At Gen Con, I stopped by the Wyrd Game’s booth. As I walked around their booth, I kept looking at a game they had on display called Vagrant Song. The art on the board game instantly reminded me of Bioshock, one of my all-time favorite video games. I contemplated purchasing Vagrant Song solely on the art alone. One of the people working at the booth approached me and gave me a quick speech about what Vagrant Song was about. I bought the game shortly thereafter. Vagrant Song is a Spooky, Cooperative game I’m glad to have in my board game collection.

Vagrant Song is a cooperative game which means the players will work together to achieve an objective. Each character is a vagrant on a train called the Silver Ferryman. Vagrants will partner together to set free ghosts (called Haints). Once a Haint gains enough humanity, the Haint will be free to go into the afterlife. Each Haint has special abilities that impact how Vagrants can interact with it. Vagrants can gather items, use their skills, and gain material to aid them in their quest to stop the Haint. If the Vagrants are Westbound (meaning the Vagrants are killed by the Haint), they lose the game.

The art was what drew me to Vagrant Song in the first place. The rule book and the scenario book are beautifully illustrated. There are pictures of a gritty brown train car with the bright blue ethereal Haints flying out and about. The game board has this old-fashioned feeling to it with the way the train cars are designed. When I play board games, I don’t pay much attention to the art, but Vagrant Song was clearly an exception. The art is exquisite.

Another highlight for me was the characters. Each Vagrant has their own style which still falls into this old-fashioned cartoon look. For my first few playthroughs, I played as Empress The Driven who is supposed to be an army general of sorts. She is skilled in “busting” a ghost aka. giving it a good punch. Another character one of my family members played included a dog which had humanity benefits to help defeat the Haint. I’m curious to play as the other characters, so I can fully decide on which character I like the best.

The final thing I wanted to touch on with Vagrant Song is replayability. With some board games, there aren’t a lot of different gameplay options. If I play the same game over and over again, it might feel repetitive and I might need to take a break from playing that game. With Vagrant Song, there are a lot of options. This is partly due to the scenario book. The scenario book is separate from the rule book, but it lists all the different Haints that players can go up against. I love this! It creates a different gameplay experience every time. Plus, if I were to somehow have the time to defeat all the Haints as one Vagrant, I could do it again with a different Vagrant and that would change my gameplay experience. I’m not exactly sure how many scenarios there are, but the book is thick, so there has got to be more than 30 at least.

Vagrant Song is the first board game that I have reviewed using my new rating system. I would rate Vagrant Song 5/5. I would always be in the mood to break out this game and I love the aesthetic of the game itself. Wyrd Games is a board game company on my radar now and I would play another one of their games in the future.