Base price: $18.
2 – 6 players.
Play time: 20 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
Check it out on Kickstarter!
Logged plays: 3
Full disclosure: A preview copy of Puppy Pile was provided by Thing 12 Games. Some art, gameplay, or other aspects of the game may change between this preview and the fulfillment of the Kickstarter, should it fund, as this is a preview of a currently unreleased game.
It’s preview time again! This time, we’re covering another game in Thing 12’s family games line, Puppy Pile! I haven’t had a ton of time to get to crowdfunding recently, just because I’ve been in and out and in town again. Pretty hectic, unfortunately, but not bad. BGG.CON and PAX Unplugged just take up a bunch of my time and focus. On the plus side, I’ll have a ton to talk about after that! Just gotta get through it and the holidays. But in the meantime, let’s cover Puppy Pile!
In Puppy Pile, the dogs are a mess. They’ve just kind of combined into one mass of puppies and this puppy Katamari is out of control. Your goal is simple. You have a favorite dog and you want them to be the literal top dog when it comes time to pick a winner. Just don’t let anyone in on the secret! They have their own preferences and even though they’re wrong, they’re entitled to those preferences. Which puppy will end up on top?
Contents
Setup
Not a ton of setup. Deal each player a puppy card:
For more advanced play, you can deal each player two puppies or deal each player two and let them keep one. For newer players, keep the puppy dealt face-up, but otherwise, players shouldn’t show their puppy to other players.
Then, shuffle the stack of puppies and place them in a line that starts at the pile token.
Finally, shuffle the cards and place the stack nearby.
You should be ready to start!
Gameplay
Gameplay is very simple. Each turn, you draw a card from the top of the pile and resolve its effects. The cards can make you move dogs, swap dogs, or even change the bottom / top of the pile! Generally, the cards affect dogs based on traits, and those traits are symbolized on the tiles themselves. The two cards to watch out for are the Pick a Winner cards. When one is drawn, the top dog of the pile is selected. If that’s anyone’s dog, they win! Otherwise, the dog is removed from the game, shrinking the pile. When the second Pick a Winner in the deck is drawn, the deck is reshuffled and gameplay continues.
Keep playing until one player wins!
Player Count Differences
Puppy Pile changes a bit with player count, but in interesting ways. With more players, it becomes difficult to have more direct control over the ordering of the line, for instance. There’s just a ton of people between your turns changing which pup is where. That said, that might actually work in your favor? If players don’t know a specific dog is yours, for instance, they might move it to the top of the pile as a feint and inadvertently give you the win. That kind of thing is fun and more likely with more players. With fewer players, you’re given more control but it also can be a bit easier to figure out which puppy is yours. You’re not necessarily moving that puppy all the time, but you do need to get it to the top eventually. I wouldn’t necessarily say it ends up being “cerebral”, just given the theme and low complexity and such, but you definitely need to think more and pay more attention at two, just because the decision space is a lot easier to figure out than it is at six. No strong preference, though; it’s a quick, cute, and fun little game.
Strategy
- Try not to be super obvious. Ideally, you don’t want other players to know which dog is yours. If they do, they’re going to routinely bury it towards the middle of the pile, where it’s absolutely useless to you. The more you can convince them a different dog is yours, the better off you’ll be. Just be careful! You don’t want to prop up some other dog that is someone else’s! That’s not great.
- If you play with the draw 2 keep 1 variant, you at least know one dog is nobody’s, so use that. You can obviously prop that up over the course of the game; just keep in mind that everyone else might be too! Or, worse yet, someone might be propping up their actual dog and hoping that you assume it’s the one they discarded.
- If you figure out a player-dog pairing, keep that dog low when you can. Not necessarily at the bottom, since the order of the line can swap, but try to keep the dog towards the middle. There, it’s useless.
- Sometimes it’s helpful to move other dogs down so that your dog rises up naturally. That way you’re not explicitly helping your dog rise; you’re just pushing every other dog down. It mostly works, though it’s not the most subtle of moves.
- Other times it can be surprisingly useful to move your dog to the bottom of the stack and hope for a switch. This one is pretty subtle, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it if you’ve already seen one swap card. They’re not that common.
- I find a bit of trash talk can go a long way toward distracting players. You can just come up with whatever garbage you need or want to say during the game to semi-seriously convince players that your dog is not your dog (or that some other dog is your dog).
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- Very cute art. It’s just very fun! The dogs are the appropriate amount of goofy, colorful, and floofy in the right aspects.
- I appreciate that they included a very upset cat in the game, as well. It shows you where the game is at, humor-wise, and that’s a wise thing to do. Plus, for a family game, a little bit of silly goes a long way, and I think they nailed it here.
- The theme and gameplay are both nicely aligned with a family game. It’s mostly about stacking up your dogs, which is cute. Who doesn’t love a pile of puppies?
- Honestly, it’s very similar to Guillotine but not quite as macabre. Yeah, that’s a simple game but it’s not quite family-friendly, theme-wise, unless you’re just really into the French Revolution. Which, hey, your kids might be. Or something. Might want to get that checked. Gameplay-wise, though, you’ve got a line and you’re trying to get the right thing to the front of the line. Unlike Guillotine, though, the line doesn’t advance every turn.
- Pretty portable. Small box; not a lot to do with it. I’d be interested to see an extremely portable version that just uses some tokens and the deck, but again, not entirely sure about the market for that.
- I appreciate that they include little clips to keep the pups up, even if I wouldn’t personally use them. Just gives the game a nice bit of 3D verticality, if that’s your thing.
- The variants add a nice bit of strategic depth to the game, which is always nice too. The variant play covers a lot of bases, and I appreciate that. The two-pup game makes it slightly longer, the draw-two-keep-one adds a bit more intrigue and bluffing, and the family variant makes the game a bit more even for all players. It’s nice to see!
Mehs
- I’m … more of a cat guy. I try, but, I just know where my true loyalties lie.
- Learning the iconography may take a minute for some players. Icons are great in that once you get it, you get it, but it does make the first play or two a bit more difficult.
Cons
- The game can be pretty random, which can mess with things like playtime or player participation. Sometimes the Pick a Winner Card can come out really quickly and just the right dog is in the right place and that’s that. Other times you can keep going for a bit without a winner because the right dog is never in the right place at the right time. That’s kind of the outcome with high chaos games, to some degree, so you can’t always guarantee how things will go. For players who prefer to have more control over their experience, this might be frustrating for them.
Overall: 8 / 10
Overall, I think Puppy Pile is fun! As I mentioned, it hearkens back to Guillotine, a game that I really enjoyed when I was first getting into board gaming, though I prefer puppies to beheadings. Just a fun quirk I have, I guess. As a bit more of a cat guy, I’m sort of neutral on dogs, but I do appreciate that they threw us a bone and included a definitely-very-real dog that isn’t just a cat in a costume. It’s playful and keeps the game’s tone light, which is kind of ideal anyways. There’s a bit of bluffing and deduction at play as you try to figure out your opponents’ dogs, which I appreciate as well. It’s a fun and quick and light experience overall. I’m never entirely sure how family games perform on crowdfunding, so I’m always interested to see more. That said, I think this is a pretty solid one if you’re looking for something on the faster end, or if you want to incorporate a little bit of bluffing and deduction into your gameplay. If you’re a fan of that genre, you’re a dog person, or you just like stacking things, you’ll likely enjoy Puppy Pile! I’ve had fun with it.
If you enjoyed this review and would like to support What’s Eric Playing? in the future, please check out my Patreon. Thanks for reading!
What's Eric Playing? 