SNAP Review – Get the MacGuffin

What’s a MacGuffin? It’s the thing everyone wants, even if no one is really sure what it does. Get the MacGuffin by Andrew Looney is a fast-playing game of player elimination for 2-11 players, published by Looney Labs. Recommended for ages 8 and up, Get the MacGuffin usually plays in 10 minutes or less, even at the maximum number of players.

Can we get the MacGuffin or were we disappointed? Listen to Andrew and Anitra’s thoughts in about 5 minutes, or read on below.

Goal

Be the last person who still has at least one card, either in your hand, or in play on the table.

How to Play

Get the MacGuffin feels a lot like Fluxx, but simpler and faster.

Shuffle the cards and give each player an equal number. Set aside the cards that are left over.

On your turn, either play a card from your hand, or use the special power of an Object card you had previously played to the table. Let’s talk about the two types of cards in Get the MacGuffin.

Action Cards

Actions are single-use cards that tell you to do something. They can be innocuous like “The Shrugmaster” and “The Hippie”. But some are nasty, like “Can I Use That?” (take a card at random from someone else’s hand and play it as your own) and “The Switcheroo” (trade hands with another player – even if that leaves the other player with zero cards). Some are just completely random, like “The Vortex”, in which you collect the cards from everyone’s hands, shuffle them, and re-deal them all.

Object Cards

Play Objects to the table. Each has a unique ability that may be used on a later turn. Andrew’s favorite is “The Crown”, which forces everyone to address the player as “your majesty”.

If you have no cards left in your hand (and can’t use an object’s special ability), you must discard an object that you had in play.

A key part of Get the MacGuffin is to have the right objects. Look for objects that will allow you to keep playing even after you have no cards left in your hand. The best one is the “MacGuffin” (obviously), since it allows you to simply pick it up and put it back down as its special power – as long as you don’t have any other cards in play!

Of course, having the MacGuffin at the beginning of the game doesn’t guarantee your victory. Objects like “The Money” can be used to take it, and actions like “The Fist of Doom” can force you to discard it.

Fortunately, there is a backup (“Backup MacGuffin”), and even a backup to the backup (“The Crown”)!

We are fans of the Rock, Paper, and Scissors objects, each of which allows you to discard one of the others.

Impressions

Get the MacGuffin is very well-designed while also being very silly. There are very few circumstances in which there would not be a clear winner.

We have a ton of fun with Get the MacGuffin. It makes a fantastic filler, and spans age ranges very well. We agree with the recommended 8+ age range, because kids need to have good reading comprehension to understand the cards. If you’ve got a sore loser, this is not the game for them, since they need to be okay with being eliminated from the game!

Fortunately, the game moves quickly and is entertaining to watch, so the disappointment of elimination is not as crushing as it might otherwise be.

We love the large cards and interesting stylized art. In our experience, it makes a great icebreaker or a great restaurant game. According to the rules, you can play Get The MacGuffin without a table, simply holding your “played” objects face-out in your hand and passing the discard pile from player to player.

Find Get the MacGuffin for around $10 on Amazon or buy directly from Looney Labs. We recommend it if you like Fluxx, or if you like the humor of Munchkin (but not necessarily the mechanics). It allows for a huge variation in player count, with some strategy but a lot of randomness. This is truly a game that anyone can win.

---

The Family Gamers received a copy of Get the MacGuffin from Looney Labs for this review.

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