Bobop

• Designers: Pirko & Amaury
• Publisher: Planet.A
• Players: 2 (preferably a couple)
• Time: varies per card
• Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/planet-a/bobop
• Prototype review copy sent to me by designer/publisher

Bobop is subtitled as a game for city lovers.  It is an interesting idea, sort of a pocket sized way to explore a new place, or honestly, maybe even a city you’re already familiar with.   It is a game meant primarily for couples – and it gives you a deck of challenge cards to help guide your exploration of your surroundings.

My set has 40+ illustrated cards, each with a challenge on it (and usually with a recommended time limit).  This is not really a traditional game though, there are no winners or losers per se – actually, I think all the participants are winners for using the cards as a tool to explore.

So, it’s still pretty hard to travel right now, you know, COVID.  But, things are well enough right now that we took a day trip to our son’s college town to surprise him with a visit and then walk around the town center to try out bobop.

The pack of cards is a bit long, but stayed comfortably in the back pocket of my blue jeans.  Once we had managed to get into the town square, we pulled the game out, and we quickly read the rules.

Seems easy enough… The first card was:

So we looked around the town.  As it’s March now, all of the window dressings in the shops were more shamrock related than valentine’s hearts, so no luck there.  Couldn’t find any trees that looked like a heart… But as we passed the old Church in town, we saw a small cemetery, and we spotted a heart shaped headstone.  So we had a smooch on the sidewalk there (a little shorter than the recommended 60 seconds).  For privacy reasons, we didn’t take a picture of the stranger’s headstone, but it looked something like this…

This first card took us around about a third of the small downtown, and given the cold temperatures, it was time to warm up!  We headed into a local pizza place, and looked at the next cards to get us ready.

As it turns out, we spent ten minutes enjoying the food and the other people in the restaurant without talking.  Card #2 achieved.   yeah, I know the card says to keep walking, but it’s 16F outside.  We made an executive decision to do it while inside.

For the third and final card in our initial exploration, we were at a lack of supplies, as we didn’t really know what to expect from the cards.  As we thought about it, we wandered by the other cemetery in town (I’m surprisingly familiar with cemeteries thanks to some other hobbies), and found a veteran’s marker, and we left a penny on top to pay our respects.

The three cards took us about 90 minutes, gave us a nice walking tour of downtown and let us enjoy a lunch with only a few words.  It was definitely a different way to see a place we had been many times in the past.

The cards in my prototype are made of very thick cardstock, and they seem durable.  The outer packaging is cardboard, and the corners are a little bent from being placed in and out of my pocket, but it’ll hold up for a few trips for sure.  The black and white art is quite cute, and I like the overall style and graphic design.

The box also contains a small passport which has a number of pages in it so that you can record some of your experiences.  We didn’t have a pen with us, but we’ll be ready for next time.

If you want to check it out for yourself, the game is currently on Kickstarter.

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor