Over the years, there have been some infamous heists making their mark on British history; In 1855, £12,000 (about £1.42 million in today’s money), three boxes of gold bullion and coins, was stolen from a train in the Great Gold Robbery. The Great Train Robbery in 1963 resulted in £2.3 million being stolen. In 1971 the Baker Street robbery resulted in £3 million taken from safety deposit boxes. The Brink’s-Mat robbery in 1983 saw £26 million worth of gold bullion robbed. 1987 saw the Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery which netted £40 million. And the City bonds robbery in 1990 saw a massive £291.9 million in bearer bonds vanish. Committing a crime is never a good thing, but have you ever wondered what it would be like to commit a multi-million pound heist? It wouldn’t be something that you could do on your own, you would need your own gang, probably your partner and the kids. Now you can, and you won’t even go to prison, in the game Bank Attack. Unfortunately it won’t leave you rolling in cash or gold bullion, but you will be left rich in the knowledge that you have had lots of fun playing a game with your family and spending some quality time together, and beating the bank vault!
Ever daydreamed about robbing the Bank of England? Yes or no, you can rob the vault in Bank Attack. A game for 2-4 players, aged 7+. It is an intense and addictive co-operative tabletop game where players must work together as a team to crack the vault and release the hidden gold worth a whopping 50 MILLION!
In Bank Attack, each person is assigned a role, they must use and swap tools, making sure to press buttons at the right time to open the vault before the alarm goes off! With five levels of play plus one bonus level, each increasing in intensity and difficulty, it is a fun family game of criminal activity!
In the box:
- Electronic Safe
- 8 tools (goggles, drill, laptop, map, flashlight, headset, explosives and gloves)
- 12 Plastic Gold Bars
- 20 Bank Notes
- Instructions
Bank Attack is an electronic game, which means that is requires batteries to play (batteries are not included). Install 3x AA batteries into the battery compartment before you start on your bank robbing mission.
Before you and your gang can attempt to attack the bank and pull off an audacious heist, the vault needs to be set up. The 12 gold bars are added into the top of the vault. The various tools needed to help players break in to the vault are laid out on the table so they are within easy reach of all of the players. This is a game for two, three or four players, and each player is assigned a role – either Hacker, Money Man, Explosives Expert or Lookout. We played with four players with each player sitting around the table in front of the relevant face of the bank vault. Once seated where we needed to be, we were now ready to play. There are five difficulty levels and we started on level 1 as we had never played the game before.
Forgot those well-known high street banks, in Bank Attack we are going for a different kind of bank and vault, the one simply known as The Boss! And don’t let its small stature or hard plastic shell fool you, it’s hard to crack! With The Boss ready and the bank attack starts, The Boss shouts out instructions, it’s a speaking vault. All the instructions must to be followed correctly to crack the vault and gain access to its hidden treasures as well as enabling players to collect bonus cash along the way.
The Boss shouts out four different instructions to follow:
- Collect (take from the pile on the table)
- Pass (pass an item you have collected)
- Grab (take an item another player has collected)
- Use (the player who currently has this item presses the button on their side of the safe)
Seems quite calm, sedate and easy, doesn’t it? Not quite. As play progresses, the instructions get faster and louder, adding tension to the arising panic, confusion and a real sense of urgency. You only have a limited number of lives which are lost when you get an instruction wrong and you only have five minutes to crack the vault.
When playing as a two player game, playing the easier levels is reasonably simple and is manageable for children at the lower end of the 7+ age range. The difficultly really does ramp up as you add more players and move up through the levels. A four player game on level 5 is exponentially harder and more frantic. Game play is under five minutes, so there are more instructions crammed into the higher levels coming at a faster pace the higher up the levels go progress.
Overall, we found Bank Attack to be an excellent puzzle game. It is fast, frantic and fun, racked with tension. A challenging game which is a bit different from playing the usual board games and does require a lot of focus and concentration and players being able to work together as a group; teamwork is key for a successful heist.
When we were able to crack the code and break into the vault, we loved that the vault lid flew open, spewing its contents of gold bars out onto the table, signalling victory and massive riches of 50 MILLION. Equally, when you lose all your lives and fail in your attack on The Boss and becoming expert bank robbers, an alarm will sound and its game over for all of you! Players all win or lose together.
It is an easy game to set up and it’s great that you can easily set the playing/skill level depending on the age of the players, making it superb for family play. Game play is quick as each game is only 5 minutes, and the excitement levels are high. We think that is an excellent fun family game packed with tension and fun – and a fortune in gold (well, gold looking plastic)!
Bank Attack is a fast, fun and frantic family game where players have to use listening skills, memory, concentration, speed and teamwork to beat The Boss and earn the contents of the vault.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £14.99
For more information, visit www.johnadams.co.uk. Available to buy from Amazon here.
