Base price: $12.
1 player.
Play time: ~10 minutes.
BGG | Board Game Atlas
Buy directly!
Logged plays: 4
Full disclosure: A review copy of Numbsters was provided by Button Shy.
Alright, let’s get back to the solo game circuit! I haven’t had a ton of bandwidth for solo games since I moved, but I had some free time to bust through some of the Button Shy solo games, so get excited about those coming up. Ancient Realm, River Wild, and Numbsters! Button Shy remains one of my favorite companies for quick, approachable games that are the right level of complexity for my occasionally-smooth brain. This one seems nice and mathy, so let’s see how things go with Numbsters!
In Numbsters, players are feeding different Numbsters to each other. The circle of life is beautiful, probably. However, you need to make sure you’re not the one getting munched! Each Numbster has a special rule that can change up how the Mouth feeds, so you’ll be trying to get through each round and try to run out the deck. Will you be able to make it to the end? Or will you just end up being lunch?
Contents
Setup
The setup is pretty easy. First, set aside the Mouth (the 8) and shuffle the cards:
Then, take six cards from the top of the deck and shuffle the Mouth into that set of six cards to create a stack of seven cards. You can leave it as a stack, but I prefer to splay it out as a face-up line. If you do, the rules state that the “top” of the stack is the rightmost card.
You should be ready to start!
Gameplay
So, your goal here is to feed all the Numbsters (except one) to the Mouth without getting munched yourself! Each turn, you’re doing a few things:
Draw
Here, you just draw a card and place it on top of the stack. If the deck’s empty, don’t do this, since you don’t have any cards to draw.
Move (Optional)
You can then do one of two types of moves:
- You can move one card to any other position in the stack (including the Mouth).
- You can swap any two cards in the stack (again, including the Mouth).
Eat
Now, a Numbster must eat another one. If nothing eats, you lose.
The general feeding rule is that if there are two sequential numbers on either side of the mouth (so a sequence like 4 8 5), the smaller Numbster eats the larger one, discarding it. The Numbsters can be on either side of the mouth (in both 4 8 5 and 5 8 4, the 4 eats the 5). For this game’s purposes, 7 and 9 are considered sequential (since 8 is the mouth, also for the joke).
Each Numbster also has a special feeding rule that can be used instead. Before Feeding, you can use the ability of the Numbster on the top of the stack, moving it to the bottom of the stack. You don’t discard it. That special ability still requires the two Numbsters to be on either side of the Mouth.
After Feeding, if there’s only one Numbster left on top of the Mouth or if the Mouth is on top of the stack, the game ends.
Game End
If there is only one Numbster left on top of the Mouth, you win!
If you can’t successfully feed or the Eat step ends with the Mouth on top of the stack, you lose!
Player Count Differences
None! It’s a solo game.
Strategy
- You cannot win by using a special ability. It took me a few games to figure this out, but fundamentally, that puts the Numbster on the bottom of the stack, which, if it’s the only one left, that means the Mouth is on top and you lose. Instead, you have to finish the game up by having sequential Numbsters and having the lower one eat the higher one.
- Have a plan for getting rid of nonsequential Numbsters. I really like the cards that let you reverse the sequential feeding rules or eat double-digit Numbsters, because I can’t do much with them after a certain point in the game.
- You can work your way down from high to low, if you get lucky enough. The lower Numbster always eats the higher one, so 17 can eat 18, 16 can eat 17, and so on and so forth. This implicitly means that you can never win with 18 (which is why it’s crossed out in the rulebook). Worth noting!
- If you really like an ability, you can keep moving that card to the top of the stack. Just keep an eye on where the Mouth is! Sometimes you don’t have that option because then you’ll instantly lose, which is problematic. As you’ve come to expect from the Strategy section, we try not to provide advice which will cause you to instantly lose.
- More generally, be thoughtful about how you’re moving things around. I tend to try to keep the Mouth towards the bottom of the stack for safety, but you might need to move it around to give yourself options. Just try to stay flexible.
- Don’t just eat whatever! You do that and you’ll end up with a ton of gaps where you no longer have sequential Numbsters to eat. You don’t need to plan aggressively, but you should have some idea of what you’re planning to do in a few turns.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- I appreciate making a game completely for the sole purpose of being able to land the “because 7 8 9” joke. It’s a good joke, and I’m glad the entire game is bent towards making that work within the rules of the game. It also makes for a satisfying win condition, so everything works across the board. One thing I love about Button Shy is that the games are small enough in scope that you really can just do that, and it works out great here.
- Pink wallet! Just in time for the Barbie movie, God bless. But yeah, I haven’t seen a pink wallet before, and this is a great choice for it.
- The art is supremely fun. I particularly like that all of the Numbsters are some weird messed-up version of the actual number that they’re supposed to be. I think that makes it better, to be honest. A bit more cursed, but better, too.
- Very easy to learn! I’ll admit that the “lower number eats the higher number” thing threw me off a bit, but remembering “7 8 9” over and over eventually caused it to sink in. Learning the game is easy, but the strategy is fairly emergent.
- I like the puzzle here! It’s a bit mathy, but it’s something that I haven’t seen a lot in my solo games. It’s kind of arithmetic-y, I suppose. I usually end up with more solo spatial puzzle games.
- As always, very portable. That’s the Button Shy Advantage, after all.
- I also like that there’s a checklist in the rulebook to let you mark off winning with certain Numbsters. It prevents players like me from just trying to win with the same Numbster over and over, since now I want to get them all. I’m easily duped like that, though.
Mehs
- I think the Numbsters should have had horrible little names. Feels like a missed opportunity to just make these little nightmares even more cursed.
Cons
- Your game can get off to a bit of a dumb start if the Mouth starts on top of the stack. It’s not a guaranteed loss, but it definitely forces you to shift your play in a specific direction to avoid a guaranteed loss, unless you have a perfect set of sequential numbers elsewhere in the stack. That can be a bit annoying, but hey, random chance is random chance.
Overall: 8.5 / 10
Overall, I think Numbsters is a great little game! I was a bit annoyed at how long it took me to figure out how to play well, but I think that’s just because the game is super easy to learn and then halfway through I realized that I was just playing badly and was never going to win doing what I was doing. That’s solo gaming for you, sometimes. I was more annoyed at me than at the game. It’s also hard to stay mad at a game that’s as nightmarishly cute as Numbsters. All of the monsters are horrible little guys, and they’re all number-shaped, and the wallet is bright pink. There are a lot of fun visual elements happening at once, and I love that for me, as a player. I appreciate that this has some similar vibes to Food Chain Island and some of the other more number-y Button Shy solos; that’s a fun area that they’re fleshing out and I love what I’m seeing on that front. There’s a reason Button Shy is one of my favorite publishers. They’re always just … doing weird stuff in the space and their niche is so well-defined. It’s very similar to Oink, in that regard. You love to see it. Also, while I say that Numbsters is mathy, it’s not mathy in the way that you need to understand advanced math to play; you just need to get numbers, which I don’t, always. In the meantime, though, I’m looking forward to my next play of this! Definitely made it on the shortlist of “very small games I’m taking to Gen Con”, though this review got published after Gen Con. I guess we’ll see how it goes there! If you’re looking for a bright and engaging solo title, you want to be puzzled by numbers a bit, or you just want to help me come up with names for the 17 non-Mouth little guys, I’d recommend checking out Numbsters! It’s a lot of fun.
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