle. The game included rubber-band powered crossbows and catapults to fire off the pucks.
For some reason the game popped in my head the other day and upon searching I happened on the rebooted version that was just released this week at retail! You can see it in action in my latest video.
The new version of “Crossbows and Catapults,” priced at $34.99 (affiliate link), comes with a variety of pieces designed to capture the essence of the original game but in far fewer quantities than the original. Part of the appeal of the original game was having enough wall bricks to come up with some unique and creative build strategies. In this new version players are mostly restricted to a singular castle design.
The new spring-loaded catapult feels close in power to the rubber-band powered original with the added bonus of an angle adjustment that was lacking before. But the new crossbow is a serious miss. It fires by squeezing it together (like a pair of tweezers) to force the puck out. The pucks don’t have much velocity out of the crossbow and I found it was hard for my 8 year old to operate.
They likely moved away from rubber bands due to how easy it was to “hack” the original weapons to be significantly more powerful (and dangerous) by adding more bands. That of course made the game even more fun !
Gameplay itself is straightforward and reminiscent of the original. Players take turns launching pucks at each other’s castles, aiming to knock down their opponent’s structures and soldiers. I did find this new version sturdier than the original (perhaps due to the reduced velocity of the weapons) so each game took much longer to play.
Overall, the new iteration of “Crossbows and Catapults” is a mixed bag. It makes an attempt at bringing back a beloved classic, but falls short due to the lack of creative build options and significantly weakened crossbow weapon. The game would have benefited from being reissued vs. reimagined.