Advert: This game was gifted by Playte Games. All opinions are ours and our reviews are always honest.

Have you ever dreamed of living the cozy life of a tubby housecat, with all the food and toys your little heart desires? Well, with Meow Meow Dice now’s your chance!

👥 2-4 players
⌛ 10 minutes
🧠 14 years+

Gameplay overview:

Players take on the role of adorable cuboid cats, performing tricks by rolling dice to convince the cat butler (yes, the cats have a butler!) to give them food, clothes, toys, and cozy beds. Each enticing item on display has a dice requirement, e.g. two pairs of matching faces. Get your dice to match, and the butler will be so impressed he’ll give you the item!

You can reroll the dice to try and get the result you need – but cats get sleepy, so you can only reroll fewer and fewer dice each time! If you run out of rolls, you’re out of luck! No treat for you – but you do get a conciliatory fish bone, which is still worth 1 point.

Some dice requirements are easier to get than others, and some cards add extra rules, like needing at least one of your dice to show a specific side. If you somehow manage to get 4 identical dice results, the butler is dazzles by your cat-robatics and gives you a pointeriffic golden treat!

Any items you win are added to your personal area and the game ends when everyone has collected 5 or 6 cards (depending on player numbers). Then you add up:

• The points on the top right of each card
• 1 point for each card that has a cat symbol matching your own cat
• Points depending on how many of each item type (clothing, food, toys, home) you collected: 1 type is 0 points, 2 types are 1 point, 3 types are 3 points, and having all 4 types gets you 5 points.

The player with the most points wins!

In the standard rules, you also have a personal cat token you can flip to refresh the items on the board before you roll dice. Your token ability resets if you collect a fish bone card.

There are also some additional ‘advanced’ rules you can throw in. Instead of flipping a cat token, players can use an Enthusiasm card that allows them to spend enthusiasm points to: add a condition token to a card (a specific dice face is now needed to win this card!), set one dice to a specific face, or refresh the cards. More enthusiasm points are gained from the fish bone cards (you can only have max. 3 at any point).

There’s also an ‘extra bite’ rule that lets you exhaust food cards in your collection to gain an additional die reroll. Cards can only be exhausted once, and they’re still scored as normal at the end of the game.

Our thoughts:

Meow Meow Dice is undeniably cute: the artwork is adorable and the wooden cat dice really make the game. The little details on the dice are a nice touch too – like how the different sides align in a way that you can stack them and the lines connect up. I also really like that the cards often feature one of the cheeky cats wearing the clothes or using the toys – super cute and a nice little extra point if you can grab them.

The cuteness and the super simple gameplay (especially the standard rules) make it a great option to introduce to non-gaming friends and family, particularly if they find rules or games with a lot of decision space intimidating. My mum – a non-gamer – really enjoyed it when we played with her! (But then, she did win!).

For seasoned gamers, however, I’m not sure Meow Meow dice holds enough interest to come to the table often because it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot to it. The advanced rules were fine (and we’d probably play with them every game), but didn’t feel like they added anything or elevated the gameplay much. And while I enjoy a push your luck game – Spots is a favourite! – with Meow Meow Dice I found my experience more mixed. There is a lot of luck, and although there are some additional actions you can take (BEFORE rolling), mitigating the die results is limited. There are games where you can get stuck with mostly fishbones – this could make it frustrating for younger players (or Laurens!). Admittedly we haven’t played with the additional bite rule yet, which may help but it doesn’t sound like it will fully tackle this issue. 

The cuteness and the super simple gameplay make it a great option to introduce to non-gaming friends and family.

Learning Meow Meow Dice is also trickier than it needs to be because the rulebook lacks clarity in many places. Which is a shame, because at its heart, Meow Meow Dice is a simple, family-friendly game that boils down to two simple steps (1) roll dice (2) collect reward. So simple even a cat could do it! (if it could be bothered…)

What we like:

• Family friendly push-your-luck that’s simple, easy to learn and super quick to play (10 minutes!)

• Lighthearted option to introduce to non-gamers, especially if they get easily overwhelmed by rules or games that use more strategy/steps/decisions.

• Cute artwork and cute cute cute wooden cat dice!

• Featuring different player cats on the item cards is a nice touch – and they’re worth points if you manage to grab the ones that have your own cat on.

• It’s nice to have the option of playing with a super simple ruleset.

Considerations:

• There is a LOT of luck and very little you can do about it, which some people may find frustrating.

• The rulebook isn’t written very well, which makes learning the game more complicated than it needs to be. Once you get past that it’s super easy to teach others.

• The ‘advanced’ rules don’t change the game much or add more strategy – meaning there might not be enough for regular board gamers to sink their teeth into.

Final verdict:

Meow Meow Dice is a super light, super quick push-your-luck game with the cutest cat dice I’ve ever seen! As far as gameplay goes, luck heavily determines whether you have a good game or a bad game. And there’s limited ways to counter the bad (no way in the standard rules!), which can feel frustrating.

Meow Meow Dice is a super light, super quick push-your-luck game with the cutest cat dice I’ve ever seen!

Overall, I don’t think it’s a game me & Matt will play together often because it’s too simple for us… but the simplicity and cute theme works well for some of our non-gamer family who struggle with lots of rules or steps in a game. And our toddler enjoys playing with the dice!

Playte Games will be at UKGE on the Revelation Games stand 3-745. You can preorder their games at revelation-games.sumupstore.com/products