The
Game
Cupboard
Exploring the world of modern board games
2-5 Players
Approx 20 Minutes
Age 6+
Designers: Sam Armes, John Ward
Sam and John were kind enough to provide us with a prototype of their game Block Happy to review prior to its Kickstarter launch. Read on for our review.
Block Happy is a lightweight strategy-based card game which drives your own emotions as you play. It plays in 20 minutes and is a fast paced and super fun game of real emotions.
An overview of the gameplay...
Each player begins the game with one happiness card in front of them. They will then be dealt 7 emotion cards from the deck forming their hand. The remaining happy cards are shuffled into the deck and placed face down on the middle of the table forming the “hidden pile”.
Any happy cards dealt to a player are placed down immediately in front of them and they draw back up to 7.
Players take it in turns to play cards, either onto a pile in the middle of the table (known as the show pile) or against their opponents. They might choose to play an annoyed or outraged card against their opponents to take their happiness away from them.
Alternatively, players can play a matching pair of emotions e.g. 2x funny, surprised, scared, angry, or sad. This will enable them to take one card from the hidden pile and to choose one from the show pile taking them back to their hand limit of 7.
The first player to get either all 7 happiness in front of them or a combination of 6 happiness and the one special “tickled pink” card wins!
So, what did we think of Block Happy?
The fantastic design of Block Happy is what immediately caught our attention - the artwork is vibrant, colourful and eye catching! Each of the cards depicts a little cube character which is cleverly designed to perfectly capture the feeling of the emotion they are intended to convey. The art style is playful and adorable.
The really special thing about block happy is that you really do feel the emotions as you play them. Feeling jealous of another players happiness? Play the jealous card to steal one of their happiness cards away from them! Feeling bored with a player’s continuous attacks? Play the dull card against them forcing them to miss a turn. How about optimistic? Look at the top 3 cards from the hidden pile, keep one of these and any happiness you find. There are so many possibilities and emotions to feel throughout the course of a game!
Let Block Happy take you on a roller coaster of emotions!
Will you be the first to find complete happiness?
Don't miss out - coming to Kickstarter on 15th October!
We found that reading out the emotions and text on the cards really adds to the gameplay experience, it created lots of fun interactions between players when we were playing for example; “I’m feeling quite impatient waiting for happiness to come along so I am going to steal your happiness from you”, “Haha, well that’s too bad as I am feeling very secure so you can’t take my happiness”.
There’s some fun little additional text on the attack cards that you act out if your attack was successful, managed to land a vengeful attack? take a bow! Feeling particularly evil and successfully stole someone’s happiness? Commence evil laughter! These great little details add another layer of amusement.
Block Happy is super easy to both learn and teach meaning that it is accessible to all types of gamers. It is absolutely perfect if you are looking for something to play with family and children and also acts as a brilliantly fun quick filler game which sparks lots of laughter and joy.
