Objective
Work to successfully manage a cat colony, by saving as many cats as possible. Do this by traveling through the feral cat colony and using action cards to help cats you encounter. The player with the most cats rescued at the end, is the winner.
Pieces
- Games Board
- Tiles
- Action Cards
- Cats
- Meeples
Set Up
Shuffle and place all tiles grass side up in the corresponding squares on the game board. Choose a colored meeple to play as. Place the pile Action Cards next to the game board.
Getting Started
Each player begins by picking up 5 actions cards to keep in their hand. The player who owns the most cats goes first. In the event of a tie, play rock paper scissors. The first player will then be the first to pick a tile on the game board to land on. Flip over the tile chosen and take action based upon the tile instructions.
Players continue to take turns picking tiles and solving problems, until all the tiles have been flipped, and the cat colony is successfully managed.
On Your Turn
On your turn pick one of the 64 tile spaces that does not already contain a meeple/has not been flipped and flip that tile over. Read the instruction, then place your meeple on top. Your meeple is now stuck on that tile until action has been taken to resolve the tile.
A player must use Action Card to help resolve the problems on the tiles. A player may use a total of 2 action cards per turn. If you don’t have the required action cards for the tile, you may discard up to 2 Action Cards and draw new ones, those new action cards can’t be used until your next turn.
Once the tile has been resolved, you may move to a new tile. A player can keep resolving tiles until they either don’t have the required Action, or run out of their 5 Action Cards.
At the end of your turn, draw as many Action cards needed to have 5 in your hand.
Cat Tiles
If a tile flipped that contains cat’s you helped rescue, collect a cat piece.
*Roughest of Drafts to Just Post for Now*
Playtest for: Got Cats (Ronan)
Playtester: Clay
What was the most frustrating moment or aspect of what you just played?
Getting stuck needing a specific card and drawing until finally getting one, and getting stuck rolling for a 10 with the dice
What was your favorite moment or aspect of what you just played?
I liked the illustrations – I think theming around cuteness always has potential. As a game for change, I’m not entirely sure that collecting cats is the same as saving cats. I think people who pass a certain threshold of cat ownership (crazy cat people) use the narrative of saving them, while they are really hoarding and the cat’s quality of life will suffer. I would like it if the game addressed this in some way.
Was there anything you wanted to do that you couldn’t?
In general, I feel like I lacked autonomy in this game. The only choice that I had was choosing a tile randomly from the board (effectively the same as drawing a card from a deck). Perhaps if there were resource conditions visible on the top of the tiles, and you had to expend cards from your hand in order to flip them, then you would see if you saved a cat or if some other outcome occurs. Maybe some tiles are worth multiple cats, while others still end your turn and have adverse consequences. This would allow players to at least try to strategize by picking tiles that they think will have higher value or at least pick tiles that they have the cards to get rather than getting stuck.
If you had a magic wand to wave, and you could change, add, or remove anything from the experience, what would it be?
I think that the last action on a player’s turn should be drawing back to the hand limit, rather than allowing someone to complete a cat tile’s conditions, they must wait for the beginning of their next turn. This would avoid some of the confusion, since unless you state your action, discarding cards and playing them appears the same: taking cards out of your hand and putting them into the discard pile.
How has the play experience changed since the first play test?
N/A
Is this a game you would play again? Why?
As this game stands when I played it, I don’t feel particularly compelled to play it again. I think the experience was heavily random and I would like it if there was potential for strategy. If changes were made to the core gameplay, I would be open to testing this again.