There are games that are rewardingly difficult, even educational (like Wingspan!), and there are games that are simple and hilarious. Monster Factory is one of the latter.
You’re building monsters. Like Dizios, you’re aligning like sides to like, only in this case it’s much more straightforward: there are purple/wide sides, and green/narrow ones. You draw one tile at a time and play it immediately on any player’s monster, provided it fits. It only gets discarded if there’s nowhere to put it! A completed monster is, of course, one with nowhere for new tiles to go. If all monsters are completed, the game ends; otherwise, the player immediately draws a tile as the base for a minion. When the game ends – which can also be caused by tiles running out – all completed monsters and minions are scored, monsters for total number of tiles and minions for tiles with eyes on them. What you want, then, is to build as large a monster as you can without running out of time.
And that’s it! That’s all the mechanics in one paragraph. Like I said: simple. The important part of this game is how fantastically ridiculous the pieces are, both on their own and compounded. One of our favorites is the green appendage holding a little screaming person! Which really sets the tone, don’t you think?
It’s always a delight when a game can multitask! Wingspan is one of those strategy games with lots of moving parts and several ways to earn points. We’ve played it four times now and I haven’t used the same strategy twice! It’s also an educational deep-dive into the birds of North America.
It’s essential that the core mechanics are simple – everything else is as complicated as you let it be, and as informational as you let it be, but the actual pattern all play follows is pretty straightforward! Each player has little colored cubes and a player board. Each turn, there are four actions available to them. The first is to play a bird in the leftmost open space in one of their three habitats, marking the column with a cube. After the first column, playing birds costs eggs.
The other three actions are specific to those habitats. In each case, your cube starts in the rightmost open space of the habitat, on the habitat’s ability itself, and then moves left, giving you the choice of activating each bird it passes over, provided they have a “When Activated” ability. (Also possible are “When Played” and “Once Between Turns.”) The habitats themselves are the forest, which lets you gain food – necessary to play most birds – from the birdfeeder; the grasslands, which let your birds lay eggs; and the wetlands, which let you draw more bird cards. A round is over when all cubes have been placed, and one is then used to mark end-of-round scoring. The result is that your number of actions each round goes down as the number of things each action does goes up. The game has four rounds. Scoring is a tally of the point values of your birds themselves, end-of-round goals, bonus cards (you pick one at the beginning of the game and can draw more later), eggs, food on cards (bird ability), and tucked cards (also a bird ability). Like I said – many ways to earn points!
And then, of course, there’s the technical aspects. The educational aspects. The part I’m nerding out over the most. Including the swift-start, the cards cover 180 North American bird species, including: their common names, Latin names, their habitats, what they eat, the continents they live on, nest type, wingspan, and how many eggs they lay in a year – that last one was brought down to scale. Some of these are just neat – continents, Latin names – and some are mechanically relevant! Various cards and end-of-round goals are dependent on nest type, or number of eggs in a particular nest type. (There’s a wild type that counts as everything, and in reality they have non-standard nesting habits. Like black terns, which apparently nest on water.) How many eggs the species naturally lays determines the limit for how many they can have in the game. Wingspan is relevant specifically when certain predatory birds are preying on the top card of the deck – if it’s below a certain wingspan, it’s edible. There is so much love and care and research permeating every inch of this game; it’s palpable and contagious. I expect the same is true of the expansions, too, which feature other continents! Someday…
The third and final game in the series! Unlike Cat Days and Woof Days, I can only speculate on the behavioral accuracy of this one. Still, Dino Days features a fun variety of the creatures in question with, like the others, a mix of new and familiar mechanics. (As this is a comparison post, I would highly recommend reading the other posts first! At minimum, the one on Cat Days, where I explained the overall mechanics of the game.)
The most immediately obvious difference is in your starting hand. Like in Cat Days, there’s a fixed card all players start with, and unlike in Cat Days, this card is an animal worth points all on its own. Quite a lot of them, in fact! The catch? Giganotosaurus’s superpower is scaring away all other dinos on the board you’ve played it on, so you need to decide quickly whether you’re using it to garner points or holding it to wield against your opponent.
There are other dinos with similar, though less all-encompassing, predator abilities, and of course some non-dino cards as well. Another major difference with this deck is the Diplodocus: a dino that’s split across Diplodocus Front and Diplodocus Rear cards, which you must have both of to play – spanning two adjacent days of the week, counting as one action, and, if it’s still around at the end of the game, scoring its player twelve points. A tricky set of conditions, sweetened by another factor: many of the dino-removing or -stealing effects can’t touch it. Which in turn makes the Meteor a coveted prize, as one of the few exceptions!
And of course, there are your staples like the Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and Ankylosaurus, with much chiller day-of-the-week effects. Triceratops being Sunday-only, for example. True to form, the dinosaur game is one of carnivores and herbivores, functionally distinct from those of Cat Trees and Muddy Paws. Which is what excited me most about this as a set, I think – not only do you pick the flavor text, you get to pick the tone!
I suppose “Dog Days” was disqualified for connotations. That’s alright – I think “Woof Days” is cuter! From the same people who made Cat Days, Woof Days is… well, the dog version. Admittedly, I know far less about dog behavior, so I can only hope it’s as spot-on as the cat game. I’d expect that it is. The contrast between the games is especially interesting! (That’s mostly what I’ll be discussing here, so reading the Cat Days post first would be beneficial.)
Instead of starting with four random cards and a Cat Tree or equivalent, players start this game with five random cards, making your opponent’s opening moves even more unpredictable. Whereas Cat Days cards tend to affect the top card of a pile, many movement effects in Woof Days move the whole stack as a unit, which in retrospect highlighted for me the mix ‘n match behavior of cats and who they choose to hang out with. Some of the animal cards correlate pretty directly – the Rescued Cat and the Mixed Breed have the same effect – while others are distinct. The Chihuahua, for instance, must be played on a day that’s not adjacent to a Great Dane, German Shepherd, or St. Bernard.
Overall, it’s sort of like Fluxx variants: you expect the overall mechanics to be the same, in new flavors. And there’s one more flavor to discuss, so I expect I’ll be posting about that next week!
The advantage to a cat game produced by an animal rescue is that they clearly, viscerally understand cat behavior. In Cat Days, your board is the seven days of the week… and the cats are all picky about where they’re willing to sit.
Some cats are easier to place than others. The Rescued Cat can go on any day, on any board. The Fluffy Cat can only be played on Sunday on any board. More difficultly, the Playful Cat can be played anywhere from Tuesday to Saturday on your own board, but only if both adjacent days are already occupied. All the cats have their quirks, and they’re drawn or played one at a time – be judicious which action you take, because once any player has filled all seven days, the game ends immediately!
At that point, scoring happens, generally counting only the top cat for each day. However, each player starts the game with a Cat Tree, which they can play on a day to let it score up to three! There are other items in the deck too, like the Cardboard Box – play it on your own board to lure an opponent’s cat to it.
As a cat person, I adore this on principle. It’s also simple enough to play while holding a conversation! So long as you keep track of whose turn it is. (We used the box for that.) And it’s part of a series of games, so expect my thoughts on the others soon!
Cowabunga is a saying, yes, and also a cattle-themed surfing card game. The goal is simple – to wipe out the least!
The execution is more difficult, and requires a combination of luck, memory, and mental math. The whole game revolves, unsurprisingly, around a wave, the height of which is altered by player actions. Each turn, you’ll play a Wave Card, adding to the wave height when the wave is rising, and subtracting when it falls. But be careful! There are also Obstacle Cards, numbered ten through thirty, and if the sum (or difference) of your play equals an opponent’s Obstacle, you wipe out! You’re not out of a game, but you do have to take a Cow Pawn.
That said, you do have one advantage – you get to see the Obstacle Cards when your opponents first draw them. You then have to remember which numbers they are, and hope your Wave Cards grant you the option of avoiding them. This is further complicated as the game goes on, because whenever someone takes the wave to higher than thirty, or lower than ten, not only does the direction flip, but the player to their right draws another Obstacle. In other words, if you’re the one to cross that threshold, the surf just got more hazardous for you.
Especially in a two-player game, you can reach a truly impressive number of Obstacles to remember. I think I had to avoid twelve numbers, the last time we played. Regardless of the number of players, the game ends when someone reaches four Cow Pawns or the last Obstacle Card is drawn. And as I said earlier, the player who wiped out the least wins!
We first played Flyin’ Goblin back in January, the day it was gifted to Mom, and we’ve played it many times since. This is mainly because there are catapults involved.
Yes, you heard that right. Catapults! The “Flyin'” part of Flyin’ Goblin is quite literal; gameplay involves launching your Goblin meeples into the castle so they can pillage the Rooms they land in. Coins are used to recruit more to the cause, be they more soldiers to fling, the Captain, to fling with doubled effects, or Robbers, who chill on Roofs and burgle a Diamond a turn. Diamonds are one of the victory conditions; your other option is to build all tiers of the Totem without your opponents knocking it down. (The Totem also sits on a rooftop, and costs Coins to build.)
The actual catapulting is a mix of accuracy and speed – you want to land in specific Rooms, certainly, but you also want to launch all your Goblins! Everyone starts this step at the same time, and continue at their own pace until all but one player have called out “Finished!” The last player then gets one more launch.
Alongside resource Rooms, there are a couple that have penalties, and several that simply have effects. Whether they’re good or bad depends entirely on what you were looking for! They are not, however, optional. If you land in the Pantry and you have two Coins, you must trade them for two Diamonds.
The “honeypot” of the arrangement is the King’s Bedchambers, which give you three Diamonds for landing there. If you gained the Balcony by knocking the King off it (not visible in my pictures, as the King has already been displaced and given his consolation prize of a lower Roof; at the beginning of the game, the Balcony balances over the top of his Bedchambers) you get five instead! Knocking the King down from his lower Roof will also gain you the Balcony, later in the game, but now you’re just bullying the poor guy.
If you’re not familiar with the serotonin rush of flinging little game pieces at the board for points, I highly recommend it. Good for the soul. Try not to hit the other players, though!
Scarf-N-Barf is a vomit-humored game from Steve Jackson Games, and both very simple and very quick. It’s exactly what it says on the tin; you’re going to (in card game manner, thankfully) eat lots of junk food, then go on crazy rides and try not to hurl.
For breakfast, lunch, and dinner each – you’ve spent all day doing this, vomit not deterring you – you’ll pick three of the six cards you’ve been dealt, representing the food you eat. Some of these sound really good: Cheese Curds! Some do not, like the Chowder Pop. All foods have a color-number combo associated with them; the more points its worth, the more of these criteria they have. After everyone has picked their meals, three Rides are dealt (with names like “Tilt-A-Hurl” and “Hork-A-Tron”) which all players will suffer together. One Ride at a time, the corresponding color dice will be rolled, and any food items that match both the color of the die and the number rolled are lost; you throw up straight into the discard. Any foods that survive all three Rides are successfully digested. At the end of the day, the player who’s retained the highest point value wins!
This is one of those games that’s about luck in a variety of ways. The cards you’re given. The dice indicated by the Ride cards. The way you actually roll. Doubles on your cards are a pain; doubles on your dice are a gift. There are several ways to strategize and none of them are guaranteed to work. The chaos is palpable. And your actual stomach’s contents are safe, unless the concept (or the cards) makes you queasy.
That’s right! The cat, the myth, the legend: Purrrlock Holmes! Purrrlock Holmes: Furriarty’s Trail is, you’ll surely have deduced, a deductive reasoning game. The goal is to work together to catch Furriarty before he can escape London, while simultaneously competing to be the best Inspector!
It comes down to a lot of smaller cases, like pulling threads. Each player has an Investigation, stood facing away from them so only their opponents can see. This card, like all the rest, features one of five characters, and one of twelve times. The goal is to guess one or both correctly. Not without evidence, of course! Each turn, you’ll Investigate two cards from your hand, revealing them to the other players, who will tell you if each is a Lead or Dead End. A Lead is a card that has the same Suspect, same Hour, or an adjacent Hour to your Investigation. You also draw and Investigate two cards when you draw a new Investigation, so you always have something to work with!
You may guess once per turn; if you’re right, you take tokens from Furriarty’s trail equal to the aspects you deduced and place them on the Investigation, discarding the Leads and Dead Ends. Note that if you guess both, you must get both right; otherwise, you’re incorrect, and your opponents are disallowed to tell you why. If you guess incorrectly, the Investigation stays open, and you draw no cards this turn. Usually, you end your turn by passing your two remaining cards, then drawing two new ones; instead, you’ll have no choice but to Investigate the cards you’re given next turn. This isn’t always the worst thing – I’ve found that if you’re down to two times and you know the suspect, or vice versa, it’s often worth taking the guess and, if necessary, taking next turn’s guess before you Investigate.
The goal, ultimately, is to catch Furriarty, who functions like a token and moves one spot forward each time everyone’s had a turn, revealing the token he passed. Furriarty is worth three points, while the other tokens range from one to three. Once closing an Investigation snags him, the game is over, and whoever has the most points is Scotland Pound Chief Inspector! If Furriarty reaches the end of the trail, though, and one last round isn’t enough to catch up, Furriarty escapes, everyone loses, and the player with the least points is… Litter Box Inspector. *shudder*
The timing is well-balanced, so it tends to be pretty close. You can call on Holmes for help, once per game, to take an extra guess and a one point penalty. Absolutely worth it, to not get stuck on box duty. And to catch that crook!
Meeple Party is, in fact, a game in which Meeple throw a party. Who knew? Better yet, it’s cooperative, so you’re all throwing a party together! As parties generally should be.
There are, by default, five Roommates throwing the party. Players each pick one to play and the rest are NPCs. All players can move all Roommates, just like they can move all guests, but certain Surprises will give or take Stress from specific Roommates, which is the only time your specific character matters. The backs of the character tiles double as rooms – those rooms specifically are optional, but there are a certain set required in the house, namely a Kitchen, Living Room, Dining Room, Bathroom, Bedroom, Door, and Outside. Rooms are arranged however the players want.
Each Roommate’s turn starts by welcoming a new Meeple to the party. This means drawing one out of a bag, and then placing them in a room of your choice and activating their effect – each color of Meeple is a different personality type, with can draw Meeple toward them or push them away. The exception is the white Meeple, which cause a Surprise and then disappear back into the bag, to cause more later! In the photo below, we drew The Conga Line as our Surprise – it moves all Meeple in the room with the most to the room with the least, which is how we wound up with five in the Bathroom. You then move a Meeple of your choice to an adjacent room and activate their effect. The goal is meet your Photo criteria!
We’ll get to Photos, but first – Disasters. The difficulty level you chose at the beginning of the game will determine whether you get individual or communal Disasters, or both! Disasters list criteria you must not meet, lest you gain Stress. If all players get three Stress, the party ends prematurely because you blew up and kicked everyone out. If you have individual Disasters, they only trigger on your turn.
After that, you get to check for Photo opportunities! Everyone has two Photos in hand that they’re trying to take, with either a minimum or exact requirement. Sometimes these clash painfully with Disasters, like when I needed exactly one Flirt and one Jerk in a Bathroom, and also couldn’t have Jerks and Flirts in the same room without incurring Stress.
The good news is, 3, 6, 9, and 12 o’clock on the Clock refresh Disasters! The Clock activates after you check for Photos, and after you move it up one space per Photo you completed this turn. There are a few different effects, some more inconvenient than others. (*cough* laying down Meeple *cough*) (Laying down Meeple can’t be moved until you’ve taken a turn to stand them back up. They’re napping, sick, etc.) You then replace any Photos or Disasters you triggered this turn.
The length of the party is also determined at the beginning of the game; in the (out-of-game) photos, we were playing Casual, or a 12-Photo goal. The objective is to reach the end of the party without completely stressing out!
This one has a colorful and entertaining realism (which is not a word I thought I’d assign to Meeple) and the mix of cards, chosen room arrangements, chosen difficulties (in multiple ways), and optional items and pets (each with their own mechanics) all combine to give Meeple Party a whole lot of replay value! We haven’t played the alternate game modes yet, but I look forward to trying the Hot Tub Party, where you aim to get as many Meeple into the Hot Tub before stressing out.
