Category: Small Games

Crew, the: The Quest for Planet Nine

In The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, you and your friends embark on a perilous journey as astronauts investigating an unknown planet. Each astronaut will have a specific mission to complete, portrayed through a classic trick-taking game. However, communication is difficult in space, and while you are all on the same team, not everyone knows your specific mission. It will take trust and a good sense of timing to successfully complete all 50 missions!

Game Mechanics:

  • Communication Limits
  • Cooperative Game
  • Hand Management
  • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game
  • Trick Taking

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.96

Crew, the: Mission Deep Sea

The sequel to The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, this trick-taking game builds onto the original with more missions, more flexibility, and an improved scalability system for different player counts. 

In The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, you and your friends are assuming the roles of deep-sea explorers in a classic trick-taking game. Unlike most games, you all must work together to accomplish unique tasks – without being able to tell each other what that is. Some players will need to win specific card while others will need to avoid it entirely! With 32 missions, each game is sure to offer a new challenge representing the immense pressure of the depths of the ocean.

Game Mechanics:

  • Communication Limits
  • Cooperative Game
  • Hand Management
  • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game
  • Trick Taking

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.05

Coyote

One day Coyote crossed the river with his friends, but he was carrying too many things and almost drowned before Bear pulled him out of the water. Poor Coyote had lost everything.

They sat down by a fire to dry off and rest. Coyote became jealous of the other animals because they still had all their things, so he challenged them to a bluffing game to win their belongings. The other animals agreed to the challenge as they thought Coyote would never win. After all, he is known to never tell the truth — but in this game everybody has to lie because no one knows the truth…

In the bluffing game Coyote, you always see the cards of the other players, but never your own. When it’s your turn, you must announce a number that is less than the total of all the cards in the game, yet higher than the previous number given. Alternatively, you can challenge the number previously announced. Finally, when all the cards are revealed, you’ll see who has the cunning Coyote on their side.

Coyote is in the same game line as Spicy, with the game box and card backs being decorated with a special metallic print in copper. As in the tradition of the Northwest Coast Tribes, copper is a symbol of prosperity and cultural wealth.

The artist Zona Evon Shroyer (Yupik Alaskan Native) is a master of the traditional Northwest Coastal art, whose richness of detail and complexity requires years of study and practice. For the cover illustration of Coyote, she designed a modern silhouette for the coyote, which she then filled in a classical manner with other animal motifs: turtle, beaver, and bear — the animals that he is sitting around the fire with and playing a game, in our little story.

Game Mechanics:

  • Betting & Bluffing
  • Player Elimination

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • 15 – 25 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.27

Coup: Deluxe Edition

Coup is all about who you know and how you use them. The game revolves around your “influence” – the face-down cards in front of you. Each card depicts a different character with their own powers that you can use. Each turn, a player will use their influence to perform various actions, all working towards removing other player’s influences. However, since no one knows what influences you have, you can lie to your hearts content – unless someone challenges you, making you lose an influence. Plan accordingly, avoid any coups, and be the last one remaining with influence left!

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Hidden Roles
  • Memory
  • Player Elimination
  • Take That
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 8 Players
  • ~15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.38

Codex Naturalis

In Codex Naturalis, you are competing with your opponents to create the best manuscript of living species in primary forests. You’ll do this by placing down cards, overlapping them to assemble an overall manuscript, providing yourself with resources or points! You’ll have to plan carefully to maximize your points, and you’ll have to be willing to make sacrifices to get the best possible outcome.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Layering
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.76

Clever Cubed

Clever Cubed is a fun dice rolling game, where you’ll carefully choose dice to place them in matching colored areas to hopefully create chain-scoring opportunities! But be careful when you go big – your opponents can use your discarded dice if their value is lower than your chosen dice. May the cleverest player win!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Paper and Pencil
  • Re-rolling and Locking
  • Solo / Solitaire Game

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.38

Chomp

The era of the dinosaurs is here! Your goal in Chomp is to form herds of dinos and make sure they are all fed. Herbivores and carnivores both need food sources, but if the carnies are not properly fed, they don’t mind chomping an herbie to fill their bellies!

Gameplay involves dual rows of goal tiles and dino tiles, and each turn players select one tile to add to their personal arrangement. Goal tiles stay off to the side for endgame scoring, and dino tiles are arranged in front of each player. Dino tiles include three sizes each of herbivores and carnivores. Each tile must overlap previous ones, either on top of a quarter tile, half tile, or even a whole tile, ensuring that any covered dinos are completely hidden.

Adjacent dinos of the same species form herds, which will eat together if connected to a single food source — or die together if they are unfed, adjacent to a tar pit, or next to an otherwise unfed carnivore!

At the end of the game, each living and fed dino scores 1-3 points depending on its size, and the player with the highest score wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.56

Cheating Moth

Cheating is forbidden? Not in this naughty game of cards – in fact, you’ll probably have to cheat in order to win.

In Mogel Motte you want to get rid of all the cards in your hand before anyone else. Each player starts the round with a hand of eight cards, with one player (the oldest) receiving the guard bug – which stays on the table throughout the game – and one card being turnd face-up to start a discard pile. The cards are numbered 1-5, with the majority of them having only numbers; some cards have special abilities that come into play when added to the discard pile or in a player’s hand.

On a turn, a player places one card from her hand onto the discard pile; that card must be numbered exactly one higher or lower than the card on top of the discard pile. (The numbers wrap, so a 1 can be played on a 5 and vice versa.) If a player can’t play a card, she draws one from the deck and her turn ends.

There’s another way to rid yourself of cards, though: cheating! Throughout the round, you can make cards disappear by dropping them on the floor, hiding them up your sleeve and so on. You must keep your hand of cards above the table at all times, you can’t vanish more than one card at once, and you can’t rid yourself of your final card this way. The player with the guard bug – and only him! – can call out other players for cheating, and no one can cheat while the accusation is being resolved. If the accusation was false, the Guard must draw a card; otherwise the cheating player takes back the card she tried to lose, is given a card from the Guard’s hand as additional punishment, and becomes the new Guard.

Cheating is a necessity as the “Cheating Moth” cards can’t be played onto the discard pile, but must be disappeared via cheating. (The Guard, however, can play these cards as the Guard is not allowed to cheat.)

The action cards work as follows:

  • Ant: After an ant is played, everyone but the active player must take a card from the draw pile.
  • Cockroach: After a cockroach is played, everyone races to play an identically-numbered card on top of it. Only the fastest player gets to leave her card in place.
  • Mosquito: After a mosquito is played, everyone but the active player must slap the pile of cards. Whoever is slowest receives a card from the hand of all other players.
  • Spider: After playing this, give a non-Cheating Moth card from your hand to another player.

When one player has no cards in hand, the round ends. All other players score 10 points for each Cheating Moth in hand, 5 points for each action card, and 1 point for each number card. After a number of rounds equal to the number of players, the game ends and the player with the lowest score wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Dexterity

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.15

Cats are Scientists

All throughout history, cats have theorized the idea of gravity. Now, cats from all over the world are testing the principles of gravity by knocking objects off of tables and recording the outcome. It is up to you to successfully conduct enough experiments to formulate enough evidence to prove the Law of Gravity. The cat who can successfully complete this task first will forever go down in history as the cat who discovered gravity!
The idea of the game is to collect 6 or more science points to be deemed the “Greatest Science Cat of All Time!” In order to conduct an experiment, you must knock a card off of the table using your Scientific Method. You then apply the rule on the card to the game and MUST follow it to the best of your ability. If you fail to follow a rule in play and another player calls you out on it, you must return a card back into the pile. See who can follow the most laws of science by stacking up more and more rules!

Game Mechanics:

  •  Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 7 Players
  • 15 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00