St. Louis Boardgamers
Timothy Hunt
December 2005
USA

First impressions.

The box is sturdy, the cute slightly rubbery animals are wonderful - they are wonderfully designed, and the artwork on the cards matches beautifully. The Denim bag to hold the animals is nice too. What a shame the quality of the cards is not quite as high as they could be. They are not linen finished and have a bit of a tendency to stick together.

Aim of the game

Lose all your cards by being the first to make the correct animal noise on an opponent when top cards match.

Playing the game

To start with, each player randomly takes a little rubber animal from the bag, places it on the table, and makes a noise that would be identified with that animal (for example, "woof" for the dog). Then everyone hides their animal in their barn, and then they go round again, in turn, making the noise of their animal. Everyone is dealt an equal number of cards, any extras being returned to the box, and those cards become the draw decks for the players.

Each player in turn draws a card and places it face up in front of them. If their card matches another face-up card on the table, the players that have the two matching cards have to make the noise of the animal of that opponent. So, for example, if Chris has the donkey in his barn, and Mark has the frog, then if Chris had turned up a cat card, and then Mark turns up a cat card, Chris has to try and say "ribbit" before Mark says "heehaw". Whoever correctly says it first wins, and the loser has to pick up their stack of face-up cards, and the face-up cards of the winner. Note, however, that any animal noise that would identify that animal would work, so Chris could quite happily say "croak" instead. Ideally, a match occurring should not halt play, but other plays should continue to play cards so that other matches can occur.

There is one special card in the deck, the "Swap" card. If you turn this card face up, you draw a new animal from the bag, and put your old one back in, making the noise of the new one before placing it under your barn.

If you deal your last card out, you win, unless your last card is also a match, in which case you have to win the match up to win the game

Thoughts

It's quite a fun little memory and reaction game. With the right crowd, there's lots of laughter, as people try hard to remember each others animals to make the right noises. It does have a little quirk in that if someone doesn't match often, or they manage to get their opponents noise in first, it can then be a little harder to remember what their animal is to make their noise shoudl you match with them again later. But that is of course all part of the game. The fact this can accommodate up to 8 makes it a useful game for a slightly larger group, and it's a great light little filler. Someone even suggested making it a drinking game, but I'm not sure that would help the memory any.

It's certainly a game I'd be willing to play under most circumstances, but I know that there are certain groups that would be more appreciative of the light silliness than others.

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