Author: Cassandra

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!