Animals

House of Cats

Fill your house with cats, mice and dice!

Form rooms using numbers. Then use the rooms' special abilities to score the most points.

There are 4 unique levels (each with their own rules), and every time you play you use a random set of 4 out of 12 possible abilities. This ensures new challenges every game.

House of Cats is a quick and clever roll-and-write game, and the first collaborative design by veteran designers William Attia and Kristian A Østby.

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HOW TO PLAY:

Each turn, one player rolls the dice and all players use the results to fill in spaces on their individual playing sheet. Keep taking turns until one player has filled every space on their sheet.

Try to group equal numbers together. A room is formed if you make a group with size equal to the number that makes up the group (i.e. groups of two 2's, three 3's, four 4's or five 5's). Each completed room scores points and gives you access to a special ability.

Cats and mice will score depending on the level you are playing.

Cafe Baras

Everyone in town is looking for a cozy little café where they can relax with a good book, something to nibble on, and, of course, some delicious caffeinated beverages. As a capybara with a love for coffee, it’s always been a dream of yours to open your own shop. Now is the perfect time! But you’re not the only one opening your doors in hopes of enticing customers. Rival coffee shops are popping up all over town and it’s up to you to ensure that you have the right food, drinks, and decor to turn your drop-ins into regulars. Put together a delicious menu and decorate your shop to capture the perfect aesthetic. You just might have the busiest little café in town!

Each turn, you play a card from your hand, either buying it as a food, drink, or decor item for your café or serving the customer on the card and earning money. If you meet a customer’s needs completely, they become a Regular and earn you extra end game points!

Café Baras is a card drafting, tableau-building game brought to you by the creative team behind the critter classics Creature Comforts and Maple Valley.

—description from the publisher

Trio

nana, which was later reprinted as Trio, is a card game in which players are looking for three of a kind.

The deck consists of 36 cards, numbered 1-12 three times. Players receive some cards in hand, which they are required to sort from low to high, and the remaining cards are placed face down on the table.

On your turn, choose any single card to reveal, either the low or high card from a player's hand (including your own) or any face-down card from the table. Then, do this again. If the two cards show the same number, continue your turn; if they do not, return the cards to where they came from and end your turn.

If you reveal three cards showing the same number, take these cards as a set in front of you. If you are the first player to collect three sets, you win — except that a player wins immediately if they collect the set of 7s or two sets that add or subtract to 7, e.g., 4s and 11s.

Note that nana and Trio contain identical components, but nana is labeled for 2-5 players, while Trio is labeled for 3-6 players. Trio has slight changes to the rules, with players using all cards no matter the player count. Additionally, you play in normal mode — winning with three sets or the 7s — or "spicy" mode, winning with two linked sets or the 7s. Finally, Trio includes rules for playing in teams with four or six players.

Fish 'n' Flip

Fish 'n' Flips is a game about maritime animals caught in fishing nets as bycatch. Players can compete or cooperate in freeing as many as possible of them. The animals are laid out in rows and columns. On a turn, a player can play one of their two action cards. These cards can exchange positions or flip a card so the animal looks the opposite way. When several of the same animals are looking in the same direction, they will escape from the net, while any animals on top of them will slide down (tetris-style), which may lead to other groups of animals being able to escape. After each turn, another animal is added at the top of each column. When a column is seven cards high, all players lose. When all animal cards have been played, players can compare how many animals were left in the net (cooperative mode) or how many they freed (competitive mode).

The game has a campaign in which difficulty rises in each level. For one, each animal has a special ability. These make the game easier but also more complex. On the other hand, more animals are added, which makes it harder to form groups. Also, garbage cards come into play. These can disrupt groups or stop animals from using their special abilities.

In the Footsteps of Darwin

Twenty years after his expedition around the world, Charles Darwin is writing On the Origin of Species. He wants to gather new information about animal life, particularly about continents he hardly explored. Who other than young naturalists, eager for discovery, could help the renowned scholar finish writing his most famous work?

In In the Footsteps of Darwin, players are junior naturalists who have just arrived aboard the Beagle to help Charles Darwin finish his book On the Origin of Species. During this journey, you will study animals, carry out cartographic surveys, publish your findings, and develop theories. Starting with the naturalist controlling the Darwin token, naturalists take turns in clockwise order, performing these two steps in order:

Study an animal or take inspiration from a character: Choose one of the three tiles facing the Beagle and place it onto your naturalist's notebook. It may be either an animal to study or a character from the Beagle's previous journey who will inspire you. Gain the bonuses depicted or any additional scoring bonuses triggered by the tile's placement.

Voyage of the Beagle: After placing a tile on your notebook, move the Beagle as many spaces forward as the distance between the Beagle and the tile you just selected (1-3 spaces), then draw a new tile to replace the empty space on the journey board.

Your goal is to score more points than your opponents to determine who contributed the most to On the Origin of Species.

—description from publisher