BOOP (2022)

PLAYERS	TIME	DESIGNER	PUBLISHER
2	20-30 mins	Scott Brady	Smirk & Laughter Games

Can a game offer challenging abstract strategy yet be one of the cutest games in our collection? This 2-player only game says yes. And it might just be right.

In BOOP, players take turns to place a Kitten on a 6×6 grid. Any Kittens adjacent to where you place get ‘booped’. And if they’re on the edge of the board, they fall off and go back to their owner.

Get three of your pieces in a row including Kittens and upgrade them to Cats. Get three of your Cats in a row and you’ve won.

BOOP is simple. All you do on your turn is place a single piece on the board. But you need to plan how that placement will move other pieces around. Both yours and your opponent.

Sometimes you have to forgo your plan to close in on victory because you need to place elsewhere to prevent your opponent from getting there first.

This could have been a basic 2-player strategy game. It has vibes of DRAUGHTS and TIC-TAC-TOE. It could have just been a checkered board with wooden discs and it would have been fine.

Instead, the designer made it about cats trying to climb up on a bed, which has made this game stand out on store shelves.

The production of this game, despite the lack of components, is fantastic. From the ‘quilted’ board to the cute, chunky wooden cat pieces. Its tiny footprint has impressive presence on the table.

But that adorable look is both a blessing and a curse.

People who enjoy tight head-to-head strategy may skip BOOP because it looks and feels like a kids game. Or people picking up the new cute might find a tense thinky game they weren’t expecting.

But I think it can do both.

BOOP is a game that gives a relaxing vide to the normally tense and thinky strategy genre. It’s super cute while still offering a 1v1 challenge.