Category: Quick games

Because sometimes, the end of the world is adorable. Right? Right. It’s certainly the case in Doomlings, “a delightful card game for the end of the world”! Though, to be totally fair, the game only ends at the End of the World. It is, more accurately, about the possible courses of life on Earth! Or some unspecified, distant planet…

Doomlings is a game of populations and traits, like Evolution for amoebas. Perhaps your organism is eloquent, or warm-blooded! Each trait comes with its own bonuses and setbacks, even if they’re just opportunity costs, and make up the tapestry of a complex, hopefully well-adapted life form. Your options always stabilize per the scope of your Gene Pool, so the higher that value is, the more cards you have in hand! Your default is always playing one, but some cards have actions that let you play others, or End of the World bonuses per certain cards still in your hand.

The End of the World is, sadly, inevitable. How else would the game end? Rounds are tracked by Ages, starting with the Birth of Life and instituting different effects, some immediate and some lasting the whole Age. Eventually, you hit a Catastrophe! Catastrophes mark the ends of Eras, of which the game has three, and at the third Catastrophe, the world ends. The poor planet can only take so much. Between World’s End effects, traits’ face values, and any bonuses and modifiers, this one is very much anyone’s game right up to the end. Which is thematically on-brand! Doomlings offers a very cheerful, carefree apocalypse experience, with jokes aplenty and the doctrine that there is no secret perfect path in life. It’s sprawly and swingy and colorful in a way that brings me joy. And the fact that it’s cute sure doesn’t hurt!

Wizard Kittens asks and answers the question, “What would cats get up to if they had magic?” Which is, of course, making a big ol’ mess and then trying not to get caught. Players are student cats, who have accidentally unleashed a whole host of Curses and have to defeat them before their teacher finds out.

This is an excellent game for Young Gamers! The mechanics come in tiers, so you can introduce whatever degree of complicated is right for your players, and there are no hidden cards. Each kitten has a standard set of actions – Summon, Sling, Swat, and Switch – with the Advanced version replacing one of those with a character power. Progress looks like collecting the right ingredients in your Ritual Circle’s chapters to defeat the corresponding Curses, with a chance that the other players may get to them first. Victory looks like defeating all the Curses, and scoring the most points between those and Extra Credit.

…Usually.

See, getting caught isn’t an idle threat. In the deck, on one of the last eleven cards, is Professor Whispurr, and if the Professor is drawn then the game ends prematurely. At this point, you do not want to have the most points – you want to have the least, so you can plead innocent of being involved! Luckily, Extra Credit only applies if you didn’t get caught, and managed to seem passably responsible; these cards usually award points for cards left in your Circle once the Curses are done. Also available is the Magical Monsters expansion, which doesn’t change too much and does add Monsters. They function a bit like Curses, but with effects pre-defeat!

This game’s adorable, and I love the variety of “pick your poison” in difficulties, character powers, New Rules, etc., as well as the duality of the end conditions. Most especially, however, I love the expansion’s new kitty’s name: Van Meowsing.

With only 16 cards and some loot cubes, Munchkin Loot Letter is quick and compact, featuring familiar cards from Munchkin and mechanics reminiscent of Knuckle Sammich. It’s a simple “draw one, play one,” with a hand size of one, leaving you choosing between two cards each turn. Each card has a value and an effect – the goal is to be either the last player standing, or the one with the highest value card when the deck runs out!

Effects come in a few different flavors, mostly ways to eliminate other players depending on what’s in their hand. By far the most common card is the Potted Plant, a 1-value card that lets you make a guess at what someone else is holding. If you’re right, they’re out! (You cannot, however, guess Potted Plant.) The higher value cards are deliberately inconvenient, meanwhile, like the Turbonium Dragon which must be discarded if you ever have the Net Troll or Dread Gazebo in hand. For a tiny, tiny deck, it’s impressively well-balanced! You’re meant to play multiple rounds, best-of fashion, with the loot cubes to keep track of who’s winning.

I have to tell you, looking up whether I’d already blogged this one was substantially more difficult than I expected – apparently there’s a lot of posts with “wild” and “side” in some combination or another! Today, however, I’m specifically talking about Wild Side, a dice game that actually takes a decent amount of precision!

Rather than the behavior of the players, “Wild Side” refers to the “Wild” side of the dice, which is a crucial part of gameplay. This is, in essence, a speed matching game – all players roll at the same time, and if any players match both a Wild side and something else, the first to slap the card in the middle steals a die from the other. Multiplayer is uncomplicated by only scoring one match per roll, no matter how many are possible – excepting multiple matches with the same person – and all-Wild matches with anything, while your last die has to match with everyone. More overarchingly important, however, is that the rolling is targeted: you have a designated square of felt your dice have to land on, or you can’t benefit this turn! You can match – that is, other people can match with you – but you can’t cash in your match with anyone else. Additionally, false positives are penalized, with the gun-jumper sacrificing a die to the middle. The next person to actually match gets that die too!

All of this comes together to form a game that’s surprisingly difficult, balancing precision, speed, and perception in the struggle to steal your neighbors’ dice. As one does. The game ends when someone runs out of dice to lose, and whoever has the most wins!

This is one of those games that’s very simple – good for younglings or intense multitaskers. Feed the Kitty involves dice, mice, and a bowl. And that’s it!

Players take turns rolling dice, which will make them put mice in the bowl, take mice from the bowl, or give mice to another player. You only get to roll if you have mice in front of you, and you’re still in even if you don’t – there’s always the chance someone has to pass you some! Unless it’s a two-player game, in which case the end-of-game condition – when all but one player are out – is immediate. Sorry. The player who still has mice is the winner.

There is, of course, a fourth option on the dice: take a cat nap! Perhaps my favorite “no action” gimmick to date.

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?