Review: Bunny Bunny Moose Moose

Bunny Bunny Moose Moose is yet another unusual game from designer Vlaada Chvatil, creator of many unique games including Galaxy Trucker, Space Alert, and Sneaks and Snitches.

The premise for Bunny Bunny Moose Moose is that a hunter is walking through the woods, and you don’t want to be the type of animal the hunter is looking for.  Each turn, one player is the narrator, and the rest try to score points based on the “story”.  You determine what the hunter wants and doesn’t want by looking at the cards turned over during the narration.  As the “story” is played out, you choose in real time which animal you are, because you never know when the hunter is coming.  When the hunter appears, all decisions are done.  How do you choose what animal you are?  Well… that’s the really unique part.  There are different types of bunnies and moose, and depending on which you want to be, you stick your hands on your head in different positions to show which one you are.

The MeepleTown game testers take their roles very seriously

To explain in a little more detail, a round goes like this:  The narrator reads a line from a poem and turns up a card.  It might say +1 and have a picture of a bunny with straight ears on top of its head.  The narrator reads another line, and it might say +2 to a moose with the left antler pointing up. This continues with the narrator creating six piles as he goes.  After the initial tableau of six, the narrator re-reads the poem and places cards on top of those six, so the awesome card that gave you a huge bonus might get covered up by a not so awesome card that gives you a huge negative.  The whole time that the narrator is placing cards, players are adjusting their hands according to what they think will help their score the most.  After the initial six cards, when the next hunter card comes up, the narrator says “bam” and all the players have to freeze.  If you don’t freeze, or if the narrator can’t tell what you intended to be, or if you try to be both a bunny or a moose, you are a bush and you lose points.  The narrator scores each person based on their current hand positions.  The tricky part to scoring is that each player has both a Bunny and a Moose token on the scoring track.  At the end of the game, players’ final score is their second-place animal.

Here’s the part where I steal Derek’s rating system:
Components - Does the game look nice? Are the bits worth the money? Do they add to the game?
Accessibility - How easy is the game to teach, or to feel like you know what you are doing?
Depth - Does the gameplay allow for deeper strategies, or does the game play itself?
Theme - Does the game give a sense of immersion? Can you imagine the setting described in the game?
Fun - Is the game actually enjoyable? Do you find yourself smiling, laughing, or having some sense of satisfaction when it’s over?

Components – They look appropriate for the game and function well.  Overall, they aren’t spectacular, but the game does have awesome bunny and moose meeples.  The illustrations on the cards are kind of hard to decipher at a glance.  However, the rumor is that this is by design to make the game a little harder and more frantic (thanks Vlaada!).  The problem I have with the components is that this is a Czech Games Edition title, and it uses the same flimsy cards that plague Space Alert and Dungeon Lords.  5/10

Accessibility – This game is actually harder to learn than you would think.  In our initial game, all of the players had it figured out by the time everyone had been narrator once.  The sticking point for a few of us was the “tongue” rule.  If you stick out your tongue, you score for the animal you are, but you move the other piece (for example, if you’re a bunny with your tongue stuck out, you score points based on your bunny ears but move your moose instead).  There are animal-based multiplier cards as well, and the tongue is sometimes hard to understand with the multipliers.  All in all this game is simple: make bunny ears or moose antlers in a certain position.  But since you have to play by memory, real-time, with no player aids, it’s a little tougher than you’d expect from a party game. 6/10

Depth – Bunny Bunny Moose Moose is actually much more complex than you would expect from a game where you stick your fingers above your head while listening to a poem.  The fact that there are many different possibilities and combinations for antlers and ears, the aforementioned tongue rule, and several types of bonus cards actually add quite a bit of complexity to the game.  There are even some things the narrator can do to mix things up a little, such as reading the poem more quickly.  The game does have some randomness because you don’t know if the hunter is going to appear and cover up the card that’s giving you an awesome bonus, but there is absolutely serious thought and strategy that goes into playing the game. 7/10

Theme - Overall the theme is cohesive and believable, but there are times where it’s just easier to think in terms of  scoring rather than “what the hunter wants” or whether you’re “a bunny who thinks he’s a moose” (the tongue rule).  However, I don’t think this game could easily be themed as something else and work the way it does.  8/10

Fun - Holy Cow.  This is one of the most fun games I have ever played. Lots of giggling and smiling and general good-natured shenanigans were happening when we played.  10/10

Average Total Score – 7.2

Bunny Bunny Moose Moose is silly fun with more depth than you’d expect.  Overall, it’s very enjoyable and definitely like nothing else you’ve ever played before.  I can definitely see this one getting pulled out late night at conventions, and the fact that I keep wanting to figure out how I can adjust my review score to give it a higher rating should tell you something.  It’s a 7.2, but it is one of the most fun games in that score range that I have ever played, and it’s a great experience if you’re looking for something different.