Poo: The Card Game Review

The latest little game that I am ready to review is Poo: The Card Game.

In Poo, each of the players takes on the role of a monkey that is flinging poo at all of the other monkeys. Each player holds 5 cards in his hand and each turn is able to either play a card (normally flinging poo at another monkey or cleaning himself off) or can discard any number of cards and draw back up to 5 cards. Between his turns, each player will have to be ready to defend himself from poo that is thrown in his direction - if you have the right cards, you may be able to block poo, dodge it, or even use your buddy's face to block the poo. Once all of the other monkeys are too filthy to keep going, then that leaves the cleanest monkey as the winner. (Sound like Lunch Money? Yeah, it did to me too, and for good reason - they play very similarly.)

The biggest pro for Poo is that it is appropriate with all age groups. If you attempt to play this with impressionable young children, yes, you may have to clean up after them if they decide that it is a good idea to fling poo at other people, but you will not have to explain to their principal why they were fighting like if you taught them Lunch Money. In addition to the theme being a bit more kid friendly, the cartoonish art on the cards is well done and is quite amusing. You will find yourself being entertained by playing the game, but also by the name of some of the cards like the "Montezuma's Revenge" defense card or the "Mighty Joe Young Poo" that you can throw.

Now that the biggest pro of Poo has been discussed, its time for the biggest con. (Yeah, with games this simple, I don't really feel a need to go too in-depth with too many pros and cons. If it takes longer to read the review than the rules, I may be a bit too detailed!) Poo does not have the level of depth as some other card based fighting games. Whereas, in other games you may have the option of grabbing your opponent after a block and doing several rounds of countering and re-countering attacks, Poo does not do this. In Poo, there are several cards that your opponent can do nothing about. This makes the amount of countering pretty shallow, and thus causes players to rely much more heavily on luck. As an example, if someone throws a poo worth 4 points of filth at the person next to me and they play "Buddy's Face" and use me to block it, there is nothing I can do - I just take the 4 points of filth. Overall, however, if you are looking for a light, quick game, you should not let this detract you from playing the game.

Overall, Poo gets a 7.5/10. I personally prefer Lunch Money, and would recommend it (to people of the appropriate age) over Poo, but Poo is a very fun little filler game, and since the MSRP is around $10, I don't think that you'll be disappointed if you buy it. (Assuming that you're someone who was interested in the game in the first place - if you aren't interested in a goofy game about throwing poo, then obviously you probably won't like it.)

If you like card games, you might also want to check out Bang!, Monopoly Deal, and Famiglia