Cat Box Card Game First Impressions

Cat Box has cats in boxes…

Look at all the kitties!

Cat Box is played with cards divided into quadrants each showing an empty box or one of five cats (in a box). Players take turns playing these cards to a shared display, overlapping previous cards by one or two quadrants. Each player is assigned a secret identity; if you are a cat you want as many of your cats showing at the end of the game as possible and as large a group of them as possible, but if you are the chihuahua you want empty boxes and groups of exactly three cats.

A brief overview of the rules for Cat Box followed by my first impressions.

Cat Box Summary

These games where you lay tiles to overlap other things are pretty cool. I recently played Honshu and enjoyed that but that is more of a strategy game than this. Honshu involves trick-taking, pick-up and delivery (in a way) and you make your own little area.

In this game everyone is playing in a large area, trying to score their own points. At the same time, stopping the other players from scoring.

This is where the secret goals come in. You have your hidden goal and you need to score points from it while keeping it hidden for as long as possible. This reminds me of the hidden scoring in Sagrada where you don’t want to be too obvious but of course, you need to score those points.

I feel being able to play a card from anyone’s hand is a weird rule. Cards are held like Hanabi but as they’re double-sided what your opponents see isn’t what you can see. This seemed unnecessary as not only could a player just have their own 3 cards in hand, but it meant you had to hold your hand up all the time.

Jesta ThaRogue