f you’ve been to any of my events you’ll know that usually you can tell me which game you have enjoyed and I can reliably recommend something you’ll like. And, if you want to play a game but don’t have enough players I can suggest a good alternative. But occasionally my brain goes a bit wibbly. For example the people who told me they had enjoyed Ticket to Ride so I then wittered on at length about other games with trains in until they stopped me and said ‘We’re not especially interested in trains….’ Then there was the couple who wanted to play Who Did It? but you need three players for that so I recommended my two other poo themed games – Poo! or Dino Dump. They were surprised that I was able to hone in on that theme and offer alternative poo themed games. Well! Great news. There’s more where that came from!
Tapeworm is the new family card game from Edmund McMillen (creator of The Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy and more…) featuring cute, confused, gross and slightly sinister worms. The art work is fabulous – lots of gross details like worms on worms, bright colours, even the angry red worm looks quite sweet! However, google caution is advised – if you’re searching make sure you include card game and don’t, don’t click on images!
The game itself is quick to learn, quick to play and the mechanics are not difficult at all making it perfect for families with little ones. As long as you can colour match, you can play. Each player starts with 5 cards and the winner is the first to get rid of all their cards. On your turn, you draw a card and place one of your worm cards on a matching colour segment. You can keep playing matching cards until you play a card with a head on or a card which changes the colour. You can also get rid of bonus cards if you can steer your worms into a circle.
So despite the worms wiggling their way through the ‘tunnels’ it all seems very gentile. Cute even? Right? Wrong. As well as getting rid of your cards on your turn you also get to mess up your opponents’ plans using special actions. Perfect.
You can get rid of your crap cards by swapping them with others, discarding to the top of the draw pile, you can chop the worms up removing some dead ends from play, make others pick cards up. Generally dump all over their plans! And yes I’m still laughing at poo- I know I’m a rubbish adult.
The scissors cards (pictured left) let you cut a segment or segments of a worm of the corresponding colour away. On the right you can see the special symbols for swapping, peeking, digging and making someone pick up a card.
Tapeworm is available on Kickstarter right now and is absolutely flying. Over £120,000 of a £20,000 target! Click the link to find out more.