You Otter Play Your Cards Quickly!

Otters love collecting cute little friends – frogs, fish, sea stars, and more! Can you shed your cards the quickest by giving them to the right otters? Let’s find out!

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What Is It?

⚙️Card Shedding / Ladder Climbing – Players are racing to play all the cards in their hand to the 3 otters. Otters have rules about suit and number they accept. Players can follow either rule, or both rules. Following both allows them to chain their turn, and continue playing cards until they can no longer follow both rules
⚙️Hand Management – Players can choose to draw 0 – 3 cards at the start of each turn and for each card drawn, they can swap 2 otter heads or tails, or flip a head or tail to change the suit/number rules
⚙️Players keep excess cards in their hand for the next round, and draw back up to ten, so it can be beneficial to try and cycle cards in order to keep a lot of 1 suit in hand, for instance. Play continues until a player has shed all their cards a certain number of times depending on player count, and that player wins!

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Who Is It For?

• 1 to 4 Players – Solo was okay – it’s very tricky because you use all the cards, playing from 4 piles, and you can’t play from the same pile or to the same otter twice in a row. It’s easy to mess up if you’re not paying close attention, and you can fall victim to luck where you can’t play anything after a while. But if you like a tight puzzle, it’s decent. Personally, I prefer multiplayer, and it scales well at 2-4
• Ages 10 & Up – Simple ruleset, very approachable to a wide audience
• Fans of card shedding/ladder climbing style games, and variable game play

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PROS

🟢Aesthetics – Adorable art, good graphic design
🟢Rules are clear and well written
🟢Small and portable
🟢Turns are quick and snappy
🟢Good for a large audience
🟢A bit of variability in the heads (suit rules)
🟢Combo-ing to play a bunch of cards on your turn is very satisfying
🟢Solo (while tricky) is very streamlined and smooth
🟢I like the balance of having to draw cards in order to manipulate the play restrictions

CONS

🔴Some luck of the draw, of course; if you aren’t getting cards that let you play a bunch on your turn, your turns might feel shorter, or more disappointing compared to others
🔴 It felt a little odd that the frog suit is the only one that appears on the tails twice, since there are an equal number of cards in each suit
🔴There are random cardboard pieces that are not mentioned in the components list

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Final Thoughts

I thought this was a really solid card shedding game! It’s super cute, and I think it’s a pretty easy teach to get players into it. Though it is light, I still think there’s a nice layer of strategy as you decide whether to draw each turn, or when it might be beneficial to try and hold on to certain cards for the next round, to maybe have bigger combos then. I also think it’s a really convenient game since it’s a small box, and doesn’t need a ton of table space, so it’s great to play almost anywhere!

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Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 8/10

Designer – Dylan Coyle
Artist – Lailamon
Publisher -Charming Games Collective
Website