Base price: $23.
2 – 8 players.
Play time: ~20 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 2
As promised, eels. Maybe it was always going to be this way. I was a lot more chuffed about this game when I didn’t know Faidutti designed it, but, alas, not much I can do about that now; I’ve already pot committed to the review. Let’s move past that. Oink Games, One of my all-time favorite publishers, their continued commitment to weird games in small boxes delights and intrigues me. So, whenever I have a “free moment” (this is never technically the case), I try to get one to the table. This time, it was Wriggle Roulette; let’s see how it plays.
In Wriggle Roulette, you’ve found your one true calling: dunking your hands into the mud to grab eels. It’s not made you popular with the ladies, or wealthy, or happy, but, eels. You have many. Unfortunately, it’s a well-known proverb that when you’ve got both hands in the mud, you can never tell if it’s an eel or a snake. It’s supposed to be about the perils of overfocusing, probably, but really it’s just that you honestly have no idea if you’re grabbing an eel or a snake until it’s too late. And now everyone’s doing it. Too many snakes is bad for everyone, so you’ve gotta know when to hold and when to fold. Can you earn the most points and the fewest snakes?
Contents
Setup
Basically none. Set out the bag and fill it with the snakes and eels:
Set the score tokens nearby:
That’s about it!
Gameplay
Also pretty simple, since all of the information is on the literal bag. Each game is played to 20 points, over a series of rounds. In a given round, each player takes turns drawing eels (hopefully!) from the bag. You may take anywhere between 0 and 4 eels (up to 6 in a two-player game). There’s a catch, however: several of the “eels” in the bag are actually bright red snakes! That’s bad.
Once everyone has taken their eels, they reveal (rev-eel) how many and what kind they got. If any player decided to take 0 eels from the bag, they score what they have and then return their eels (not their snakes) to the bag. If the total number of eels taken by all players during a round has not reached the threshold, you’re good; take another set of turns. If it has, all players who took the most eels on their turn discard all eels and snakes back to the bag, including the ones they took previously! The other players earn one point per eel collected (and 0 snakes). Then, a new round begins.
At the end of a round where a player has 20+ points, the game ends! The player with the most points wins.
Player Count Differences
There aren’t a ton, since it’s really nicely scoped to player count. At lower player counts, the game will likely go a bit faster just because players can theoretically score more points per round, but there will also be huge losses since if there are only three players who can bust and at least one of them must bust, statistically you’re likely to bust more often personally than at a higher player count game. The thing about more players, though, is that you’re more likely to assume the risk is getting amortized out, to some degree. Oh, it’s fine if you take two eels this turn, surely nobody’s going to draw seven snakes in the first turn, and then it happens. It sucks, but it does happen. Honestly, it keeps the game silly and light no matter the player count, so I’m not particularly inclined to complain, even with two or eight. No major preference; just a nice silly time.
Strategy
- If you’re nearing the threshold, you can tap out and take 0, but every turn where nobody busts hurts if you’re not scoring anything. Taking 0 early sucks. Not only do you dump all your eels back in, diluting the snakes-to-eels ratio, but you also can’t score more after this. The worst outcome is that the round goes for a while and other players outpace you because you decided to tap out too early.
- Taking one to stay in play is often the best move; even towards the end you don’t see a ton of people taking just one. Someone almost always takes two and gets greedy, except for all the times that they don’t. Keep an eye on how conservatively or aggressively other players are playing and try to guess what they’re going to do.
- Taking four (or six at two players) on your first turn of a round is probably fine, but stranger things have happened. You personally won’t bust on that much, but if everyone takes the max value you do run that risk, even in the first turn. If it happens, well, it’ll happen to just about everyone, but that might mean 3 free points to a player who decided to hedge their bets more than y’all did.
- There’s not many ways you can affect other players, so keep that in mind. If a player is starting to run away with it, short of trying to convince them to make worse choices, you can’t really stop them from doing that.
- Make sure you don’t take too many eels by mistake. And I mean eels, here. Never take more than four; that’s essentially a foul by the game’s rules and you have to beg the other players to let you correct your mistake. Embarrassing. Try to avoid it.
- There’s almost always someone in my groups who tries to push their luck and take two when they’re down to the wire on eels, and it almost always blows up in their face. It’s great for everyone else, since everyone doesn’t bust together, but you may not want to risk it. That said, if you don’t have a lot of eels, you might as well risk it since even if you lose you’re not losing all that much.
- Similarly, players with fewer points are more likely to push their luck desperately. You can use that to your advantage. They’ll be more likely to take more from the bag each turn anyways; you might be able to take two or three towards your final turn of a round and hope they went for four and insulated you.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- It’s a very silly concept. You’re just grabbing eels from the mud. Do you do this regularly? It’s impossible to say. How much of this is your lifestyle. Is it a hobby? Is it a high-stakes engagement over eels or something? I think about this constantly.
- I like that you really can’t tell the difference between the snakes and the eels except visually. I think that makes sense from a metanarrative standpoint, but also, I mean, it would ruin the game if you could tell from feeling. You have to feel with your heart, not your hands.
- Printing the important information on the bag is an incredibly clutch decision. It makes every single part of the game easier, and I wish more games just printed critical information on the bag. If you don’t like it, then just print it one-sided and flip it to the blank side during games.
- I think this might be the easiest time I’ve had repacking an Oink Games box? Everything fits nicely without making me want to tear my hair out, which is more than I can say for some other Oink titles. It’s nice to have that sometimes.
- The eels are relatively nice. They’re all a decent-quality wood for the price and amount that you get.
- The press-your-luck element of the game is incredibly exciting, especially since everyone’s gambling on how much everyone else is going to press their luck. Press-your-luck games are some of my favorites just in general because of how much can happen during a particular game or round and the inherent silliness of all of it, but having everyone share a potential bust based on how greedy they got is fantastic. Always makes the rounds exciting.
- The portability of an Oink Game is always a plus. I’m packing for a trip as we speak and I just threw in four as a bonus. They’re great to have with me for just about everything.
- I really like the intensely yellow box. It’s striking!
Mehs
- The game can be derailed a bit by a player who’s not being particularly strategic. There are people who just … always take as many as possible, and for some reason they’ve proudly made that their personality. It’s very easy to just take three towards the end, knowing they’re going to take four. I do wish there were other ways for the game to be interactive as well, it’s just this particular behavior is enabled by the game and fairly annoying. As with many games, the fix is “don’t play with that person”.
Cons
- There should be some texture on the eels and snakes so that it’s easier to tell quickly how many you have in your hand so that players don’t grab too many by mistake. It’s a much easier mistake to make than you’d expect; the eels are small and slick so you might grab five when you mean to grab four and then you’ve got to take a penalty unless you can convince every player to let it slide (unlikely; I know who I play games with).
Overall: 8.25 / 10
Overall, I like Wriggle Roulette a bunch! It’s extremely silly. Just, so silly. As mentioned, your goal is to pull as many eels out of the mud as possible while avoiding snakes, and the collective total of snakes is what can potentially bust all players. I love press-your-luck games with stakes, and having other players’ bad luck be something you need to take into account is particularly entertaining. It adds some nice tension regardless of player count. I think the big worrying round when you’re close to the snake limit and everyone’s deciding to take 0 or 2 eels can be the most fun. You’re not sure if everyone’s going to push over the bust point or if anyone’s going to hold back or even if people go for it and still end up getting away from it. There will be laughs, disasters, and most importantly, eels. And sometimes that’s just the Oink Games way. You’ll have a fun time and a weird time. If you’re a fan of Oink Games, or you’re a fan of high stakes or low snakes, you’ll likely enjoy Wriggle Roulette! It’s a lot of fun.
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