Pub Games — Unstable Games’ ‘Happy Little Dinosaurs’ Goes Great With Mozzarella Sticks
by Anton Kromoff
Summary
The art is adorable, the game is quick to set up and easy to explain, and everything fits in the box when you are done without a ton of creative moving bits around to make things fit. All in all, this is kinda the perfect fast casual game for those who want something that works for all audiences.
Overall
10/1010/10
Welcome to the table,
Sometimes we have to abandon our desks, call our friends, and head over to the local pub to play a hand or three of a card game to feel more human. Lucky for me, my pals at Unstable Games sent me a copy of their new card game Happy Little Dinosaurs. So I called up some friends, ordered up some mozzarella sticks, and got down to playing this new fast-paced card game to see what all the fuss was about.
The game is really easy to set up and get going. You pick one of the dinosaur character play cards. I picked Nervous Rex, grabbed the corresponding meeple, a small wooden game-piece that has a bit of an abstract shape that sorta matches your character form, and drew a handful of cards to get down to work.
The game plays like a complex version of the card game War. Each player lays a card face down with a number on it. Then the highest number wins the round and advances their meeple-dino along the game card track in an attempt to reach the end of the map and survive the disasters playing out around you.
The higher the numbers, the more you can advance. While the track seems long at first, the point values of the cards are set up in a way that the five or six games we played took us about 15 minutes each, with one hilariously taking about five minutes because just the right cards came out of the deck for my adorable wife in just the right order.
As an added bit of fun, the lowest card played on each round forces that corresponding player to have to draw a disaster card. Once you have three disasters of the same type, you are out of the game, regardless of where you are in your journey of survival.
This worked hilariously well against one of our friends, as they ended up going out fairly early on two games in a row and could enjoy their drink while adding very delightful color commentary.
This is the kind of game I could easily see keeping kids occupied for an hour at a doctor’s office or during a family gathering between setting up and taking down meal prep or something. It’s fun for adults for sure, but we were only able to lock in for about an hour before we started drifting attention-wise.
I think that honestly speaks to the fast casual nature of the game. This is the kind of thing you could have in your backpack or car for a casual game while you grab drinks before a show or while you are waiting for the late D&D players to show up or something to that effect.
The art is adorable, the game is quick to set up and easy to explain, and everything fits in the box when you are done without a ton of creative moving bits around to make things fit. All in all, this is kind of the perfect fast, casual game for those who want something that works for all audiences.
Until next time, this would also make a solid gift for someone who is maybe a little younger but wants very badly to get into more complex gameplay. It’s a good transition game as well as a time killer, so I can see it serving a few different needs at the table, and we love a game that can do more than one thing and keep players happy.