SNAP Review – Streamer Standoff

Streamers are really polarizing. Even if you are the kind of person who likes watching streamers, sometimes you’ll find someone that really vibes with you, and other times watching someone is like gritting your teeth. Other times they’re just kind of mid.

Well, board games are the same way. So channeling our inner streamer critique, let’s take a look at a board game about streamers.

This is a SNAP review for Streamer Standoff.

Game

Streamer Standoff is a primarily a set collection game, where you are a streamer, vying against all of the other streamers for subs. 2-5 people are trying their best to go viral in this game that lasts about half an hour.

Art

So, let’s talk about the art in this game.

There really isn’t a lot of art to Streamer Standoff, other than the cover art and the player mats (or the Streamer mats). The rest of the components use iconography to represent the topic icons or the influence perks.

It’s fine and serviceable, and the graphic design is clear. But nothing here is going to get you to mash that “like” button.

Mechanics

Let’s talk about how we play.

Start by laying out the Trend Track. Shuffle and deal five Trend cards below the track, and then shuffle and deal five Collab Opportunity cards somewhere above the track. Put the rest of the Collab cards back in the box, because you won’t use them.

Each player takes a Player Mat and a clip, clipped to the left side of the “1” on the bottom of their track. Then, each player gets four Content Cards and two Influence Tokens.

Turns go around the table. On your turn, play a Content card in front of you. You can start a new video, or you can add the card to an existing stack of cards – an existing video. Cards with only one Topic icon will also get you a free influence token.

If the video now meets all of the requirements of one of the available Trend cards, you may release that video to the public by discarding those cards and claiming the Trend. You’ll move your scoring clip up by the number of new subs according to the Trend Track, adjusted by any additional rewards shown on the Trend itself.

Slide the Trends forward and flip a new card to go at the beginning of the track.

Trend cards have requirements, like a minimum number of topics, required topics, deal-breaker topics (which means you can’t have those at all on that video), and they also have rewards.

The trick of the game is waiting for the right time to complete a video and hit the peak interest for a certain Trend.

Some Trend cards rewards are permanent bonus topic icons that you will now always have going forward. These lower your acquisition cost for future Trends, but also mean you might be permanently unable to claim Trends with deal-breaker topics that match those icons.

These icons also count toward the Collab cards above the trend meter. If you’ve got the permanent bonus icons to claim a Collab card, declare it, take it, and you get those subs too.

If you decide not to claim a Trend during your turn, you can play as many influence tokens as you want. Just show them to everyone and do what they say. (The exception here are the Hype and Scandal tokens. Those you place face-down on a Trend card on the track, without telling anyone what they are.)

Draw up to four content cards at the end of your turn.

Once someone hits 20 million subs, finish the round. Then the player with the most subs wins!

Expectations

So Andrew, what did we expect from Streamer Standoff?

I had no idea what to expect with this game. We’re not really big streaming people, despite being content creators ourselves, so I have to admit I didn’t even know who DrLupo was. I thought I might see some references to videos that I had seen in years past, but frankly, that was about it.

I just hoped our kids would like it. Streaming and viral videos are much more a Gen Z and Gen Alpha thing.

Surprises

So, what about surprises?

Well, I knew there would be some kind of a disconnect between the theme of this game and how we interact with it, but I was surprised at just how flat it fell for me. Maybe this is part of getting old, but I felt super disconnected from this theme from the very moment we set it up.

I just couldn’t bring myself to care about mixing content cards to make a video about “what color is this dress, with a puppy cam, at the grand finals”, or “reading my high school diary about real blind dates while mining crypto”. But I also don’t understand how my kids can stare at YouTube videos, slack-jawed for hours at end, either.

So not connecting with it, I guess wasn’t surprising, but just how much I didn’t connect with it, was. There was absolutely no spark.

I think this might be because the gameplay, just isn’t that inspiring to me, either. We’ve seen this kind of push-your-luck betting style game where you want to wait for something to hit a value threshold you care about, or that it’s worth it. And we’ve seen set collection before. But neither one of these mechanics gets a novel treatment in this game.

I either need amazing mechanics or a theme I vibe with to make it work for me, and this game didn’t have either one.

I was most surprised that it didn’t even really vibe with our kids. They found the video topics funnier than I did, but that wasn’t enough to keep them engaged. Even our youngest – who often quotes videos to us – didn’t really connect with this game.

Unfortunately, this is also because the first few rounds of it just feel – boring. Because most of the video Trends require four or more topic icons to claim them, everyone spends their first couple of turns just collecting and playing out cards, with no reason to do anything else – like move Trends around or mess with an opponent’s video in progress.

And then once things get rolling, you’re pretty much at the mercy of whatever Trend cards come out and how well that matches your hand. You only ever play one card on a turn, and you usually only draw a single card to replace it. So if your hand cards aren’t good for the current Trends, you just have to build something out for the future and hope it will work.

Recommended?

So Anitra, are we going to recommend Streamer Standoff?

Well, I don’t hate this game. I did enjoy making silly video combinations to claim Trends. But it just wasn’t enough to make this something I’d want to play again. Even when we used the advanced player abilities, it just didn’t hit for our family.

Mostly, it reminded me that even though you and I make these review videos, we’re just not hip enough for streaming.

Also, we said “hip enough”.

I’m old.

Anyway, we would recommend Streamer Standoff for teens and young adults who are REALLY into streaming culture. Otherwise, maybe save your subs for something less standoff-ish.

We’re going to give Streamer Standoff 2.5 million subs out of five.

And that’s Streamer Standoff – in a SNAP!

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Streamer Standoff from Maestro Media for this review.

This post contains affiliate links, which do not change your price, but help support The Family Gamers.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?