Category: Two player

We’ve all wanted to be members of a prehistoric tribe, hunting dinosaurs for dinner and competing to be the next tribal chief, right? Right. Well, now you can, because that’s the premise of the board game Ooga!

In Ooga!, the board is a randomized array of dino tiles, comprised of 5 different color-coded species on 3 different terrains, as well as the occasional coconut (for nutritional balance, of course). The Tribal Chief flips over a menu, which will be the goal until it’s completed — for instance, 1 red, 1 purple, 1 green and 2 blues. The aim is to collect all the dinosaurs on the menu, at which point you call out “Ooga!” discard those tiles, collect the menu, and become the next Tribal Chief. The game ends once all 12 menus have been completed, at which point whoever has the most of them wins.

The catch is that you can only pick up the dino tiles which not only match at least one color on the menu, but also a terrain from the current bones. Each hunt, the current Tribal Chief will toss the four bones, and whichever flip picture-side-up are available that round. One of these, rather than a terrain, marks Coconuts as fair game, which act as a wild card to replace any one dinosaur when completing a menu.

I should also probably mention that once the bones are thrown, you collect dinosaurs on a first-come, first-serve basis by stabbing them with a suction cup on a stick. (Sorry, I meant a “spear.”) The round ends as soon as all but one of the players has caught a tile, or, since we were playing two-player, once each has caught one. Mom refers to this as “the matchy and stabby game,” and honestly if that’s not incentive to try it I don’t know what is.

(Apparently I’ve already done a write-up for this game, but I forgot until after I had already written this one, so… if you didn’t try Ooga! the last time I posted about it, maybe you’ll try it now.)

Hey, would you look at that? It’s been over a year since I last wrote about a Fluxx variation (Jumanji Fluxx, December 2019). I guess we’re due for another one!

Our newest rediscovery in that vast, mythical land known as “the game closet” is Eco Fluxx. From Keepers like Birds and Flowers to Actions like Extinction and Pollution, this deck is, like the others, a fun and quirky reimagining of the original Fluxx concept. It’s more than re-themed cards, however, as like every version of Fluxx it has some unique mechanics of its own.

The first big difference is the Creepers. In any game of Fluxx, you can’t win if you have a Creeper in front of you (unless the current Goal says otherwise). In Eco Fluxx, though, there are 3 Creepers, and while they’re in play, nobody can win. Furthermore, 2 of them have a second, more active negative effect — Forest Fire will force you to discard one of your Keepers every turn you start with it in play, until you no longer have any (at which point the fire goes out and gets discarded). If you have Flood instead (or, ow, at the same time), then at the end of your turn you have to discard your hand and give Flood to the next player, until either someone intervenes (plays a card that allows you to discard a Creeper) or it’s gone through every player in the game.

The other feature that stands out as specific to Eco Fluxx is a particular subset of Goals that I’ve been referring to as the “[x] eats [y] Goals,” like “Snakes Eat Mice,” “Mice Eat Seeds,” and “Rabbits Eat Leaves.” The key difference here is that where most Goals say “if you have [x] and [y] in play, you win” and some Goals say “if you have [x] in play and nobody has [y], you win” (ex: the “Ferns” Goal requires Leaves and no Flowers), “[x] eats [y]” Goals say that you win if you have [x] in play and anybody has [y]. For instance, in the picture below, I won with the Goal “Bats Eat Insects” by having Bats in play, because even though I didn’t have Insects, Mom did.

Along with this new style of Goal are a couple ways to combat it — the first is Poison, a Keeper that protects your other Keepers from being eaten. The second is a New Rule called Camouflage — you can “hide” one of your Keepers by either playing it face down or flipping it over if it’s already on the table. You can only have one hidden at a time, but while it is, the card is treated as if it isn’t in play, meaning things like “[x] eats [y]” Goals, Forest Fire, and Keeper Limits don’t affect it. You can reveal your hidden cards at any time, but you can only hide them on your turn.

Unsurprisingly, I love this version of Fluxx at least as much as I love the others, and I hope you will too!

Some of you may recall that I wrote about a game called Just Desserts a couple years back. For those of you who don’t, I’d advise you read that post here before continuing with this one. Why? Because today I’m talking about the expansions!

Just Desserts currently has two expansions: Just Coffee, and Better With Bacon. Yeah, I know, ew. Believe me, Mom and I spent plenty of time making faces at cards like Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes and Maple Bacon Donut.

The expansions don’t change the mechanics of the game; what they do is add two new ingredients (coffee and bacon), and two new families, bringing the count up to 9. Each has 4 customers, and six new desserts. For each expansion pack, there’s one dessert that doesn’t have the expansion’s special ingredient in it, and a customer who’s favorite is that one dessert. Which makes sense — none of the other families have one ingredient entirely in common, after all.

The one thing I think is really different with the expansions is that they each have a character who has their favorite listed as “Anything With Bacon” or “Anything With Coffee,” which allows players a way to use a single-ingredient card on its own (not possible with any other customers) or to use something with extra ingredients and still get the tip for a favorite.

For some extra fun and opinionated commentary (because seriously, why do people put bacon in desserts) I’d suggest getting the expansions (Just Coffee, Better With Bacon) to add to your base deck, or buying them all together at the Looney Labs online store. It’s worth it!

No, not the eating utensil. Chopsticks is a simple yet entertaining game I learned in elementary school to pass time while waiting in line. It’s convenient, as it doesn’t require much equipment — just two hands (at least four fingers each) and basic arithmetic.

I’ve usually played this as a two-player game, but you can really have as many people as you like, so long as you can fit them all facing each other (directly across for two, circle-ish for anything more) in whatever space you’re playing in.

Each player starts with both hands out in front of them, one finger on each raised. From there, whoever is going first will choose someone (anyone) and tap one of their hands with one of their own. The tapped hand raises a second finger, and play continues either clockwise or counter-clockwise (because it honestly doesn’t matter so long as it’s agreed upon).

It’s not always one that’s added to the hand. The principle of the game is that however many fingers are raised on the hand that taps, that’s the number added to the hand that’s tapped. Once a hand gets to five, that hand is fisted, put behind your back, or otherwise indicated as “dead.” If both your hands are dead, you’re out of the game.

Instead of tapping someone else’s hand, you can choose to tap your own together. This is an action of rearranging chopsticks; for instance, if you have four fingers raised on one hand and one on the other, you might adjust it to three and two. You’ll end up with the same amount of fingers raised, just redistributed, usually to lower the chance of a high-numbered one getting out. The rules vary by group (make sure you confirm them ahead of time!) so in some versions it’s acceptable to redistribute chopsticks to a dead hand, bringing it back into play, and in others once the hand is out, it stays out. It is not, however, a legal move to flip the values of your hands. (Think 2 and 3 to 3 and 2; nothing has actually changed, which prevents the game from properly progressing.)

The winner is, of course, the last person with at least one hand left in the game.

Ah, yes, furious ramen. Or, well, ramen with chili peppers in it. But, like anger, that’s only a bad thing sometimes! Let me explain. Ramen Fury is a surprisingly backstabbing-intensive game of ingredient collecting and meal preparation.

Very basically, each player has three bowls, and each bowl of ramen can have up to five Ingredients (noodles excluded). To be eaten, there has to be a Flavor and at least one additional Ingredient. Flavor determines scoring. For instance, Beef Flavor scores for unique Protein Ingredients, whereas Shrimp Flavor bowls are worth four points per pair of Protein and Vegetable ingredients. There are also special Ingredients: Nori Garnishes and Chili Peppers. These can be played at any time (as a free action) into anyone’s bowl. Nori is a plus one, while Chilis are a minus one. That is, unless they’re in a bowl with Fury Flavor, which scores two points per pepper, and is where Ramen Fury gets the “Fury” part of its name.

You get two actions per turn. There are six of them: Prep, where you place an Ingredient in one of your bowls; Draw, where you take either a face-up card from the Pantry or the top card from the Ingredient Deck; Spoon, a twice per game action where you remove the top Ingredient from any bowl (including your opponents’); Restock, where you replace all four Pantry cards; Eat, where you finish a bowl of ramen, making it untouchable; and Empty, which you perform on your bowl of choice and is largely self-explanatory.

The final round is initiated either when any player has eaten their third bowl of ramen or when the Ingredient Deck is empty. Scoring is directly correlated to ingredients and handily mapped out on the Flavor/special Ingredient cards, making it quick and easy to calculate.

So, sit back, make some ramen, and appreciate the strategic Protein/Vegetable duality advantage of tofu!

Yep, another Fluxx. Specifically, the Fluxx that ended up in my Christmas stocking this year. (As well as a Doctor Who Fluxx 13th Doctor expansion pack, but that’s sidelining…) Don’t worry, there’ll be no spoilers here for the Jumanji films; I haven’t even seen the new one yet. More importantly, I’m not actually focusing on the plot, because, well… this is Fluxx. Plot? What plot? We make our own plots here, thank you very much.

Anyways, I’m not really here to talk about Fluxx, or the new Keepers and Goals for this version of it, as I am to talk about what’s new and different about the game mechanics in this version. I mean, sure, there are some interesting new cards — I definitely don’t recall having seen “Let’s Keep Doing That” as a New Rule before — but that’s not really big news.

The really big news is that there are Danger cards — cards with a yellow and black border that allow players to be “eliminated.” Elimination is both more and less drastic than it sounds — you lose all your cards, both your Keepers and the ones in hand, but after everyone else has taken a turn, you draw a hand of three cards and play from there. So you’re not out, you’re just kind of… starting over. The conditions for these danger cards are usually based around Keepers, like saying, “If a player has Albino Rhinos in front of them, that player is eliminated.” I may or may not have used a whole slew of Danger cards on Mom. What can I say? I grew up on Munchkin.

There are also optional Meta Rules, which we didn’t play with this time around, but as I understand it there are two of them. The first, if used, gets placed next to the Basic Rules in the middle, and indicates that you must shout “Jumanji” when you win the game. The second, “No More Lives,” gets placed at the bottom of the deck, and once it comes up it, elimination is permanent.

I should also probably mention that, like “The Doctor” and “Companions” in Doctor Who Fluxx, Jumanji Fluxx has certain cards marked as “Adventurers” and “Animals,” which for certain card mechanics are interchangeable amongst themselves.