LogFAQs > #977123014

35. Happy Little Dinosaurs
Expansions Played: None

This game is weird. At its core, it's really just a trick-taking game, but it plays like absolute chaos.

You play as a dinosaur trying to escape disasters... Or something. Each round, a card is flipped over with a Disaster on it, which can be one of three types plus a wild card. All players play a card with a number value from 0 to 9 facedown and reveal simultaneously. Everyone gets a chance to play additional cards with other effects to manipulate the scores until everyone passes consecutively. High scorer earns points equal to that score. Low scorer takes the Disaster card. Collect all three types of Disaster or three of one kind and you're eliminated. First to 50 points or last dino standing wins.

For such a simple game, there's a bizarre amount of rules overhead that confuses us all more than I feel like it should, and the rulebook itself is not a great helper. The components are nice and the art is cute, and setup and playtime are quick enough to get in multiple rounds in a short period anytime you want - Unstable Games is at least reliable on those fronts. I'm just not a big trick-taking fan, though, and a version this simple is not going to be my jam, even considering the hand management and push-your-luck aspects tossed in. HLD's brand of humor also doesn't land with me - the "Emotional" disaster cards in particular make light of things like your friends making plans without you or embarrassing gaffes on a first date, and that sort of joke has just never made me laugh.

It's not awful, though. It's a nice, small, affordable filler game and nothing else.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me. Bought by my wife when she was just getting into board games. I don't think it'll ever really see much more play in our usual group but I'll be glad to have it around to play with our eventual kids.

34. Boss Monster
Expansions Played: None

Look, I'm here on a video game message board with a seventeen-year-old account - obviously a small card game with a retro video game aesthetic is going to stand out to me on a shelf and tempt me to impulse buy it. Which is exactly what happened.

Fun little theme for a game, where you play as a monster trying to devise the perfect dungeon that is enticing enough to lure in adventurers to be killed without attracting so many that some survive the deathtraps and come to defeat you instead.

Simple little card game with a lightning-quick setup and easy teach. It affectionately rips off your Metroids and Castlevanias and throws in plenty of chuckle-worthy references to other nerdy pop culture standouts. The flavor text is fun, which is a nice bonus for a light warm-up game that gets everyone around the table that little bit more involved, and your strategy will be affected just enough by what other players are doing that it behooves you to maintain at least some awareness.

The strategy itself just isn't all that deep, though. I don't mind games like this being pretty luck-based, because it's not like I bring out Boss Monster with the goal of conducting a hyper-competitive main event for game night. But there's not a whole lot of variety, either, and limited replayability is definitely something that affects the viability of a filler game.

As it is, it really only works as an occasional palate cleanser. Every collection needs some games like that, and the charming look of Boss Monster makes it a good one for me personally. But it's not something I'd ever really recommend. I've heard the expansions help at least a little, so that's something I might look into eventually.

Collection Status and Future Outlook: Owned by me, but it hasn't hit the table in a while. Filler games in general have a pretty high turnover rate in my group, no idea whether that's a common thing. As I mentioned, if I ever find an expansion for dirt cheap somewhere, I could maybe see a little revival for this game that would bump it up a couple slots, but I don't think it'd jump a whole tier or anything.