Get your puppy to the top of the pile when it’s time to pick a winner!
What Is Puppy Pile?
Puppy Pile is a game for 2 to 6 players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 25 to 40 minutes to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $18 for a copy of the game. The rules are pretty simple, and with an adult to help read the cards, I think even younger kids could get in on the fun.
Puppy Pile was designed by Mike A. Pratt and published by Thing 12 Games, with illustrations by Cindy Lee.
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Puppy Pile Components
Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality.
- 12 Puppy tiles
- 12 Personal Puppy cards
- 40 Action cards
- Bed tile
- 12 plastic stands
The card-sized puppy tiles are double-sided, with the same image and icons on both sides. The plastic stands are optional, in case you want to stand everything up, or just have them flat on the table. I felt the tiles were large enough that they would be easy to knock down while moving things around (and possibly have a domino effect) so we mostly played without the stands.
The illustrations are really cute, with a wide variety of dog breeds, plus one definitely-not-just-a-cat-in-a-dog-costume. Each one is labeled with its breed and has some icons indicating its size, whether it’s a short- or long-haired dog, and what its job is (companion, sporting, or working).
The personal puppy cards match the tiles but without the icons. Instead, the bottom of the card has a dog tag area where you and your kids can write a name for each dog if you like. (We didn’t write on the prototype since it needed to be sent back.)
How to Play Puppy Pile
The Goal
The goal of the game is to have your personal puppy on the top of the pile when the “Pick a Winner” card is drawn.
Setup
Place the bed tile on one side of the playing area, and then make a row of puppy tiles in a random order.
Shuffle the personal puppy cards and deal one to each player. Players should look at their own and keep it a secret.
Whoever was most recently licked by a dog goes first.
Gameplay
On your turn, you draw the top card of the action deck and do what it says. Action cards will let you move puppies up or down, sometimes a specific number of spaces, or sometimes above a particular type of puppy. Some cards only allow you to move puppies that meet a specific criteria like size, hair length, or job, but the majority just move pups up or down a set number of spaces.
In the deck, there are two “Pick a Winner” cards. When one of these is drawn, you check for a winner (though if not everyone has had at least one turn yet, then just discard it and ignore it for now). Take the top puppy from the pile and check if it matches anyone’s personal puppy. If so, they win! If not, that puppy goes back into the game box. The player who drew the card draws another card to take an action.
When the second “Pick a Winner” card is played, if the game continues because the winning puppy doesn’t belong to anyone, reshuffle all of the cards from the deck and discard pile before continuing.
Game End
If the top puppy matches somebody’s personal puppy when the “Pick a Winner” card is drawn, they win and the game ends!
Variant Rules
There are a couple of variant setups included in the rules depending on who you’re playing with. For younger players, keep the personal puppy cards face-up—it removes the secret goal aspect, but makes it a little easier for younger kids to keep track of what’s going on. For a longer game, you can use the double puppy setup, where every player gets two personal puppy cards; you must have both of them picked to win the game. Finally, for experienced players, you can give each player two personal puppy cards and let them choose one to use, and return the other one to the box. This gives each player information about one dog that doesn’t belong to anyone, which can then be used as a decoy.
Why You Should Play Puppy Pile
Puppy Pile is pretty simple to explain: be on the top of the pile when the “Pick a Winner” card shows up. But you have no idea when that will happen—there are two of them in the deck, and they could be anywhere because there’s no special setup that places them near the bottom or middle of the deck. (The only allowance is that everyone gets at least one turn or it doesn’t count.)
So it requires a bit of luck, of course, because every card played manipulates the pile in some way. Most of the cards let you pick any dog in the pile and move it a specific number of spaces up or down, depending on the card. Some of the cards (not very many) let you move a dog based on its size or hair or job—these are a bit more restrictive because you can’t move just any dog. Either way, if your dog isn’t already near the top, that might not help you right away. In that case, you can work on moving somebody else’s dog down … if you can figure out which dogs belong to somebody else.
Other action cards can shake things up even more, like moving the top or bottom dog to anywhere in the stack, swapping two dogs, or even flipping the entire stack upside down. These cards can be quite powerful, but can also give away your secret goal if you’re not careful. But if you think that Pick a Winner card is coming soon, maybe it’s worth the risk to move your dog to the top, and hope that nobody else gets a chance to replace it in time.
Puppy Pile doesn’t have a lot of deep strategy; it’s intended to be a light, quick game for families who don’t mind a good bit of luck. You’re not making big, long-term decisions on your turn, just a quick tactical choice based on the current conditions of the pile. One tip in the rules is that it’s better to be at the top or bottom than the middle, because there are cards that will flip the stack or move the bottom dog all the way to the top, but if you’re stuck in the middle it takes a lot more manipulation to get to either end. I do like the way that the pile shrinks each time that nobody wins, because that helps you figure out which dogs matter to your opponents. Overall, it’s probably one that I would mostly use as an appetizer game, kicking off a game night or something to play while waiting for the whole group to arrive, but not the main game I would be playing for the evening. I’d recommend this one primarily for groups that include younger players (and, of course, people who love cute puppies).
For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Puppy Pile Kickstarter page!
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a prototype of this game for review purposes.
