SNAP Review – boop

[boop!] I just booped your snoop. Like a kitten!

Kittens are adorable!

Kittens are jerks. Especially to each other.

This is a SNAP review for boop, the game where cats and kittens bounce each other off the bed.

Game

boop is a game for two players by Scott Brady and published by Smirk & Laughter Games. The box here says it’s best for ages 10+ and it plays in about 20 minutes.

Art

The art? Let’s talk about it.

It’s adorable.

The components in this game are simple, but very cute.

Open up the box, take out the two sets of tokens. Then flip the box bottom over and lay the little quilted board on top: voila! It’s a bed.

The cats and kittens are all wooden meeples with smiling faces and details like stripes and cute little white bellies. (They’re so cute!)

Mechanics

So the quilt and the cats are cute, but how do we actually play boop?

The goal of boop is to get three of your own cats in a row: horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. But you start the game with kittens, not cats.

The way the game works is simple. Set one of your pieces anywhere on the board. If it’s adjacent to any other kittens, it boops them away in a straight line.

But if you can manage to get three kittens in a row, they turn into cats! Add the cats to your supply and remove those kittens from the game.

Kittens can’t boop cats, but cats can boop everyone. You can keep upgrading kittens into cats, but every time you make a line of three with at least one kitten in it, the whole line is removed from the board.

When one player manages to line everything up correctly and get their line of three cats, they immediately win the game.

And that’s it! It’s pretty simple.

Expectations

So, what did we expect from boop?

I liked the box art for boop, but what really attracted me was the marketing that stated that boop was a sort of successor to SHOBU, which I really love playing.

And that’s totally what this is. At it’s core, this is an abstract game. But it works really well with this theme, which is super adorable, and definitely makes a difference in your level of joy when you are playing.

Two player games get a lot of play time in our family, and well-done abstract games like this (or like SHOBU), will keep us coming back over and over. So I expected simple rules that would lead to some fairly deep thinking.

Surprises

So Anitra, what surprised us about boop?

It’s so cute!

I mean, is that really a surprise? But it is so cute!

And that cuteness hides that this is a cut-throat game that encourages you to be a jerk.

[Andrew] Wait, is that why I’m so good at it? (Maybe…)

The rules about getting cats and how they’re different from kittens are not completely intuitive, and they did trip us up once or twice. And you might miss a boop in your first couple of plays.

Although the box says 10+, I think younger kids can play this game. Like checkers and many other abstract games, they’re probably not going to be good at it. But being able to bounce cats across the bed can be its own reward.

Recommended?

So Andrew, would we recommend boop?

Absolutely! It’s got a cute theme and simple rules, and we think it will even pull in the most reluctant of gamers; as long as they have a soul and like things that are cute.

You can try boop right now on Board Game Arena, but it’s also finally back on Amazon after being sold out, so look for it there, or give your friendly local game store a call.

So what are we going to rate boop from Smirk & Laughter Games?

We’re going to give this adorable game 4½ Cute Cats out of 5.

And that’s boop. In a SNAP!

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The Family Gamers received a copy of boop from Smirk & Laughter Games for this review.

This post contains affiliate links, which do not change your price, but help support The Family Gamers.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?