Not the best time to be a dinosaur

If you know Unstable Games, you know how their games usually work. 👉 Simple card play, lots of take-that, amazing puns and awesomely cute art. While I normally like avoiding take-that mechanics, the themes of these games just lend themselves perfectly to it. 😄 Our favorite game from them is Here to Slay, but now we are here to talk about Happy Little Dinosaurs! 🦕

You take on the roles of dinosaurs and have a straightforward (albeit not easy) goal: avoid any and all kinds of disasters, and be the last dinosaur standing. Thanks to the funny theme these disasters aren’t just Natural ☄️ like a meteorite, but there are also Predatory 🐾 and Emotional 💔 disasters - most of which are hilariously written. 😄 Whenever someone has a set of each disaster type, or 3 of a kind from a single type, they are out of the game. 

You either win when you are the last one in the game, or when you reach 50 victory points. 🏆

The actual gameplay is quite simple. 🧐 Each round a Disaster card is drawn, then every player plays a point card from their hand facedown. If everyone is ready, you turn your cards face up and check the values and effects: whoever has the lowest number has to take the Disaster, possibly getting knocked out of the game. To make things more interesting, of course lower value cards have some special effects on them, possibly turning the tables. There are also additional card types that you could play to add or subtract from a value, or do other shenanigans. Whoever has the highest value, gets that many victory points, moving their little dino meeple on their ‘escape route’ track.

Getting Disasters has a tiny bit of upside: ☝️ at the end of a round everyone gets as many points as the number of disaster cards they have. This is an ideal beer & pretzel game (best with 3+ players), with just enough things going on to keep you entertained.

Asmodee brought Happy Little Dinosaurs to the german market, and the translations are stellar. So many puns and wordplay. 😁 There are also expansions, like ‘Dating Disasters’ which we played with, that add cards that are just as ridiculous as you might expect. 😅