Super Kawaii Pets

This one feels a bit like Cat Lady, but without the distraction of toys and costumes.

There is a deck of Animals and a deck of Help cards (health, hearts, food), also a deck of Location cards oriented horizontally.  The animal deck is interesting because one side has the sad version of the animal oriented vertically, where the other side shows the happy animal horizontally.

The setup is just the sad-side-up deck of animals with two showing to the right of the deck, then the face-down deck of Help cards with three face up cards next to it.  Then the Location deck with three face-up cards.

The basic idea is that you can draw two cards each turn, any face-up card.  Some animals give you a bonus card, so if it has a plus sign you get a free card with a plus sign if there are any showing.

The overall flow involves grabbing sad animals, then getting Help cards to care for them.  If you have the resources the animal needs, discard those and flip the animal to the happy side.  From there, the Location cards each have a list of animals required, so if it needs a cat and two rabbits, and you have a cat and two rabbits, take the shelter card and tuck those animals beneath it.  It helps if their point value is showing.

The hand ends when someone has ten horizontal cards of any kind, then you add up the points and reset for the next hand.

We got that Cat Lady feeling especially when deciding which animal card to take.  No, that one needs more food, and that one needs other cards I don't have ...


The art gets an 8 out of 10 on the cute scale, which is about as high as I ever rate things like that.  Some of the sad ones are more angry than sad.  It's light-hearted mellow fun.  

Like usual, a new game drags the first hand or two, as we have to keep looking up rules & details.  Then we speed up to where we forget to even look at the art.  A lot of times you can dial back down the energy by saying the names of the funny pets or characters, but these guys did not have names.  That would have made it a lot more personal and relatable to pet lovers.

At first it looked like there was no shelter for the miscellaneous critters like the fish or panda -- I guess you just get the points for the animal for those.  But their species icon is a yellow star, they are wild cards, will match any slot on a Location card.

Thumbs up, cut short because dinner was going into the oven.  Will try again.  It has a simple version for one player.

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