Goblin' Goblins, a Review

Kidzilla and I have played a number of games of a pre-release copy of Gobblin’ Goblins; what follows is our experience. Since we played with a pre-release copy, the artwork and card text may change.

“It’s fun. Parents and kids can have fun with it. It’s very silly and sometimes a little gross.” – Kidzilla

In Gobblin’ Goblins, players take the role of, wait for it…. goblins. Each goblin has its own distinct personality, with loves, dislikes, and allergies. The goal is to gobble up more food than anyone else, while avoiding food to which you’re allergic or just flat out hate. For instance, I played one game with “Swipey Gobbo”, who loves Gold and Grot Noodles, hates Padlocks, and is allergic to Blue foods.

Since we were playing a two-player game, we had a little extra setup to do – namely to remove all the cards designed for 3 or more players.

Eat your Greens

During your turn, you can either add food to your plate, play an “action card”, such as “Eat your greens” where you force a goblin to gobble all the yucky food off of their plate – anything they hate or to which they are allergic.

Distraction cards can be played at any time – they let you do things like steal food from another goblin’s plate and gobble it.

The Food

And the food! The glorious food! I have already mentioned Gold and Grot Noodles. There are also such delicacies as Spaghetti, Cheese, Sprouts, Old Boots, 6 pints of sour milk, Mongolian Caviar, Cat sick, and Microwave Dinners (ewwww!). Feeling like you want some chips? Eat a computer. Feel thirsty? How about some quenching beer or, better yet, bin juice?

Clean Yer Plate

Once your plate is sufficiently full, you may gobble up its contents.

Action!

However, just because you’ve gobbled something, doesn’t mean it’s safe in your stomach! Action cards can bring foods back “up” or “out” and into play.

Action cards and distractions add a level of strategy – for instance, you can put something on your plate which you hate and use actions to transfer it to another. Just be careful, though, the other players can use actions to force you to eat it!

End Game

At the end of the game, players total up the foods which they hate or are allergic and subtract that from the total of all the other foods. Sometimes, in order to clear your plate it makes sense to eat an allergy; you often will still come out ahead.

Verdict

I think this game is a lot of fun – it works pretty well with two, but will be a lot more cutthroat with more players. It’d make a good party game or family game night. The rules are simple, but the actions and distractions add a whole extra layer of strategy. It’s simple to learn and but there’s a lot of depth!

Gobblin’ Goblins is currently available through Kickstarter – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toonhammer/gobblin-goblins-the-orrible-eat-a-thon-card-game.

For those curious, Kidzilla lost….