Garbage Gobblers Preview

Have you ever thought about all that food that ends up in our garbabe bins and what a treat they present to other beings (not necessarily human) who are starving ? In fact trash bins are a way for stray cats and dogs to survive or even hungry rats (remember Emil from Ratatouille movie?). Today we are going to review a game in which you are going to do just that: provide the best possible food for those lonely, stray animals from garbage bins.

Garbage Gobblers is a card game for 2 to 5 players that lasts about 30-50mins, depending on the number of players. It will soon be on Kickstarter and then get published by a new Greek publisher, Wildbox. It is designed by Angelos Sifonios along with Vasilis Jerboa, a graphics artist. In this game you take the role of the leader of several street critters, trying to find the best meals in the neighborhood’s garbage cans. There are four available garbage cans, which you can raid at the time you think appropriate in order to get the most of them.

The components of the game are:

• the garbage deck (66 cards)
• the gobbler deck (56 cards)
• 4 trashcan cards (in 4 colors)
• recipe cards (5 cards)
• 5 garbage trucks
• 4 garbage bags
• 5 player guide cards
• 1 score block

Gobblers can be rats, cats or dogs. When performing a raid in a garbage can, dogs are the most powerful to win the raid (which thematically makes absolute sense), cats have a middle power and rats are the weakest ones. To counterbalance that, rats have the best ability, cats the second best and dogs the worst (we will talk later about abilities). Moreover there are some other special creeters with special abilities, a racoon, a bear, a skunk and a pigeon.

These are some of the regular gobblers

Common garbage food can be pizza, beef or apples. These are worth 1, 2 and 3 points each respectively at the end of the game. A special kind of garbage is bottles. At the end game scoring, they are worth the square of their number in points, for example 5 bottles would worth a total of 25 points. Some special food must be eaten by a specific critter during a raid, or else they will be discarded. Cheese can be eaten only by rats, fishbones by cats and bones by dogs. These are worth 4 points each if the appropriate creeter takes part in the raid. But wait, this is garbage, it can’t be that good. Some of this junk food is really tasty but some other is rotten. Tasty food will count as positive points for you whereas rotten food will count as negative.  The more food you collect of the same kind, the more points you will get (set collection mechanism). For example a set of 3 same kind of food will give you a bonus of 5 points, a set of 5 will give you a 10 point bonus etc.

This is tasty food!

At the start of the game, the gobblers and garbage decks are shuflled and each player is dealt 5 gobbler cards and a secret recipe card. This is a card with ingredients they must collect till the end of the game to score extra points. The 4 garbage bags are put under the garbage deck (they are the signal that the game approaches its end). The 4 trashcans are laid in a row with garbage trucks above them. 2 face-up garbage cards are dealt under each trashcan. And the game begins!

Recipes

Each turn a player can choose to do one of the following:

• Produce more garbage. He/she draws 2 garbage cards, looks at them and places them face-down in one or two trachcans. If a trashcan has eight garbage, a garbage truck card is immediately added to the garbage of that can and no more food can be added. The player who wins the raid on that trashcan, gains also the the garbage truck which is worth 5 points.

The Garbage truck

• Get more gobblers. He she draws a number of gobblers equal to the number of players, choose one, then each of the other players, picks one, moving clockwise.
• Begin a raid. The player declares which can he/she is going to raid, flips the corresponding trachcan card and plays at least one face-down gobbler in front of them, to take part in the raid. Then the rest of the players, each on their turn, choose either to play a number of gobblers to participate in the raid or pass. Gobblers chosen by each player must be of the same color. Rats, cats and dogs can all participate in the raid and are played face down. Special gobblers have an instant effect, are played face up and then discarded. This action goes on until all players have passed. Then gobblers, taking part in the raid are revealed and the player with the biggest total strength of critters wins the raid. If the color of the trashcan, matches the color of the critters played, the total power of the critters gets a bonus of 2 points. Then the winning player takes all of the cards from that trashcan. Now let’s talk about critters’ abilities. I have already mentioned that dogs are the strongest. Their weak spot is that they must always leave behind a tasty food. The cats, which are midrange regarding power can leave a rotten food behind. Rats, who are the weakest, have the best ability, they convert a rotten food to tasty. Food from the trashcan, after applying the critters’ abilities is added to the feast of the player who won the raid and organized on the table based on their value.

The neighborhood trashcans along with trash food!

The special critters have the following abilities:

• the bear: all opponents with gobblers in play must discard one of them
• the skunk: the currect raid is moved to the next garbage can on the right
• the pigeon: all player reveal the face-down gobblers they have chosen for a raid and all subsequent ones for the particular raid
• the racoon: exchange one garbage from one trashcan with another from a different trashcan

The game will approach the end when one of the garbage bags appear in the garbage deck. From that point on, the only option to play will be raids until all players have passed. Then each player calculates their score according to the positive and negative points they have accumulated and the player with the most points is declared winner.

A garbage bag signals the end of the game

Now let’s see how the game scores in our usual scoring categories:

Components

The only components of the game are cards. I can’t tell of the quality of the cards, as the game I have tested is a prototype, not the final product. The art in the cards, on the other hand is finalized and is an aspect worth mentioning. The various critters are adorable, from my point of view. They are pretty realistic, having many different expressions, resembling what one would really see on the street, various types of the different animals. Graphics are not cartoonish but more on the realistic side. Garbage is depicted with fancy pictures. Depiction of rotten food with flies flying around them is so much fun.

Rotten food

A comprehensive rulebook is included in the game, along with game guides for a each player, ensuring that all crucial information is available at all times to the players. The box of the game deserves a special mention, as it has the shape of a trashcan, so no way you can miss it. How thematic!

Gerbage Gobblers box (not the final product)

A scorecard is also included in the box and it comes very handy for calculating final scoring. 8/10

Gameplay

Gameplay of Garbage Gobblers is simple yet challenging. Each turn players have interesting decisions to make, like which action to take, what critters to choose when opening new critters, which trashcan to raid, which creatures to put in your raiding team.

The garbage producing action is straight forward. You are the only one knowing what the face-down garbage you put in the bin is, so it immediately becomes an advantage for you.

The choice of adding some critters to your deck, yet presents another challenge: what to choose. Regarding this decision I think the most interesting element of the game is the balance between the power of the critters and their “raid” abilities. No choice is self-evident. Rats are weak in battles for the raid but once they are in the winning team they are the most useful by converting negative points to positive ones. Dogs are the most powerful, almost always winning the raid but you must compromise by letting behind a tasty meal. When there is an apple in the trashcan (which is only worth one point) it is definitely worth to have a dog in your team, in order to have a better chance of winning the raid. Cats deal with the problem of rotten food in the trashcans too and have more power than rats so they are definitely worthy. Eventually what critters you choose depends on the colors and types of critters you need the particular moment.

Choosing to start a raid is the most fascinating option, as it lets you dive in the heart of the game, which is collecting food. You must study the trashcans closely and figure out which of them is worthy of your critters. Don’t forget that once you win a raid, you must discard all critters that have taken part in the raid. Opponents must discard only one of the critters they chose to play for the raid.

Special critters make the game even more interesting by messing up opponents plans. Their abilities are all well thought and have a big impact to the game. Recipes also spice up gameplay, making you seek certain ingredients and influencing the decision of what trashcan to raid. The duration of the game depends on the number of players and falls into the most attractive zone of 30-50 mins. The game flows without having a boring moment.  8/10

Replayability

At the end of the day, what really matters in a board game is, upon concluding it, how eager you are to play it again. That depends on the general feeling it leaves you with. Did you have fun or did you get bored? Was the game challenging or was it too easy? When I finished my first game of Garbage gobblers, the feeling was definitely positive. I wanted to play again, make better decisions and have more fun. Since that first play, the game was selected many more times to appear on the gaming table, being equally fun. Simple rules and quick setup, make the game interesting to all age groups and all levels of board game expertize. Moreover its small box makes it fit easily in your vacation luggage to be carried anywhere. 8/10

Theme

Garbage gobblers tries hard to be thematic and in most aspects, it succeeds. The theme is about street critters raiding trashcans. The cute animals, the trashcans and the food are all represented by cards. What I found not being quite thematic, are the abilities of the regular critters. Why would a dog leave a tasty snack behind? How could a rat convert a rotten food too tasty? Does that mean that maybe it becomes tasty only for rats? The cat ability seems more logical. Cats are a bit more sophisticated so they could leave something not so tasty behind. Some of the abilities of the special critters have some logic, others not. The bear has a cool ability that seems fair enough, it scares away opponents’ creatures, so they discard one animal played for the raid. I assume that the skunk exhales such stench that raiding creatures move to the next trashcan. On the contrary, abilities of the pidgeon and the racoon seem a bit disconnected from their nature. Not that it would be easy to find an animal that would fit what the creator of the game had in mind. My overall sense however is that it really feels like raiding these trashcans while playing the game. 7/10

Special critters

 

Player interaction

The only moment that players interact with each other is during a raid, when playing the special critters cards. More player interaction could be implemented, if there were some more special cards that would interact with opponents’ feast cards, maybe an exchange or some stealing. The same could be done with opponents’ critters. Some more interaction with the garbage cans could also occur, for example changing the cans colors or some more garbage exchange other than with the Racoon card. Of course there is a chance that the designer keeps some aces in his sleeves with future expansions.  6/10

Learning Curve

This is really a very simple game, that can be learned within minutes. What one really has to know is the creatures’ abilities, available actions and final scoring. That makes it attractive for groups that are not so into board games, as well as young children and elderly people. Practically it’s a game for everyone. 8/10

Final Thoughts

Garbage Gobblers is a game for all ages and groups with an original theme that is fun to play with. It features superb graphics and a gamebox that very characteristically reminds us its theme. Gameplay flows smoothly and is very engaging, leaving no place for boredom. Special cards ensure that surprises and reversals are ahead. However a little more player interaction would be nice. This game will soon be on Kickstarter, so if you would like to support it and maybe grab some cool extra stuff, stay in touch with the game’s Kickstarter page here: t.ly/5Z4UD

Last but not least, some final thoughts from my 9-year old son: He had a blast the first time we played the game during a game convention and later said it was the best game he played during the day (we tried a lot of them). What he is mostly enthusiastic with is the game’s art and the way the game flows. It has become his favorite game ever since and we play it often.

I would like to thank the designer, Angelos Sifonios for providing us with a prototype. When the game is officially out, we will feature a review of the final product.