Not many Kickstarters can grab me on their name alone, but that was the case for Lobster Pot. The tagline, "Be a sore loser, pull your friends down" resonated with me on a persona, physical, and spiritual level. The concept of the game is simple, everyone plays a lobster, and first one out of the pot wins. It's a mix of chutes and ladders meets every party game you've played, from charades to Pictionary. Here is what the game looks like set up.
The board is hilarious, with a seagull hungrily looking in as your lobster pieces desperately try to escape the pot. The game takes place over six rounds, and you can see how each round is symbolized by a burner going on. There are "Chaos Cards" which act like cards in other games, letting you mess with other players or advance yourself faster. Then, much like Mario Party, if you end your turn on the same spot as another lobster you have to resolve a "Conflict", a bunch of Mario Party esque mini games. For example, one of ours was to have someone out of the conflict draw a sea animal and the two people in the challenge had to guess what it was. The winner of the conflict advances, the loser either stays on the same level or goes down further. The game moves pretty fast, probably around a half hour of playtime once you know what you are doing. As impressed as I was with the gameplay, the materials themselves impressed me even more.
Each player gets a "menu" to play off of, where each round you get to choose to either boost your own Lobster up, or drag someone else's down. I was the Blue Lobster, so as you can see, I'm petty and vindictive. There is also a dominance track, shown by the circles above, which either gives you plus 1 on rolls or makes you suffer -1. So while there is a lot going on in this game, game pieces like this menu keep it VERY simple to keep track of everything going on. I am very impressed with Brian Walton's organizational skills. Even the box was perfect, having a perfect space for everything in the game, making one of the easiest clean up jobs I have ever done after a game. I will say my only gripe was that in the end it didn't really seem to matter what you did during the game. The gameplay is fun, but it mostly led to us being on the lower levels of the pot for most of the game (because we are all jerks). But there are some seriously overpowered Chaos cards that really make it so it doesn't really matter who is in first at the end of the game. I enjoy a game that gives the last place player a boost, but in this case it is WAY too much of a boost. So if you want a fun time this is the game for you, just expect some BS at the end to flip everything completely around. I recommend this game for anyone who likes to be a jerk, so everyone reading this should buy a copy here.
Score: 7/10 for fun, 6/10 for competition
