A game I just needed

Ever since I first saw boop. I knew we needed to have it. The cover picture is just too sweet, 😍 plus the components themselves are also cats! We have been getting more into abstract games lately, which made this prime Christmas gift material! 🎁 This is a really quick game; setup takes seconds and matches only last for minutes. It’s basically something like tic-tac-toe, but before you stop reading ☝️ I’ll add that it is amazing and has a bunch of unique rules that make decisions more layered.

So as you start out, both players have 8 kittens. On your turn you can place one on an empty spot of the 6x6 grid (which is a little textile blanket that you can put on the game box, so it resembles a bed - so cool 🤩). The main twist is how newly placed pieces push (aka. boop) adjacent pieces back, potentially knocking them off the bed, so they come back to their player’s supply. This makes getting 3 of your kittens in a line difficult, as you often just push them around. You either have to get 2 pieces adjacent so one can brace against the other, or push a 3rd piece from somewhere else between 2 others. You need some practice to start seeing viable plays.

If you get 3 kittens in a row you remove them from the board, and in exchange unlock 3 of your cat figures. 🐈 If you manage to get 3 of your cats in a row you win the game 🏆, so unlocking them is essential! The more you have the better. In case you’ve unlocked all 8 cats and all of them are on the board, that is a secondary victory condition. 🏆 Cats work similarly to kittens - however while cats can boop other kittens and cats, kittens cannot boop cats. So the introduction of cats on the board switches things up in an interesting way.

Boop is definitely a fun little game, learned, setup, played and packed away in mere minutes! 🥰 It also shows how theme and good graphics can help even abstract games. If we would only push black and white cubes around, I think it wouldn’t be half as fun.
So if you like cats or abstract games, you might want to check Boop out. 😉