boop. from Smirk & Dagger Games

👥 2 players
⌛ 20-30 minutes
🧠 10 years+

Boop is a lightly themed abstract game where 2 players play cats trying to get the best spot on the bed. It’s a reimplementation of another 2-player abstract game (Gekitai).

A player starts with kittens, and has to get 3 of them in a row to swap them for cats. To win, you have to be the first to place 3 cats in a row – but it’s not as simple as it sounds! Whenever a kitten/cat is placed on the bed it ‘boops’ any kittens/cats in the surrounding squares one space away. Kittens can’t boop cats though, they’re too small!

Very important house rule: whenever you place a cat/kitten you have to say “boop!” out loud as it pushes other felines away!

Our first impressions of Boop:

• This was our favourite game we demoed at the expo! It’s fun, cute and deceptively thinky.

• The game felt a bit random to start with when you’re first getting your kittens on the board until you suddenly hit a point where you can make more intentional moves. However, I think this was just because we were new to the game and imagine with experience you develop opening strategies (like chess).

• The fabric quilt board is a cool addition and really makes the game what it is.

• For the type of game it is, it is a little bit on the pricey side – at UKGE it was £33. 

It’s safe to say on first impressions we loved Boop. We’ve not stopped thinking about how much we liked it and we’ve been playing it on BGA ever since. It’s the perfect game for us to enjoy over a cup of coffee at a coffee shop (a big pastime for us!). The only thing that held us back from buying it at UKGE was the price; if it had been around the £20-25 mark we wouldn’t have hesitated to grab it. However, we’re sort of regretting it now because it doesn’t seem to be in stock anywhere. Hopefully we’ll be able to add it to our collection soon!