From Maleficent to Jafar, board game Villainous lets you play as Disney baddies – and it looks wickedly fun

The Queen of Hearts? Misunderstood. Captain Hook? Sympathetic. Ursula? Simply unfortunate. If you’ve ever found yourself trying to consider Disney’s pantheon of classic villains in a different light, this is the board game for you.

Villainous flips the typical goodie-baddie focus of Disney films such as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid, casting players in the role of their respective evil-doers rather than their plucky heroes.

Each villain – the full list of six also includes Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent, Aladdin’s Jafar and Robin Hood’s Prince John – has their own deck of unique abilities and reigns over their own individual world. That means there’s no Kingdom Hearts-style crossovers: don’t expect to find Captain Hook and Ursula ruling above and below the waves together.

Turns involve players moving their villain, each represented by a gorgeously stylised pawn, between spaces on their board. Each space offers up an action, such as the chance to play cards to deploy allies, use items, cast magic and trigger various effects. Other abilities include messing with your opponents by drawing from their deck and covering locations on their board.

As you’d expect, those pesky do-gooders also show up from time to time, trying to spoil your plans and needing to be dealt with in order to work towards your individual win condition based on the villain’s motivations – for example, Maleficent is trying to curse every section on her board, while Prince John is all about hoarding power and Jafar must find a way into the Cave of Wonder and obtain the magical lamp with the genie inside.

Villainous has a really fantastic look and its gameplay sounds promising – little surprise when you learn that it’s been designed by the team behind the excellent film spin-off Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle.

Villainous is due for release on August 1st – get your evil cackles at the ready.