Animals

The push-your-luck game Cheeky Monkey includes eight sets of animals – three elephants, four seals, and so on up to ten monkeys – with a plastic chip representing each animal. To start the game, you place all the chips in a bag.

On a turn, a player may draw chips until either (1) he chooses to stop or (2) he draws an animal that he has lying in front of him from a previous draw this turn. In this latter case, he returns all chips in front of him from the current turn to the bag, and the next player then takes his turn. In the former case, he stacks the chips in whatever order he wants on top of any chips he's collected in previous turns. (If a player has animals of only a single type, he can tuck them on the bottom of his stack.) Two special rules come into play while the player draws chips:

If a player draws an animal chip that matches the animal on top of an opponent's stack, the player can steal this animal, adding it to the chips currently in front of him. (If he busts for drawing a duplicate animal, this stolen chip is also returned to the bag.)
If a player draws a monkey, he can either keep the monkey (as with any other animal) or he can swap the monkey for the chip on top of an opponent's stack.

When the last chip has been added to a stack, the game ends. Any player who has more chips of an animal type than any other player receives bonus points equal to the total number of that animal in the game. The player with the most points wins.

Another day, another mammoth hunt. But the spoils of the hunt remains to be divided, and everyone tries to secure the largest share for themselves in this quick and clever family strategy game. Each round the tiles are shuffled in the bag and dropped onto the table. The face up symbols show the spoils of today's hunt.
The tiles are then divided by a unique mechanic: When it is your turn, you may either A) Take any number of tiles from the pool, or B) Claim that another player has been too greedy, taking all of that player's tiles, but returning at least one tile to the pool (you must of course show yourself to be a little less greedy).

The next player without tiles then follows in turn. This way the size of the pool will gradually increase, and the round is over once the last player without tiles decides to take what's left in the pool. Every player will then have a share of tiles, and a scoring phase follows.

Tactical play will help you get the meat, fur, tusks, animals, and tools you want (each tile has a different way of scoring), but you may also play cards for immediate effects or to secretly influence the scoring.

- Game material is language independent -

Publisher's description:

Frank the farmer is proud of the delicious apples, pears, cherries and plums that grow in his garden. It's fruit crop day and Frank is in a really good mood. But what's this...?

Six ravens are sitting in the trees eating his fruits. "Watch out! I will get you!", he shouts. Will Frank be able to catch the naughty ravens before they steal all his fruits?

Europe. Summer 1997. You and your most creative friends have discovered two problems with a common solution: mad cows in England and unexploded bombs in France. You've decided to bring these two powder kegs together just to see what happens – and you wouldn't say "no" to a little money on the side, so round up your herd, march them through France, and set them loose behind the Cordon Rouge. If you're lucky, you'll come home rich before Greenpeace gets hold of you.

Either way, there's something magical about blowing up cows.

Unexploded Cow is a money game in which players are trying to collect enough points to win the pot. On every turn, you will buy cows and pay for special effects by putting money in the pot, then try to discover bombs with your own cows in an effort to take money out of the pot. All along, you will be earning points from the French as you liberate town after town from the terrors of unexploded bombs, and the player who scores the most points gets whatever's left in the pot.

Unexploded Cow is best played as a series of short games, each of which takes about thirty minutes. The game is quite simple and very chaotic: You'll have a blast.

A long time ago at the Japanese Imperial court, the Chinese Emperor offered a giant panda bear as a symbol of peace to the Japanese Emperor. Since then, the Japanese Emperor has entrusted his court members (the players) with the difficult task of caring for the animal by tending to his bamboo garden.

In Takenoko, the players will cultivate land plots, irrigate them, and grow one of the three species of bamboo (Green, Yellow, and Pink) with the help of the Imperial gardener to maintain this bamboo garden. They will have to bear with the immoderate hunger of this sacred animal for the juicy and tender bamboo. The player who manages his land plots best, growing the most bamboo while feeding the delicate appetite of the panda, will win the game.