Cat Days Review

Cat Days is a fun little game that’s quick to play and supports a great cause!

Overview

Cat Days is a quick game to play for two players. In this game, each player takes a set of seven-day cards and a cat tree (scratching post) card (to be added to one of the day cards of your choice).

Each player starts with four cat cards. These cards vary with most depicting a different type of cat ranging from examples such as ‘rescue’ cat and ‘fluffy’ cat and each of these has a score value ranging from zero to six. There are other cards too such as catnip and toy cards. Every card type has rules on what it does and how to play it.

Players take it in turn to either play a card or take a new card and essentially, the aim of the game is to add one cat to each day and when either player has added a cat to every day of the week the game ends and both players add their scoring cards together and the one with the most victory points is the winner. Presumably both players win on a tie, because no tie-breaker is included.

There are cards that can affect your opponent, so you need to watch out for these and this is a fun aspect of the game as you are not just playing in a silo. Player interaction is therefore good and the game is so quick, multiple games are possible in an hour or so, with each game taking about 15 minutes or so to play.

Rules

If there is a weakness in the game, then it is the rules. The rules as written on a card in the box are very basic. In fact, they are so basic, some aspects of the game are not clear at all and it leaves the rules open to interpretation. Players are encouraged to access Farplace’s website for further rules clarification, but even the errata listed isn’t complete to help you interpret all the rules.

It might be a deliberate ploy to lead people to view the website to potentially view the work the charity does, but I’m not sure and I don’t think this approach works. It seems that possibly this aspect of the game wasn’t play tested enough. For me, I would prefer the rules to be clearer from the outset and included in the box, even if added to an extra couple of cards.

As a result of this lack of clarity it is possible mistakes were made in the games I’ve played, and bearing in mind this is a game designed for children aged six and up, more clearly defined rules would be helpful.

Some clarifications

Normally you can only play one cat card, per day card, although the rules in the box don’t state it. The cat tree card allows up to three cat cards to be placed and scored.

There is no hand size specified, but the errata confirms whilst there is no hand size as such if the card deck has only one or two cards left, both players must discard cards sufficient to bring their hand size down to five cards. This is to prevent a player hoarding cards.

Most of the cards are easy enough to understand. The cardboard box card is a fun and easy to use card to use to sabotage your opponent by luring one of their cats to your side, because let’s face it, cats love cardboard boxes to use a base and vantage point!

The catnip card is a useful card to allow you to pick up all your currently placed cat cards to shuffle and redistribute, one per day ignoring placement rules. This is useful if you want to relocate a cat that is otherwise blocked by a grumpy cat, a card which must be played on top of another cat on any board, and yes that includes your opponents. This then blocks the scoring for that cat as the grumpy cat is worth zero points, aww grumpy cat!

You also have the feral cat. It is worth five points, so a good scoring card, but it scares (removes) any card to either side of it on placement. It can be placed on your own board, useful to remove a grumpy cat or your opponents to remove their cards.

Finally, there is also the pointer card. This allows you to remove a cat from any board, because you just know cats love to chase a laser dot or stick!

Summary

Despite the shortcomings of the rules, if you can access the errata, then the game is a fun, dynamic easy game to play. If you are looking for a little filler to play, then I would recommend Cat Days.

I would add too, that as someone who once fostered a cat for an animal welfare charity, the cause is a good one. The price of this little game is at a good price point and on a par with similar small card deck games too, so a cheap game to add to your collection.