Base price: $20.
2 – 4 players.
Play time: ~15 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 3
I was actually surprised I hadn’t done this one yet, and then I remembered that I had previously reviewed Animal Upon Animal: Crest Climbers, which I think made me think I had covered my bases. While helping someone with some board game recommendations for their job, however, the opportunity to play the OG showed up, and how am I supposed to pass this up? The last time I played this was with my friend Amber at BGG.CON years ago, so I think I waxed a bit nostalgic for the memory. But how does the original stack up? I guess that’s a pun, but that wasn’t really my intention. Let’s see what’s up.
In Animal Upon Animal, the animals are very excited about stacking into pyramids, and let’s be real: who wouldn’t be? Everyone who has to stack on or near the hedgehog. That’s who wouldn’t be. Spiny. But your goal here remains the same: stack on the crocodile’s back and don’t fall under any circumstances. The animals are so chunky, you say; this should be easy. I love your confidence and I hope that you remember that when the animals bury you. There’s no hope otherwise.
Each turn, you roll the die and then take an action: you’ll place an animal or two, pass one along to someone else to place, get forced to place one by a jury of your peers, or extend the crocodile base with another animal. As you do, your goal is simple: avoid toppling the tower. If you do, you keep two of the dropped animals in your supply and the rest go back to the box. The fun of this is that you will keep going until one player has run out of animals to place; they win. You can even make this harder by just distributing all the animals at the game’s start to expand it out. There are a bunch of animals. So how high of a stack will you build? And most importantly, how far will you fall?
Overall: 8.5 / 10
You know, I think I wasn’t sure what to expect from Animal Upon Animal after playing Crest Climbers. I liked Crest Climbers, but this is the OG for a reason. It’s super fun. It has the right animals, the right shapes, and the right amount of pressure to get you to build up. Maybe I just really didn’t like the tree? It’s genuinely hard to say. But Animal Upon Animal is a fantastic introductory stacking game for the whole family. The pieces are nice and big and approachable, the die is big, and everything is well-coded to be something that a young player can pick right up and get going with. I do love the classic yellow HABA box for this, though I genuinely wish that the box had a bit better organization for storing the animals between games. Just something to block the pieces from smacking around everywhere; it stresses me out. Though, that’s generally true for all HABA games. They’re not a huge fan, corporation-wise, of inserts in boxes. Baffling, but neither my horses nor my circus, I suppose.
Where Animal Upon Animal can be challenging for some is just within the nature of stacking games. These pieces remain slippery on purpose, to allow the pieces to slide past each other and fall over. Same as I mentioned with Crest Climbers, years ago. It ends up forcing you, the player, to be smart about your balance. You’re not just working with angles; you’re working with weights and physics. Sometimes the smooth edges will work in your favor, letting a piece slide and lock into another, and sometimes it’ll work against you and one of those smooth edges will fall right off the crocodile and take everything down with it. Them’s the breaks. The pieces here all all impeccable, though; a deeply silly collection of animals from the sheep to the penguin. I’m a big fan of the design choices, and I see how this was a game that launched a thousand ships. Simple concept, excellent delivery.
This all tilts me towards a growing love for Animal Upon Animal. I think it’s worth considering our roots when we think about games and why we love them, and people have been playing stacking games for, I assume, as long as there have been things to stack. Animal Upon Animal is, in my opinion, a great foundational title for gamers who are looking to get into stacking games, and, most critically, it passes the most important check for kids’ games: it’s fun for kids and still fun for adults. There’s nothing about Animal Upon Animal that limits it to kids, and I think that’s impeccable design. HABA at their best. Animal Upon Animal is, quite literally, an excellent game to build on, and if you’re moving from that to Catch the Moon or any other fantastic stacking game, you’ll appreciate its pedigree and still go back to it. It’s a classic. I’m a big fan, and if you like stacking games, you need a game for the whole family, or you just want to balance some penguins instead of slapping them, I’d recommend Animal Upon Animal!
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