- Designer: Scott Brady
- Artist: Curt Covert
- Publisher: Smirk & Dagger
- Players: 2 Players
- Playtime: 20 minutes
- Ages: 10+
Boop goes by the tagline “A Very “Thinky” Game for 2 Clever Cats.” It is a MENSA Select winner, won Game of the Year as an Origins Award Winner and was also the winner for American Tabletop Awards – Early Gamers. Needless to say, it has been well recognized for both it’s thoughtful mechanics and adorable artwork. Work against your opponent to herd your cats into the winning order first in Boop.
What’s In the Box?
In the box we have:
- 8 Orange Cats
- 8 Gray Cats
- 8 Orange Kittens
- 8 Grey Kittens
- A quilted fabric game board
- And the bottom of the box serves as the bed frame
Setup
Setup for Boop is very straight forward. One player gets all of the orange cats and kittens and the other player gets all of the gray cats and kittens. Flip the bottom of the box over and put the quilted fabric game board on top of it to form the bed. The bed will be your playing area.
Related: boop Shuffle
Objective
The objective of Boop is to get three of your colored cats in a row on the blanket. This is trickier than it sounds though! I thought this game played similar to Tic Tac Toe, but really the only thing it has in common with Tic Tac Toe is that you are looking for three in a row. The movement rules are what make this a tricky game to win.
Gameplay
Each player has 8 kittens and 8 cats, but will only ever have 8 pieces available to play. Players start with 8 kittens and they can be upgraded to cats, most often after making a line of three in a row. Once this happens, remove the three kittens and replace with three cats in the reserve pile. A player may also graduate a kitten into a cat if a player has all 8 kittens on the bed.
The person who most recently pet a cat goes first and they place one of their kittens on the bed. When the next player places their kitten next to the first, it “boops” it a space over. Pieces can even be “booped” right off of the bed, making it hard to get three kittens in a row!
Once a player has cats in their reserve pile, they may then begin placing them on the board. Keep in mind that while cats can “boop” kittens, kittens cannot “boop” cats. If you have three mix pieces of one color in a row, say 1 cat and 2 kittens, you will still remove all of the pieces from the board and graduate the kittens into cats.
Gameplay continues until one player has either three cats in a row or all three cats on the bed.
“Work against your opponent to herd your cats into the winning order first in Boop.”
Final Thoughts
For a cutesy game, Boop was a lot more intense than I expected! What started as just a casual game of cats and kittens, quickly became a cutthroat battle for who was going to win! Arc and I play best 2 out of 3. I lost. But it was closer than I expected! Boop is an excellent pick up game for two people, plays quickly but still has strategy to it and we can see why it won so many awards. If you are looking to add to your two player game selection, Boop would be a great addition to almost any collection!
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